Serif DrawPlus X4 released!

[Giovanni]

Just received the upgrade offer and bought straight away: at circa €44 it was a bargain.

Real brushes, pressure aware, blending modes, new colour picker, etc. etc.

I'm happy!

[masque]

I used Drawplus one or maybe two versions back and it was great until you began to get complicated with a lot of objects in a drawing the it slowed to a crawl.
The new version certainly looks good, in terms of features but I'd like to know how it fares with more complex and demanding drawings.
I always disliked the fact that you have to buy it and then get your money back if you dont get on with it, rather than being able to download a trial version.
Derek

[Giovanni]

I hear you Derek, the lack of trial was a big stopper for me, too.

This is why I started Serif route with their "SE" product line, a "lite" version of the mainstream software, much cheaper and yet quite powerful.

Can't comment on performance with complex drawings, yet, but after reading the manual I can say there's a whole lot of cool features vector and raster wise.

[Albacore]

I have always liked their products and they have a very similar approach to their software as Xara but I hate all their sales pitch. You get swamped by phone calls and emails which you can deal with but you have to answer the phone. Had a look at the site but I can't see what you will gain from it bar say the brushes. Would like to hear from you on your success or not but they do produce reliable PDF's.

[Giovanni]

Albacore, probably Serif is more commercially aggressive because of your country; in about two years I just received one mail every months or two, and never a phone call.

Today I discovered a little issue: contour tool only accepts values expressed in percent, not pixels.
Damn, is very hard to produce precise web graphics using % values, I just tried and got plenty of 20,4 or 13,8 pixels... bleah!

[MEB]

I´ve been following the development of Serif Drawplus with interest. The program is getting better and better with every new version. I even bought Drawplus X3 but only have used it once.

I think it isn´t good enought to compete with Xara Xtreme yet, at least not for me. Redraw is a lot slower than Xara in complex drawings, the mentioned problem with the contour tool (that´s somewhat hidden in the application menus), creating brushes from vector shapes is very limited (you can´t create a vector brush composed by several objects with transparency applied - this would be super!), the artistic text tool is limited compared to what Xara does (you can´t apply a stroke color to a word in a sentence for example - you must convert it to "curves" first) as well as the block text tool and it´s overall less flexible than Xara (when stacking objects using clippings,effects, transparency, grouping everything at the same time).

It does have however some strengths:
- Transparency gradients are similar to what Xara offer (except for blending modes that seems one of the big news in the new Drawplus X4)
- It has a gradient mesh tool (easier than Illustrator)
- The raster based brushes are great (althought i would prefer more flexibility creating vector brushes - see above)
- It deals with PDF´s rather well (import and export)
- Moving multiple objects between layers is much easier and quick than in Xara

Overal my main problem was the missing blending modes (that´s finally added), the slow redraw, and the lack of flexibility stacking objects/effects as described above. But it´s getting there. I will have to try this new one. Maybe some of those problems are fixed/improved. Incredibly there´s still no trial as always. A plain stupid decision that complicates the access to the program. Buying and returning the software isn´t a decent solution. I shouldn´t have bought version X3 and never returned it back and now is collecting dust in a shelf.

Anyway i´m obvious waiting to get my hand on Xara Xtreme PRO 6. Hopefully it will add much needed new/improved vector tools. If they make the upgrade as good as the one they released for WebDesigner 6 but in terms of new/improved functions regarding vector tools of course then the new version will blast!

[Giovanni]

After a few hours spent with this software I'm not completely happy.

Just asked the refund (by placing a mandatory international call ) .

I will never ever purchase a software without trial. Full stop.

[w00dy]

At work,we're still on Drawplus X2 and about to upgrade X4 but personally I wouldn't leave Xara in month of Sundays... like I say X2 can't match the speed and stability of Xara and for someone who uses the web capabilities of XXPro5, with XXP6 in the offing, DPX4 is a non-runners at a personal level. At the end of the day, you have to nail your colours to a mast and as it is, it's Xara/Magix, I've got the Xara works and Movie Editor Pro 16 beats MoviePlus for me.

[Soquili]

I moved Xhris' and Miguel's post to a new thread http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=45167

Anyone wishing to continue the discussion about how Xara's development is going please post in that thread.

Anyone wishing to continue the discussion about Serif X4 please post in this thread.