Will my old Xara X1 files work in latest version if I upgrade?

[Veeness]

Its official, I installed Xara Photo Graphic Designer 7 last night.
I took it through some of my regular pace strokes, yes your right about the change in skin, its not my preffered eyecandy, but I slowly adjusted, (couldnt find the change option at this point in time)...
'live effects' nice feature))
thankyou for input in my queries, look forward to joining in the forum community now and then, no doubt I will have questions along the way))

ps soft grouping>? going to check that out

[handrawn]

ctrl+shift+alt+s will toggle the skin - but be warned it also reset any customisations to bars that you have made back to default

soft groups allows you to group across layers

there is lots and lots - all the web site building [ which I don't use personally ] - all the photo editing stuff - pressure sensitive freehand drawing in real time - the list goes on... I suggest you refer to the pdf manual on the CD for starters as you have the basic principles already

[Daniel]

Watch out if you're opening files created in old versions of Xtreme: previously you could apply a bold effect to any font, but now you can only do it to fonts with a specific bold font as part of the font family.

If you had some text which had bold applied to it before, you may find that it isnt bold anymore.

Xara insist it was a Good Thing.

[handrawn]

good point about the fonts reverting if they have no installed bold/italic... variant

there are probably one or two other small differences too, hence my saying' by and large'...

but I appreciate that those who have a large body of work that includes font variants that were created by earlier xara versions and are not official variants will maybe not see this as a small issue

Xara did it to prevent issues arising by exporting work in vector with non-standard font variants [non to mention possible licensing issues]

[Veeness]

Watch out if you're opening files created in old versions of Xtreme: previously you could apply a bold effect to any font, but now you can only do it to fonts with a specific bold font as part of the font family.

If you had some text which had bold applied to it before, you may find that it isnt bold anymore.

Xara insist it was a Good Thing.

Thanks for the headsup on fonts yes encountered the message about bold fonts luckily on a sample...I'm inclining to keep my recent project files intact and only open them and edit in Xara X1 for now. 3/4 of the way through a project and I dont need added dramas))

Handrawn:: I didnt realise about the web features and extras like that in this latest version, but will come in handy no doubt...if need be.

I mainly use Xara for drawing and sketching design layouts before paintings, props and the like, so fast so easy, gone are the days of handrawn sketches when I can erase a thousand times or overlay different perspectives...[sighs with deep un time wasted pleasure]
after a while tho... the rawness and reality beckons me to keep it real...I simply must go to my primitive artistic forms...

[handrawn]

Actually I think full website building is only in the Pro version - and I note you have P&GD7 ? [like I said I don't use xara for website work, I use comic press]

'handrawn' is very fond of handrawn sketches, and inking too

being a cartoonist I find it's the best way to keep the spontaneous feel, and very subtle line character - digital often either comes out 'too slick' or it takes just as much time if not more to get 'right' - when I ink digitally I tend to use raster rather than vector

the part of the process that I would definitely not wish to do by hand any more is the colouring and lettering and the page make-up

and the big advantage of paper is you can see it 'all at once' - need a very large monitor to do that digitally