Is Xara Designer Pro 7 actually professional equipment?

[DimitriBreivik]

Do professional graphic designers actually use it?

[angelize]

Welcome to Talkgraphics! There are many Professional designers here at Talkgraphics who use Xara software

[mwenz]

The answer, as Frances mentioned is "yes." But there are qualifications.

A question for you is, to do what? Anything and everything possible one wants to do? Then the answer is likely "no." I personally do not know any professional designer that only uses a single application for design work. I personally do what ever I can in XDP, which is most of my design work and, if needed, port the design into other applications to achieve the goal.

Take care, Mike

[graphicsfactory]

Yes, everyday. I find that I can do 99% of what I wan't to do. There are a couple of features that I find lacking. For instance, I'd like to see a more robust mould tool. But, on the other hand, I really find Illustrator and CorelDRAW cumbersome. Unfortunately, the industry is SO dominated by Adobe products. It is just a necessary to export an Illustrator file.

[angelize]

As Mike and Mike have pointed out Xara may not be able to do 100% of everything a professional designer may need to do all by its self but it is a tool that many professional designers want to have in their virtual toolbox

[Big Frank]

I use it almost exclusively - every time somebody asks me for an AI file I give them a PDF

[DimitriBreivik]

I am not myself a professional graphic designer, although I have increasing interest to become one (I'm thinking of starting a study at the Amsterdam Rietveld College next year, if I get admitted.

I do get the impression that the graphic design community is very adobe-dominated, that's what made me doubt the professionality of Xara. I used to use Corel products, but I found them very un-intuitive and never really developed much interest to explore those programs further. Xara has really awakened in me an interest in the world of graphic design!

Thank you, and everyone who responded for you replies!

[gwpriester]

The reality is that the professional design community use Adobe products.

This does not mean that they are better, but this is the reality.

If you go to design school, you will be taught on Adobe products. But you can create many things in Xara, bring them into Illustrator, and make the other students think, how did he do that?

[Albacore]

Find out what your Rietveld College is using and see if you can acquire a 2nd hand version of that software it doesn't need to be an upto date version of the software. If you talk to the lecturers at the college they will help and state that alright they use Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign CS5 at the college but all of your assignments can be done on CS2. If you need a portfolio to get in to your college then the Xara products are good value easy to learn and use another set of value products you could also look at is Serif Draw & PagePlus.

But out in the real world of design nearly all work is done on Adobe products and if you are not working for yourself then you are told to use Adobe products.

[rpc9943]

I currently use Xara at my profession. So yeah, that's the technical definition, it is therefore a "professional" software. I use it in combination with Photoshop if I need raster editing using "Utilities>Bitmap Editor", and use it hundreds of designs every day full time. Any software can be "Professional" if it is used in their work and in turn get paid for it. Case closed