My products, made with Xara!

[GooseKirk]

My family was bugging me this year for a calendar of my photography, so I finally got around to it (OK, a month too late, really, but hey, I did it!). I've been using Xara since '96, and I do nearly everything with it. Well, not photo processing, but all design and layout work, for sure.

I'm putting my calendar and other assorted 'stuff' on www.cafepress.com/goosekirk for now. Some of it turned out pretty cool, I think.

I know most people might use Photoshop for this sort of work, but I would sooner pull out my fingernails. I really can't wrap my brain around Photoshop sometimes. Xara just works so intuitively and smoothly. For the background of my calendar, I built several layers of transparent textures, and it's so easy to manipulate them however I want... with Photoshop (or Paint Shop Pro, for that matter), you have to know so many obtuse commands to do the simplest things.

Anyway, I love my Xara, and I thought y'all might be interested in seeing how I'm using it for my photography.

[OklaEd]

No argument here Christopher ... I think all of us use Xara for everything we can ... and only acquiesce to the "Photoshop Gods" when all else fails.

Nice Photos http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

-Ed.

[Quinn]

Nice work Christopher. Maybe a little later than your family was hoping but worth the wait http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[John Rayner]

Nice work Chris! Liked that parrot the best of whatever the bright birdie was. Very cool.

[gwpriester]

Outstanding!

My ony question is how do you tell the days of the month?

Cafe Press is a good place to market and sell your products on-line. How is that working out for you?

So of us may be interested in that option for a turn key system of selling and collecting money on-line.

Gary

[GooseKirk]

Huh... y'know, when you "design" the calendar product on the CafePress site, it shows you the whole page. It's 11x17, with the upper half being your image and the lower being the days of the month. It's a nice design, too, simple and clean, just like I'd make it.

But apparently they don't show it when you want to buy the thing! That's really stupid.

So far, I've only had this up for 12 hours or so, and I haven't sold anything, so I can't say if it's working out or not yet. Doesn't help that right after I posted a message to my favorite high-volume Colombia message board, the server seems to have glitched for the first time ever... go figure! CafePress does seem pretty cool. The interface for designing products isn't great, but it isn't terrible either. If you try to use their "add a product!" wizard, it won't show you the dimensions you need to make the design, but if you add the product through your main control page, it will. Again, pretty stupid. But it's hard to argue with the simplicity - you can have your shop up and running in a only a few minutes, for free.

Doesn't seem to be any downside, so far. If you want more control over the site, or if you want to add more than one design of any product, you have to upgrade to their premium store, for a nominal fee. Still not a bad deal at all, as the free shop gives you an opportunity to try it out and ease into it.

So far, CafePress could be better designed, but you can't argue with opening up a free account, and they do seem to generally have their act together. Oh, another minor annoyance, at this point, they only send out checks 45 days after the end of a given month, and they don't do direct deposits or PayPal or anything. Rather inconvenient if you live in, say, Colombia, and your checking account is in the US, but pfah, a minor quibble.

[amoore]

Gorgeous work, Chris! Immediately sent the link to a Colombian friend.

[caraman1]

Hey, since we're advertising our CafePress sites. Here's some stuff I've put together with Xara for the Chamber of Commerce of a small town in Arizona called Quartzsite. There are only about 2000 full time residents (it gets up around 125 degrees in the summer) but it swells to the hundreds of thousands in the wintertime.

http://www.cafepress.com/qzaz

Dennis Cox

[John Rayner]

Pretty cool... Dennis WE only get swamped for 1 week a year (Rally Time) other than that it is very pleseant.

[amoore]

Neat image on the poster, Dennis.