Xtreme - Vector Design Edition

[jeb]

Interesting thread - and some very good posts from some very knowledgeable people.

I think I fall into the category of those that purchased Xara for 2 very simple reasons - ease of use and cost.

I have Photoshop and a couple of other Adobe products - have never opened them since I purchased my first Xara product. Why? Because I am not a professional design artist - I don't need, nor want, a program that takes months of study just to have simple results. I did an animation in flash - going back and forth to the manual as I did it. I can do the same in Xara after one viewing of the animation video in a snap.

I, like so many of the "newbies" - I consider myself a newbie even though I have had the program for several years - here at Xara, love the program because I can produce a reasonably good result quickly and easily -maybe not a "professional" result like so many here but a result that will certainly do what I need.

I can understand the ones here that have grown up with Xara and use it for it's vector side - you don't use nor care about all the other "goodies" Xara has added to the program. But those "goodies" are bringing a whole new group of users to the program - and their money as well - which will benefit all of us.

My complaint of Xara from the start was the lack of support - send them an email to ask a question and wait for days or not at all to get an answer.

Then I found this forum and all of the great people here that take their time and knowledge to, effectively be Xara's customer support. This seems the way that the business World is going - Google and so many other companies let their customers do their work for them, it seems.

I thank all of you for doing so - for taking your time and sharing your knowledge.

Long story, short - or not so short - I can't wait until Xara takes Xtreme to a fill blown WYSWYG web editing program. They are so very close now and when that happens, Xara will have a lot more money to spend on the program - both the "goodies" side and the vector side. A win/win all the way around. - jb

[FLySOLO]

i agree - the last 5 versions or so brought some bitmap stuff like the filters that i never use or the very bad internal bitmap proggie that has few features.

the new 3d thing is ok but its hard to color the produced thing. again its a bitmap and cannot be converted to vector to color or modify it properly.

i don't know what the panorama thing has to do in xara.

the only reason i still use xara is the way you draw and modify shapes and the very intuitive way of creating gradients and modify these. dito for the transparency.

speed was another point years ago but illustrator got pretty speedy too.


to sum it up:

please give us some more vector improvements. a cool round edges tool or a tool to distort lines and shapes interactively.

color stuff would be useful too like a hls control that affects selected vector objects or some better select tools like select same color...

the star shapes tool (whats it called?) is pretty cool. why not some more tools like this to create maybe wavy lines or other geometry. look at dimitry's tools eg.

...

bb,

FLy

[ivan louette]

I agree !

For me, Expression 3 (before MS) was a nice vector app. Warping shapes and even bitmaps along strokes, and the possibility to change locally pressure profiles is fantastic and should be added to Xara brushes system.

I suggest an automation of stroke fields creation inside shapes which could be used to fill them with vector shapes (which is already possible manually).

On the other hand, a lot of new vector effects are included in Inkscape too. I am sure that Xara could innovate with interactive (even non destructive) vector effects on lines : fractals, waves and others.

And finally, I think that new paradigms should emerge in vector world. For example, today the only basic objects are open and closed curves (Bézier only in Xara). Why not add independent dots and effects based on them : influences, dot clouds etc.

There is room for a whole new graphic world ! Who will bring it to life ?

kindly,
ivan

[peachesQT]

I totally agree.

With Vector ability being the must have for design graphics (why can't we export as SVG) and not particularly liking either Illustrator or Photoshop (they always seem so slow as compared to Xtreme, although I do use them), I would love to see Xara split the package.

Take the web authoring back to WebStyle and keep just graphic designing for Xtreme. And also add in some features.

When designing a graphic I would like to be able to list on the page all the colours used at a click of a button or at least have them showing in the Layer properties. As I'm still using version 2.0f, this might be already available in 4.0

I would also like to have separate colour palettes. Tonal ones for various uses: Pastel, Soft, Neutral, Earth, Vivid, Metallic and more etc. although you can link your colours and that's great for changing graphic blends/colours but I think this would be a definitely good add-on.

Now there's a thought, why don't Xara just bring out Add-ons; that way we can choose which Add-ons we need, and not waste extra coinage on things we don't.


peachesQT

[MarkMyWords]

Well I am not a designer, but I agree too, in general.

All the bitmap 'toys' are fine and don't bother, even though I don't use them. Xtreme is fast and cheap, so there's no reason not to buy it really.

Xtreme sells, or at least sold, itself pretty heavily as an illustration tool too (just look at the galleries) and while it is possible to create almost any image with Xtreme, it is not always as easy as it might be. Certainly it is easy to get into, the learning curve is great, you can get started and work happily almost immediately. The interactive toold are marvelous and time saving, top marks. Unfortunately you soon hit a plateau, which is forgiveable at first, but Xtreme seems to be stagnating in the useability/productivity stakes.

Once you get past the surface of Xtreme things begin to get a bit clunky, the galleries are like something out of a time warp. The alignment box uses an idiosyncratic control method instead of the industry standard icons (the fact that they needed to include the dropdown menus shows how clunky it can be for some). You can drag and drop from, but not too galleries.

