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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
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    London, England
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    209

    Default Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11 has just been launched.

    As usual you can find an overview on our website @ http://www.xara.com/photo-graphic-designer/whats-new/ and more detailed information in the release notes @ http://xaragroup.magix.net/PGD11releasenotes/ but the highlights are:

    • A big step forwards for the Brush Tool, with new Art Brushes and enhanced Scatter Brushes
    • New industry standard blend / transparency modes
    • Lots of new & improved text features including abbreviation expansion
    • Document sync with Dropbox or GDrive
    • Significant PDF and Word import improvements
    • An extension of the Shape Editor Tool (Liquify Tools).

    Gary Priester has done his traditional first look which you can find here http://xaragroup.magix.net/PGD11/

    Fyi the Liquify Tools and latest SmartShapes (check out the new spiral) are the first quite simple examples of what can be created with our new plug-in technology, for which we intend to publish an API so that third parties can add features, tools and SmartShapes. The API isn’t ready to be released yet, but if you’re a JavaScript developer and this sounds interesting, send us a ticket via support.xara.com to register your interest and we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime I hope you enjoy the new features, they will of course all be in Pro 11.
    .................
    Kate Moir
    [url]http://www.xara.com[/url]

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    UK
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    21,283

    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    installing as I type

  3. #3

    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    Good job Xara!!!

    The most interesting:

    Art brushes - Finally. Great!
    New Blend Modes - Overlay, Hard and Soft Light are very very useful options!
    Liquify Shape Editing Tools - Not sure. But the possibility of expanding (via JavaScript if I understood correctly) sounds intriguing.
    Font Replacement - Good!

    The rest we'll see. Hopefully a couple of extra pro-goodies will be added to the XDP version

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    UK
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    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    just to say an issue has occurred:

    my wacom will not produce rendered strokes when program set to pressure recording - it does when pressure recording is off
    also there is a crash if a custom brush type is selected by the wacom without leaving pressure recording first

    this has been reported to xara

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    England (Amongst the green rolling hills of the East Midlands)
    Posts
    51

    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    Wahey... new vector tools for 'artistic' strokes and for vector deformation. Can't wait to try this out on a Cintiq when I return from hols.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    UK
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    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    ok the new art brushes are seriously cool - more on that later

    the liquify shape editing is quick and easy

    the 'intersect all shapes' is a sort of 'enhanced slice' and useful

    however the new blend/transparency mode/types don't really add anything for me [just 'trying to be photoshop'] and worse, apart from STAINED GLASS, the ones I used most are gone: LIGHTEN, DARKEN, HUE

    very quick subtle changes to colouration, whilst maintaining black/white tone highlights was possible with these, can't seem to get it to work the same way at all with the new set, so no reason to upgrade there and it could well be an issue for files where backwards compatibility is not available

    some examples:

    Click image for larger version. 

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    top left - original
    top right - original with pale yellow rectangle and HUE
    bottom left - original cloned and DARKEN applied to the clone
    bottom right - original cloned and LIGHTEN applied to the clone

    EDIT - still get left and right mixed up, now put right... [just as well I can afford to pay someone to drive me around ]

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    UK
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    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    oh and the darn TG board has reduced the image to a fuzzy jpg [why does the thumbnail still say PNG?]

    so here is the .XAR - but it won't work if you open it in ver 11 of course, since the transparencies used are not there
    Attached Files Attached Files

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jun 2004
    Location
    North Tawton, UK
    Posts
    1,152

    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    Version 11 loads and displays files that use the old deprecated transparency types. In such files the old transparency types will appear in the transparency tool dropdown menu.

    Phil

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    UK
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    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    Hi thanks Phil

    actually I was more thinking about having to go back to ver 8 to apply the 'non-PDFsafe' transparency modes to ongoing work, because I can't do this in ver 11

    whilst I'm here - great work on the art brushes; so good in fact I have only found one quibble so far.. a tendency when working very fast and free in sketch mode for the freehand brush to suddenly switch to line tool - guess it's catching nodes, cause there are still some there even in sketch mode; maybe tweaking the hit radius will help, still looking at that

    incidentally - did you fix the 'ctrl+A' problem; not seen it so far..

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jun 2004
    Location
    North Tawton, UK
    Posts
    1,152

    Default Re: Just Released: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11

    Hi,

    If you're working in a file that uses the old transparency types then you can apply them without restriction and, of course, you can create a template file that contains them, just like you would for a set of colours or brushes that you want to be present in all new documents.

    Thanks for the kind words. We worked very hard on the art brushes to make them smooth and and give high quality feedback while you're drawing (unlike some other programs). As a drawing gets more complex, of course, it takes more CPU power and more time to draw it and so eventually the program has to give up on live feedback and draw the simple "spine" instead. You can help the program to keep up by grouping things or putting things on layers so that it can cache them.

    Do you mean it switches out of the Freehand tool to the Shape editor tool? If so, that's almost certainly because you have accidentally double-clicked on a line while drawing. I can see that we might have to do something about that!

    Note sure what Ctrl+A problem you're referring to...???

    Phil

 

 

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