Xara v Illustrator

**Bradj2** · 29 July 2009, 02:33 AM

I have been reading about the differences in this forum between Xara and Illustrator CS4. It would be great to see the differences first hand if someone would be willing to demonstrate a movie of them both using the same drawing. Is illustrator CS4 catching up with Xara, I heard it now has live gradient fills?

Thanks,
Brad
P.S may also make a good advert on youtube for Xara converts!

**Albacore** · 29 July 2009, 08:58 AM

Brad I don't think you will get any takers here. Firstly people choose a programme for various reasons, one is they get comfortable with it, that they are forced to make a choice because the job requires it or it is what they can afford (high or low) and there are many other reasons.

Because of my various jobs I have been required to learn AI and now I really know my way around both programmes but which is the one that I like best. Well I have used Xara products since Art Works in the early nineties so there must be a reason for that. I would not have stuck my jobs if I didn't like using AI. Each programme has there strengths and weaknesses with AI a huge programme with many tools and now not doing any one of them badly. Some of these tools I rarely use or want to even have in the programme. If you look and use Xara products, what have you got, a simple set of tools that are very easy to use and it is very quick to design and draw with with the emphasis on speed but with maybe a few tools missing in the vector area. Through this I have hardly talked about the price between the two. You pay more to buy an upgrade in AI, about £60 more than to buy the full product of XPro 5.

Like a lot of people you use more than one programme to do a job and I still bring out Freehand to do certain jobs just like some other person might have a copy of Corel Draw on the H/disc for some specific jobs. Each one to there own and it is up to the user to decide on what's the best. No I still don't think you will get anyone to do a movie on how to use both programmes not from me anyway.

**slavelle** · 29 July 2009, 02:09 PM

I was actually watching a few youtube videos the other day describing how to acomplish certain things with different applications. Illustrator and Photoshop were used for different things. As I watched, I tried to think about how I would accomplish the same thing in Xtreme. I watched a 12 minute video on masking a movie poster in Photoshop and I could describe the same process in Xara in less than 5 minutes and it would be simpler to understand (even without the option to use masks) - mostly because of a tip I learned here on the forum about applying a bitmap fill to a group of objects.

Again, another in illustrator, watching the guy who seems pretty familiar with the toolset try to create some simle curved lines with the Illustrator pen tool - ok, then we drag this tanget handle over here...wait, need to hold alt, er...lets start this one again - etc. These same little vector lines, which were being used as layers of shading, could have been made in seconds in Xtreme - his example took at least 15 minutes.

I'm not familiar with Illustrator myself, and I just got MS Expression Design 3 (as part of Studio, which I got as MSDN/Partner company) and have only poked at it for a few minutes, so I couldn't do a side-by-side comparison. Same with Photoshop...I could do a little in PSP, but I don't know squat about Photoshop.

Best I could do is take one of these videos and re-create the same effect in Xtreme and someone could just watch the videos back to back to see the differences.

**MarcT** · 29 July 2009, 03:06 PM

Xara is quite faster at rendering, quicker zooms.

Many tools are faster to use also.

Check it out!
Try out the 1500mb demo of illustrator cs4.

Marc

**gwpriester** · 29 July 2009, 07:11 PM

To the best of my knowledge, Illustrator cannot do a gradient transparency. Xtreme can do 7 kinds of gradient transparencies including multi-step gradient transparencies. And I am pretty sure you cannot do this in Photoshop without having to create an intermediate grayscale mask.

Illustrator is an excellent vector drawing program and has dozens of really great features. Using the eyedropper tool to copy an attribute from one object to another is brilliant.

But in terms of speed and ease of use, Xtreme gets the nod.

**handrawn** · 29 July 2009, 07:16 PM

Originally Posted by gwpriester

To the best of my knowledge, Illustrator cannot do a gradient transparency.

It was introduced in CS4 Gary

**spline** · 30 July 2009, 09:11 AM

Well I think there is a difference.

In xara the transparency tool is free from the gradient tool. Which means you can have a gradient pointing one way and a transparency pointing another way.

I don't think its done this way in illustrator?

In Xara you have multiple directions transparency in illustrator its just linear.

**handrawn** · 30 July 2009, 10:24 AM

to be accurate CS4 has radial transparency too

I have both programs

There are things each will do that the other just cannot do. That is the issue for me.

**slavelle** · 30 July 2009, 01:38 PM

HandDrawn: I'm a relative newbie to the vector graphics stuff. Prior to Xara, the only things I used were PSP (which I got moderately good at, but UGH, what a PITA to do the stuff Xara can do easily), and tried out stuff like Inkscape, trying to find the great tool. I stubmbled on Xara somehow from some forum and I've pretty much stopped using anything else except in very particular cases.

Can you tell me a few things about Illustrator that are missing from xtreme? I know it has a TON of tools (maybe to a fault) and that its pen is a bit esoteric to learn comparitive to Xara's which is pretty easy to get the basics of, but that there are a lot of things that it can do that other apps just don't have.

I know it would be nice to have some things like node symmetry and the like. What am I missing? I have Expression Design 3 now (just got the other day) and it has something called the bspline tool, which acts like the curve mode of Xara, but seems much more controlled, where the curve mode is sometimes just confusing in Xtreme. that's interesting, as is the non-destructive stroke/path controls (that I believe must be raster behind the scenes like Xara plugs, 3d, etc), which work like Xara brushes, but there are a greater variety of built in ones to try out.

Anyway - just aklways interested in learning new stuff and whether I care about it!

Thanks for any info.

**tonylondon** · 30 July 2009, 02:27 PM

Many years ago I seem to remember doing my own comparison of the two programs and publishing it on a web site. Several months later there was an upgrade of one of them and the comparison became out of date.
Any comparison of two programs is going to suffer the same fate. OK if you are paid to produce it.
It is interesting to read the comments on this thread nevertheless.