I would love to see the option added to the brush engine to allow spacing to fall-off with pressure. Why? Well it would let you give perspective to brush elements, it would keep the spacing in proportion to the size of the elements. Think of a lace pattern or links of a chain getting smaller AND closer together as they go around a curve.

The bitmap tracer has a mass of controls, but a steep learning curve (I've fiddled with that thing for hours), more presets would be good (can users swap saved settings?).

The context sensitive tools options while keeping the display simple and uncluttered, can also be limiting, in that you sometimes have to swap tools in order to get at some functions - adding unnecessary steps. Why can't these be added to custom palettes, like most other buttons can?

Putting more options and power beneath the surface of the program need not create 'bloat', but allow the user to carry on improving productivity as they discover more and better ways of doing things.

I have had Photoshop 7 for years now (probably time to upgrade, CS3 Extended looks pretty good) and I'm still finding better ways of doing things.

Hot keys for ALL functions (including in the galleries) would be a great help for those of us who like macros (some of you knew that was coming) when using third party macro-makers.

Anyway I have to stop whinning now and get some work done.

[gwpriester]

Paul

More to the point, what vector tools are you missing?

I have been doing the Xara Xone for about 13 years and I have to say that the addition of HTML export, limited though it is, has brought more e-mail to me than any new release or any new feature. Ever. By a huge margin. I have not counted the actual number of responses but I can honestly say that it is substantial.

I also happen to be a professional designer. I spent 15 years as a print and TV art director and another 12 years (formally) as principal in my own graphic design company in San Francisco, and the rest since about 1996 doing odd jobs. I use Xtreme for about 95% of my design work.

I also review graphic software for Communication Arts Magazine so I have the very latest versions of all the major players installed on my computer. If I have a better program installed, I try to use it. My clients don't need to know, not has one ever asked, what software I use.

I used to do a lot of my image editing in Photoshop. And I still do quite a bit. But more and more, I find I can adjust levels, edit brightness, contrast, and blur/sharpen in Xtreme. And as a professional I try to use the best tool for the job. If these features in Xtreme were lacking or inferior, I would not use them.

I use NetObjects Fusion to create my websites. But if the occasion comes up to create a more modest site, I will not hesitate to use Xtreme. There are many things I can do that I cannot do in NetObjects or Dreamweaver.

But this is all very self serving on my part (and I do love to hear myself bloviate!)

But I really am more interested to know what features are missing from Xtreme that are holding you back.

Gary

[Tao jones]

I really like it the way it is...just don't use what you don't want...

[PatentGuy]

More to the point, what vector tools are you missing?

I am not Paul, but I agree with him totally.

As for what vector tools are missing (or not working properly), TalkGraphics is full of examples.

I think Xtreme is losing focus by branching into features that really are unrelated to vector graphics. Some of the new non-vector tools don't work all that well. The extrusion tool does not make vectors. It is useless for vector drawings. The html tool feature makes pretty websites that are suitable only if the author wishes to limit the number of visitors to the site. I would rather have a vector drawing program that works very well instead of a program that does everything, but none of it well.

Gary, you have impressive credentials. But, as a user that does different types of drawings than you do and has different needs and requirements than you do, I feel like Xtreme is becoming less useful to me. Xtreme is still the best tool for my work, but the gap is closing.

I vote for an "Xtreme - Vector Design Edition" and an "Xtreme - Does everything edition."

[richinri]

I don't think I know of any vector program worth anything that does not integrate some degree of bitmap capability. Given the realities of the graphics I think this would be a step back.
And most also offer other things like some animation capability, albums, web specific functions etc.

[handrawn]

1. I think the xara code in places at least needs a major overhaul for anything like this to happen - however it is done.

I don't know this for certain of course - but the signs are all there.

This means money, ie sales, before any of it can take place - you always have to start from where you are [not where you would like to be if that is some place else].

This explains for me the way xara is going at present, and a lot of the problems that are being experienced as things change.

2. To answer Gary's point [at the sake of repeating myself from last year]:

vector fill unclosed shapes - the admission given elsewhere in this forum that this facility was actually disabled in xara early on, because it might be confusing, says it all - was xara ever pitched at the high end?

vector brushes that you can manipulate, not have to remake at every twist and turn - and as Mark says, that can vary size with pressure as well as transparency - a tool particularly useful for those who draw artistically.

the ability, say in the name gallery, to adjust the transparency of a color within an object independently [ie take up or down the A in RGBA for a specific color - see inkscape].

mesh manipulation of vector transformation [including color ideally] - the live effect deformation liquid color tool is excellent - but its not vector [sigh].

and just for completeness - layers you can group.

3. From my point of view there is nothing wrong with xara 4 per se - I am quite happy with the bells and whistles - there is perhaps as much chance of me using the panorama tool as there is of me swimming the channel, but no one is forcing me to do either, and you never know...

Some of the changes have affected my workflow, but so far I can flow round it.