Some questions about Designer Pro (v20, perpetual license)

[James505]

Ok, I'm new here and I have read many threads in this forum before asking these questions, but I might have not found the key threads. So, from more to less important (for me):

1) So, the v20 "One-time purchase" option, is an "end of line" in terms of future upgrades?. I have read that this option has been created by Xara for those who were having such license in Magix. Did I understand correctly, that there is no warranty that there would be any other update for perpetual versions, any other option other than switching to a subscription plan by then? Or that it's only a "maybe" situation, at best?

2) I have read that this version has a "yearly update". Does this mean then that it will be updated (to v21, or v20.1, whatever the version) so that the people who purchased a permanent license now, will be able to purchase a new version but (and this is the important part) will not be forced to do so? I mean, if the software will still run (IE, the license is not deactivated or something) and etc if one does not upgrade to a new version after a year.

3) With the available trial (unsure about if it is similar to the v20 or too different) I have noticed that the brush when drawing freehand, if smoothing is on, even a slight value, it like jumps or trembles while drawing. If smoothing is disabled, then it does not make it, but then the lines get like many tiny bumps (looking closely, many nodes that are a bit random). I have noticed that it can be greatly fixed (or to an extent) if afterwards one combines all shapes, selects all nodes and applies a (careful) smoothing. It is not an ideal workflow, though (IMO). Is it planned in some roadmap a fix for this? BTW, I am using a Wacom tablet.

4) I have noticed that greatly augmenting the memory (in settings) that Xara Designer is allowed to use, in several fields (redrawing, etc), and tweaking some other setting, the performance improves greatly when you have many vector nodes. Is there available any sheet or forum thread specifically about performance tricks?

I don't expect people knowing the answer for the 4 questions, any answer would be very welcome and appreciated. Many thanks

[Acorn]

James, welcome to TalkGraphics.

in reply:
1. No one knows. Probably not even Xara who have yet to explain anything about bug fixes, versioning or upgrading. As an outsider, it certainly looked like a cobbled-together response as the lack of marketing of v20 or a trial version puts it on its own island of destitution.
2. No one knows. You v20 Perpetual will be forever. You will not lose its capability if a "v21" comes along. If a v21 appears, it will probably use the same licence that you have for your v20. This means you will be limited to two active downloads of a mix of v20 & v21 on your system(s).Whether you can install v21 and later on revert to v20 is another Xara question. 'Forever', in reality, means it will run on Windows 11 and lower to 8.1.

https://www.xara.com/designerpro/v20/ :: While V20 is our latest offering, we plan to develop future versions that incorporate new features, enhancements, and the latest design trends. There are no dates or plans set for a future version. If you require the latest features, updates, and constantly updating design content, the Plus versions are updates on a regular basis.

3. I have a new Huion Tablet, Inspiroy Ink, but I have noticed this too. That said, I am no digital graphic artist or designer. I use the Shape Painter Tool mostly and don't get the wibbles. Using the Brush Tool, I set Pressure recording and so get the Pen Pressure profile. Beyond this, I am a tyro.
4. I would like to understand more around your 'tweaking'. You need to describe your machine first off as I have never done that much to get Xara working with thousands or nodes.

Acorn

[handrawn]

I have noticed that the brush when drawing freehand, if smoothing is on, even a slight value, it like jumps or trembles while drawing.

you are stuck with this i'm afraid

xara has 'smoothing' but no stabilisation in the modern sense and there is no way round it - the program seems to try to guess where you want to go next which is back seat driving at its worst when sketching

it has been like this since 2003 when I first used the program and probably since inception; xara have never shown any inclination to change it - my honest advice: use affinity designer instead if this gets in your way [as it does for me]

[James505]

James, welcome to TalkGraphics.

in reply:
1. No one knows. ...

Thank you very much, both of you.
Both posts confirm what I suspected.

