Bouton's Wish List for Group Participation on v 11

[Sadler]

That's not to say that Xara Designer is a total loss for custom brushes...

[Gare]

That's quite an impression, Sadler. Perhaps this request has reached the point where we can walk away from it. I've stated my wish, and we'll see something like it, or not. I do wish we could build our own Pressure Profiles, a matter entirely unrelated to skeletal strokes.

Something else I'd request is that when you bring a bitmap in,quite frequently Xara does no read the resolution of certain file types because their structure doesn't have the capability. And you being a 12MP picture in and it's 72 dpi by 45 feet by 90 feet, you know?

And then one is obliged to go to the Infobar and type in more realistic values.

Wouldn't it be nice if the status line had a filed rather than a readout of what the current resolution of the selected image is? Then if you need, for example, a 300 dpi (pixels per inch, technically) you open the field that states the current resolution, and type in your desired one and then hit Enter.

It is SO hard to set the resolution of an image if you don't know the pixel count, the readout of dimensions on the Infobar.



Please consider, dear programmers?

TIA,

Gary

[letsgofishing]

Any chance of colour management? The CMYK screen colours in P&LD10 are WAAY out...simulate print colours doesn't help much either...

[Gare]

The program is beginning to feel "loose"; not quite as responsive as say version 5 or 6, which naturally have fewer features.

The new features are causing the code to run more sluggishly?

-g

[wizard509]

The program is beginning to feel "loose"; not quite as responsive as say version 5 or 6, which naturally have fewer features.

The new features are causing the code to run more sluggishly?

-g

I have noticed that also, and I fear it will only get woese as more and more new features are added. So what's the answer, a total re-wite, in which case it would no longer be the program we love. I have seen other softsware become "bloted" and as for me I do not want to see that hppen here, but then my needs are simple and I do not need those extra features.

[Gare]

I have a simple proposal to keep Xasra Designer focused and lean:

Let Web Designer be its own thing. Keep the current features in Designer Pro, but stop cramming more web stuff into it in the future.

Also, this is a line of products, right? And they're al a subset of Xara Designer? This, too, is a cause of "bloat", as Larry remarked.

The Xara Group has yet to offer a paint program for retouching photos. Instead, we're getting masks, and third party plug-ins that don't work for me as an artist because they all execute in proxy boxes instead of directly in the document.

Buy a paint program and then code the heck out of it so now you have a suite of products,like Microsoft, like Adobe, and Xarsa Designer, the crown jewel of the creators, doesn't get a hernia doing 100% of the coding heavy lifting.

-g

[wizard509]

Now that is a good idea.

[Albacore]

Would the cut down version be called "Design Pro" it certainly sounds like it for me. Just vectors, ooh can't stop just thinking about that, that sounds the business!

[mwenz]

I think that there is the need for bitmap capabilities in the pro version. Just not the web stuff. One of the most off read compliants on the AI forum is not being able to do xyz with bitmaps. As well, if XDP is ever going to have flashed out document features, there will always need to be some basic bitmap manipulation.

[Gare]

Mike,

I think Designer Pro already has the basic photo manipulation tools. The program is not a bitmap editor on a pixel level because it has no true brushes. Which is odd because I read an article back in the Win 95 daze that explained how a "Get Brush" call from Windows' DLL library wasn't hard to code. And I probably just said something that is stellar-class stupid so the engineers lurking here...feel free to chortle.

You can resize, change hue, adjust levels, blur and sharpen, use masking tools to specify and area to be changed, but you're limited to the Photo Enhance tools and cannot use 3rd party filters on your selected ("region") area, not even using MAGIX's filters which I'd think MAGIX might toss a couple of programmers in Xara's direction because they sort of have a stake in the evolution of a money-maker, to be totally pedestrian.

A Suite, in my mind, would be:

• Designer Pro, as is for the moment, with development continuing on drawing tools and neat stuff like the advanced calligraphy features Illustrator has, mesh gradients, editable polygons, choice of color spaces in Xara and for export (everything is sRGB and you can't change this right now for RGB mode), and full control over pressure profiles (make your own, IOW), and make something that works a little more like Expression when you paint a shape of a shape, so to speak. I feel as though I'm using a clone tool when I pepper the page with novelty strokes—it's a workaround to begin with. You need dynamic strokes, editable ones after you've created them, completely unlike the Paint tool.

• Xara Print: A desktop publishing program, no more graphics tools development, but you already have a good DTP program, leave it as that.

• Xara Pixel-Pusher: An honest-to-gosh pixel editing program, a paint program.

No extra weight on load-bearing members, no more retro-fitting, seems t be the way other graphics Goliaths are going.

I really, really want to see Xara/MAGIX kick Adobe's butt in the forthcoming months or even years. Smarmy bastards with the Creativer Clod which is mostly smoke.

-g