You can make banners using Xara. I do it all the time. Here's a little tip regarding sizes.
If you start with a rectangle of the size that you want for your banner, then place any objects you want on top of that rectangle, you are free to let these objects overlap or exceed the boundaries of the original background. When you export the final banner just click on the background only and export that as a JPG and your banner will be confined to that size and anything outside of it will be ignored (works for animated GIFs too).
In the attached I started (left hand image)with a 300 x 250px rectangle and placed the photo image in such a way that the bottom would be cropped on export. And on the right you can see what I ended up with after I exported the background shape.
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