1. OK. Based on that, my safest path is to consider it as probably an end of product line situation (and buy it as that, no expectations), or, at least counting only with the current version, anything else would come as a nice surprise.
Still fine, for me. For example, it has export to PDF/X-1a:2001. Affinity Designer has only PDF/X-1a:2003 (plus PDF/X-3:20003 and PDF/X-4), which is sometimes required by some very particular client or company, and they can be very strict with that...instead of just using PDF/X-4. And it counts on many export formats and other advantages. It is good for me to have it as an extra tool. The features for regular design work (not counting hand drawing, but I can get that with other tools) are pretty much what I need, with what it has now. So, even if the paid upgrades would only be maintenance versions to keep up with Windows (when and if it really breaks things), that'd be fine for me.

2. So, for example, with Windows 12, it could be its goodbye, I see. I will get it before the special offer ends, though; I just wanted to know better which was the situation.

3. What I suspected, too, then. I would keep doing that thing with my other tools, then.

4. Oh, it was just in case there were some brilliant pair of threads or something already made about it. I got it to work nicely with the tweaks in settings I already made with the demo. It's just that when inking without smoothing, a few lines introduce already several hundreds of nodes, so, noticing it not fully snappy (until changed the settings), I predicted a complex drawing could end up "heavy". But I think I will manage, with my tweaks, and as probably will just bring in the already inked drawing (an svg or etc) from another vector software (Inkscape, Affinity, etc). But it seems that inking with no smoothing, and applying a smoothing at the end could work for not too complex vector drawings, just fine. My machine? It's a Ryzen 9 3900X (getting old, I know), 32GB RAM, 3060 12GB nvidia GPU. But a hybrid situation with disks (SSD for the OS, yet HDD for apps and files... I know, it's 2024, etc... )

Thank you very much, Acorn.

[James505]

you are stuck with this i'm afraid

xara has 'smoothing' but no stabilisation in the modern sense and there is no way round it - the program seems to try to guess where you want to go next which is back seat driving at its worst when sketching

it has been like this since 2003 when I first used the program and probably since inception; xara have never shown any inclination to change it - my honest advice: use affinity designer instead if this gets in your way [as it does for me]

"Secret" to be told... Affinity Designer's brush system (unlike Affinity Photo's brush, which is very accurate) is also neither perfect (somewhat workable, though). It adds always some extra smoothing (quite increased in zoom-out situations) which makes it not fully accurate. I made my mind about it a while ago. Besides I am mostly a raster software person when it comes to painting (I am also a g. designer). When I need vector drawings, which is going to be an increasing need, next months from now, what I do is one of the following, depending on the project's type and requirements :

a) I totally "free style", wildly draw it on Clip Studio, Rebelle or PaintStorm (or Krita in the free world), or even draw on paper and scan, then just carefully "ink" it with the usual "node per node" tool that one gets in every vector app out there. "Old school".

b) The first step in (a) but I ink with Inkscape (or, directly inking with Inkscape, from scratch), the single one vector tool (with the exception of Adobe Illustrator) that seems accurate in the process of getting your ink lines just as you draw them. [But you do have to feel OK with the red highlight of the lines (some active segment) while you draw, and the "sections" it draws only while laying the stroke. Silly thing, but it bothers me, lol, when the line is very thick].

c) Like first step in (a) but in this case carefully inking as a finished inking, but just in raster (pixels). At a huge resolution, as if going to print in very large scale. So that the auto tracer that Inkscape uses (based on Potrace) will do a fine job. With certain special settings, it does a fantastic job, if the file is that big. ONLY if the optimization of nodes is not a problem for the output (not in my case, for those projects). Yet some final vector clean-up and fixing is preferable. For me it's the most enjoyable, as I am actually just working in raster, which I prefer. For many projects this technique would be (a bad decision) very crazy to use, though.

(c) is the fastest, my most probable route for next months. The best, technically, is indeed (a), a solid drawing/composition made in whatever (traditional or raster software), then carefully do the vectors node by node. I do (a) or (b) when I have the time and the project requires it / pays well enough (hehe) . (b) is a very nice compromise in terms of speed / output quality. Not great for 'fast production' (very niche use), though.

