Xara alternatives?

[KIR23]

I curious if Photoline has the same bitmap ability as Xara:
1. feather edges quickly
2. Vector masks/crops editable keeping bitmap fill on place or scalable together with the vector outline
3 name or just color tags to keep layers/selections organized. maybe a kind of layer compositions?
4. A brush that could randomly scatter around groups of bitmap objects like Xara brushes, that could be kept as vector objects.
5. A tool to quickly replace similar bitmap fills keeping the scale and position intact . Maybe an outer reference to a file on disk like illustrator does

Ps. maybe illustrator can do so already? I tried it 10 years ago last time.

[pauland]

What really disappoints me about the way that people look at Xara and then look for alternatives - comparing with Xara features and bullet point comparisons. You often see it in all sort of threads .

Xara is a one-size-fits all program whose sweet spot is someone who wants one purchase to do more than one thing - ie illustration and web publishing, illustration and PDF production, illustration and bitmap editing without breaking the bank and requiring too much technical knowledge. Xara sits in that niche.

For me, that niche isn't so much where I want to be, but it is where Xara's core users sit.

So, I wouldn't go looking at other software looking for a capability that is like Xara, I would look for a program that fits what you want to do and isn't Xara plus.

Personally, I picked up a Mac based program that specifically targets the mobile app/web design that I need to do. It doesn't do half of what Xara does, but it does what it does extremely well and has no bloat. For most Xara users it's not an option because you need a Mac.

For the curious, you can check out this software here: http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/ and there are a lot of videos out there about it. It's not an option for Windows-based xara users.

I would encourage everyone to think again about how you evaluate software. It's too easy to compare feature bullet-points and look for too much functionality that you may never use or can be done better in another program.

I think Xara users are their own worst enemies - expecting everything to be available in one basket, when really separation of function can be good.

A number of Mac Xara users are currently gurgling over Serif Affinity which on paper looks like a much more sophisticated program than Sketch 3. I can see why people are excited by it, but for me Sketch 3 is targeting my kind of design workflow, so I want that targeted simplicity.

Unfortunately for Xara users, the Mac world looks to be leading the design software breakout at the moment, fuelled I think by Adobe's licensing choices and costs and for the first time I can see Adobe's dominance being challenged in the future. A long way to go yet.

My message here is not that everyone should buy a Mac and one of these programs, but to look at what you do. Hard. Then make a choice that isn't based on a bullet point count or similarity to Xara. You may even find that Xara is a better fit for what you do than you realise.

Good luck in your choices.

[KIR23]

That Sketch looks interesting. Can it output 16 bit grey scale image( depth map)? Does it work with bit maps the same easy way as Xara? Easy crop, feather edges, easy bitmap replacement in the whole document?

[pauland]

That Sketch looks interesting. Can it output 16 bit grey scale image( depth map)? Does it work with bit maps the same easy way as Xara? Easy crop, feather edges, easy bitmap replacement in the whole document?

KIR23, I'm not here to sell Sketch 3 and my suggestion is that you investigate it yourself if you have a Mac (there's a free trial). My whole point was that you should look at alternative software in terms of your workflow not as a direct comparison with Xara.

I am not someone who really cares about depth maps or photo manipulation and I haven't investigated that. It's not really the focus of the software, or my focus. Sketch3 is a vector drawing app optimised for creating user interfaces not photo manipulation. Feathered edges is just a shortcut for a gradient mask. I can't remember the last time I used it in Xara.

Sketch reminds me of what Xara was many years ago - lean and mean.

[KIR23]

thanks pauland