Few things I'd like to see before considering an upgrade for my old Xara

In order of importance
1. Ability to work with and export 16 bit per channel images. Those that would work as greyscale depth maps in 3d graphics
2. A special blending mode for those depth images when brighter pixels are seen through darker ones whatever stack order is. Like 'lighter color' in Photoshop
3. Something similar to layer comps in PS. Basically what I want is just a button to see only selected name tag and hide everything else
4. Simple mesh deform for bitmap objects

actually I would buy an upgrade if only the first thing would appear

Why not buy Photoshop? While Xara can do a fair amount of bitmap editing, it is a vector drawing application. Not a dedicated bitmap editor.

FWIW, I create all my depth map images for my stereograms in Designer Pro X (or previous similar versions).

I have Photoshop but I don't like it. Yes, it's possible to do what I want there but I still find Xara much more convenient. It just takes less clicks in Xara to do things.

unfortunately now I have to go photoshop. Mostly because of those 16 bit grayscale images. 8 bit jpg is not good for what I need (depth map for a material in 3d soft)

I predict that next year at this time we will have a grayscale export option.