BTW, nice that you mention Affinity Designer, as I am indeed an Affinity user, for years, and many more years, an Adobe user (for the job). I guess you might have received some influx here, since the Canva's news. I'm not pessimistic about that acquirement, though, at all (one of the few). But in the first days I was, slightly, and I looked around, then one day I realized that Designer Pro is in a big discount... I had indeed wanted to buy Xara Designer Pro for a while (years), but as I only want it to have it as a fantastic companion tool (not main) the normal price (even less the case with Corel Draw) would mean not a great deal for me, as in many ways I am getting "redundancy" with tools (both raster and vector ones).

[handrawn]

no brush system is perfect

I see affinity beta 2.5 is introducing a line width tool along the same lines [is that a pun] as illustrator where you drag the node[s] on the line...

both my favourite vector drawing tool programs, toon boom harmony and painttool SAI 2, do not actually export as vectors, but both will work at very high resolution and for me that is good enough

[James505]

no brush system is perfect

True...I'd say, though, for me Clip Studio, PaintStorm Studio and Rebelle 7 come incredibly close... (and just Rebelle for traditional, other than just picking some oils, acrylics or watercolors). As, not only is it the brush system. There are always other caveats coming with each app... Rebelle can't do large canvases due to all the physics calculations it makes. But nanopixel feature can help for print stuff and huge exports in general. But that's an AI enlarger, and I dislike the concept . At least that AI only invents micro fiber of the paper or oil canvas, to look nice on 300/600 dpi prints, it does not generate anything you did not paint; no scrapping. Clip Studio can't do 16bit per channel (smoother gradients and in general more intermediate tones, most people do not notice) while Affinity Photo (and Photoshop, I think Krita too) can. PaintStorm relies too much on GPU (so you'd better off having one, even a bad one, tho it can paint CPU-only). PaintTool SAI is somewhat limited in features (fully functional for painting, though).

I have PaintTool SAI 2.x, but... isn't it fully a raster, pixel based software? (no vector export? I wish I'm wrong...). I have it and it is indeed (by my personal tests) by very far the raster painting and image editing program allowing me to paint with largest canvases and largest brushes at the same time (in raster canvases). To very crazy levels. I don't have an idea of how the author was able to get that, it's like magic. It is the favorite tool of a huge percentage of artists doing commissions (many of them still use an old 1.x beta, I think), specially among students - artists, and some more pro ones who started in DeviantArt and now are quite pro. Quite a jewel. I believe the reason why it got used by so many young ones is because it runs on any potato, incredibly optimized for low hardware (besides being available as a free beta for some time). So, cheapo school laptops with no GPU (old intel's integrated graphics) would even work (as they do currently) with it even while doing big illustrations. And super fluid.

I had NO idea that Designer beta 2.5 was introducing that feature. As I don't check the beta forums anymore. I was a beta tester, indeed, but did run out of free time, sadly.

Still, that feature does not really fix the inaccuracy when laying down the stroke (actually the smoothing gets triggered once the line is finished, curiously it is accurate while in the process, the bad thing is in the unavoidable automatic post-smoothing).

You can work around it (till some extent...) by inking at very high zoom-in. Which might be fine as the key moment to see all the composition or most of it is when you are doing the "pencil work". But even so, while inking is very good to see all at once (or at least a 50% of the canvas) to check weights, etc.

I've never used Toon Boom.. I guess Moho Pro 12.5 (got it for like 20 bucks in humblebundle, like corel painter, totally legal, btw) will have to do for me for a while... or Clip Studio Ex/Krita's animation, hehe. I'm very noob at animation, anyway.

[handrawn]

I'm not a painter - I trained as one but I found cartooning [in the modern sense] was a lot more me

Clip Studio can't do 16bit per channel

neither can xara gradients...

painttool sai is a manga/cartooning tool at heart...

[handrawn]

paintstorm studio looks interesting... rebelle looks more like artrage or corel painter, not that you can tell for sure without trying...

[handrawn]

paintstorm studio looks interesting

and then again, maybe not