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  1. #1

    Default Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    And how does it compare with Xara?

  2. #2
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    Placitas, New Mexico, USA
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    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    I'm not going to be much help. I use Photoshop. Basically to convert a Xara black and white image to grayscale.

    I am too old and too lazy to invest the time to learn a new program and Xara does just about everything I need it to do. Not always the way I would like it to. But it does it.

  3. #3
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    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mcffee View Post
    And how does it compare with Xara?
    It's really difficult to answer that question. Xara is a one-stop-shop app that does a lot of things, while rivals tend to specialise in one thing and try and do it well.

    I don't rely on one software program and have multiple programs to what I need. On a single feature they can compete well against Xara, but in terms of the range of things that Xara does they would fall down.

    Some of my favourite software is simple and lacks a lot of features, but that's what makes it good - it is focussed to a single task rather than trying to do everything. I use that software to design user-interfaces, it has limited functionality compared with Xara but that makes it a joy to use. It would be far less suitable if you wanted to draw realistic organic artwork, doesn't do animation, doesn't do websites, etc.

    All I'm saying is don't evaluate software by bullet-point features and don't think that more is always better. Even with limited features, my UI-creation software can beat Xara hands-down at some things.

    No point in naming it - it runs on a Mac.

    For a one-stop-shop Xara performs very well. It all depends on how important that approach is to you because often dedicated software can be better (definitely different).

  4. #4
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    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    Here's one feature that is completely missing from Xara and is supported by my UI software and Adobe Illustrator - artboards.

    It essentially allows you to have project files and within that multiple artboards for individual artwork. You can build variations of artwork easily by duplicating artboards and you can see everything as though it was laid out on a single sheet.

    Xara users don't work like this and many might argue what the value of this kind of working is when essentially the project file is like a Xara directory and artboards are like files in the directory.

    If you are building a lot of related items that will be used in multiple images it's a superb way to work. You can copy and paste from one part to another, easily. If you don't wish to you can use the software like Xara and have no artboards at all.

    The embedded image was reduced to 3% so I could capture it. All vector.

    A big thumbs-up for artboards.

    Click image for larger version. 

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  5. #5
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    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    I don't think you can compare

    you have a task - you choose the best set of tools to do that job

    until you have a specific task, you cannot so choose
    -------------------------------
    Nothing lasts forever...

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2018
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    21

    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    Quote Originally Posted by gwpriester View Post
    I'm not going to be much help. I use Photoshop. Basically to convert a Xara black and white image to grayscale.

    I am too old and too lazy to invest the time to learn a new program and Xara does just about everything I need it to do. Not always the way I would like it to. But it does it.
    I use PaintShop Pro (have been a beta tester for Corel for 14 years, but have stopped now.
    I use PSP and Xara side by side, the one does things a lot better / easier than the other.
    If only I could combine the two programs into one.. yeah, dream on Joëlle ..

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
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    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    I stopped upgrading Xara at X9, and still use it on ongoing annual projects. However, I did get Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher and have used them recently on a project, feeding Photo into Designer into Publisher, and have been very impressed.

  8. #8
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    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    I like the idea of Sprite Sheets (Art boards?) they save multiple image requests & downloads. One file can serve up all.
    Egg

    Intel i7 - 4790K Quad Core + 16 GB Ram + NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1660 Graphics Card + MSI Optix Mag321 Curv monitor
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  9. #9
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    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    artboards can be very useful for organising work

    so can nested layers - also completely missing from xara - nested groups are not the same thing because they alter the construct of the objects
    -------------------------------
    Nothing lasts forever...

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
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    UK
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    85

    Default Re: Which other brand graphic design software do you use and why?

    I hadn't come across artboards before, although I've probably done something similar in the past using a large page. A nice concept, and I see that Affinity Designer has artboards. Something to try out in future.

 

 

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