Xara announced the availability of version 8 of its Designer products – Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX (v8) and Xara Designer Pro X (v8). Each Designer program provides a full set of tools for a range of graphic design tasks that would normally require three or more separate ‘suite’ programs: illustration, photo editing, advanced page layout, web graphics and animations. In addition, Designer Pro delivers functionality for building complete websites and online presentations.
Xara Designer Pro X, the flagship of the Xara product line, is an all-in-one creative tool with features used by professional designers, such as PANTONE®, CMYK, color separations and PDF/X. It also supports multiple processors for even faster performance.
New features in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX and Xara Designer Pro X include:
- Color Erase /Selection enhances (change color, adjust brightness, blur, etc) or makes parts of photos transparent based on the selected color.
- Photo hue adjustment changes the color tint of any part of a photo.
- Shape Erase Tool performs both vector erasing or path adjustment, as well as ‘soft mask’ painting to perform detailed soft-edged erasing of vector, text and photo objects.
- Text Styles offers an efficient and powerful way of controlling the global appearance of text, and generates CSS compatible styles.
- Inline Graphics for embedding symbols and icons into text.
- Template Designs and newly categorized clipart designs.
- Integrated Panorama stitching tool.
- Enhanced Image Optimization functions.
- Media Exchange allows sharing of media files among all titles in the MAGIX/Xara range other and with important third-party services such as Flickr and Facebook.
In addition to the above features Xara Designer Pro X includes:
- A Shape Builder Tool to ‘paint’ onto an existing vector shape to enlarge it, add new areas or adjust the shape or outline.
- Smart object positioning and page resizing which automatically adjusts the size of a web page and position of objects as text is added.
- Embedded fonts
- Resizable JavaScript Widgets, such a smooth photo slideshows and an interactive Chart Widget for embedding high quality charts into documents or websites.
- MP3 player widget that embeds a fully cross-platform compatible audio player (including iOS for iPad and iPhone) into a website.
- Create numbered lists and graphical bullet points.
Managing Director, Charles Moir says “Xara’s approach offers not just dramatically better value, but we believe it makes the software considerably faster and easier to understand and learn.”
Pricing for Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX 8 is set at $89 for US customers, £69 for UK (inc VAT) and €69 (inc VAT) for the EU, while Xara Designer Pro X 8 is priced at $299 for US customers, £249 for UK (inc VAT) and €279 (inc VAT) for the EU, and upgrade pricing is also available. Xara Designer products operate on Windows XP/Vista/7.
Visit the Xara Designer website or read the full press release.
