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Xara Xtreme Illustration Software
Xara Xtreme Illustration Software
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Xara Xtreme Illustration Software

From Sue Chastain,
Your Guide to Graphics Software.
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Guide Rating - rating

The Bottom Line

Xara Xtreme is a top-notch graphics tool, no matter what your level of graphics experience. With its amazing speed, small size, reasonable system requirements, moderate price, and powerful feature set, it's hard to go wrong with Xara Xtreme. Although it's currently only for Windows, Xara has announced plans to make Xtreme open source and to develop Macintosh and Linux versions.
Pros
  • Fast and small with minimal system requirements.
  • Powerful features for a moderate price. New lower price.
  • Live interactive tools offer real-time feedback as you create and edit.
  • Work with vector- and bitmap-based objects in the same environment.
  • CD includes tutorial movies, plug-ins, clip art, templates, fonts, textures, and full online help.
Cons
  • For Windows only.
  • Some dialog boxes are small and can't be resized.

Description

  • Xara Xtreme is a fast yet powerful vector-based drawing and illustration program for Windows.

  • Includes a Picture Editor where you can crop, rotate, enhance and sharpen bitmap-based photos.

  • Suitable for Web graphics, illustration, technical drawing, animation, cartooning, and compositing.

  • New rendering engine in Xara Xtreme performs even faster than previous versions.

  • Live tools allow you to apply effects interactively and see the results in real time.

  • New Live Effects tool for real-time special effects which update as you edit the source object.

  • Add bevels, shadows, feathering, and transparency effects to vector- and bitmap-based objects.

  • Draw with pressure-sensitive natural media brushes, pen tool, QuickShapes, and shape editor.

  • Create animations, navbars, rollovers, image maps, and export as optimized Web graphics.

  • Supports 32-bit alpha-channel bitmaps, "zero-memory" bitmap editing, and CMYK color for print.

Guide Review - Xara Xtreme Illustration Software

Xara Xtreme is a top-notch graphics tool, no matter what your level of experience. If you're a non-artist just getting started with illustration software, Xara offers tutorials and video demos to help you learn. If you're a professional illustrator, Xara Xtreme holds its own against the leading drawing packages in features, and totally blows them away in terms of performance. For Web designers, Xara combines the power and ease of vector drawing tools with export capabilities for all major Web formats.

The tools in Xara Xtreme offer live, on-screen editing which means that all effects can be applied directly in the document window, without having to navigate cumbersome dialog boxes and screen-cluttering palettes. Changes you make to blends, bevels, shadows, feathering, transparency, and other effects appear on-screen in real time, so you can see exactly what you're going to get. Xara Xtreme also allows you to work with imported bitmap images and photos in the same ways you work with vectors. The included Picture Editor provides photo-specific editing tools.

With its amazing speed, small size, reasonable system requirements, moderate price, and powerful feature set, it's hard to go wrong with Xara Xtreme. Xara's recent announcements to make Xtreme open source and to develop Macintosh and Linux versions should only make this excellent product even better.
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