Xara Xtreme
Carl Grivakis

August, 2006

When it comes to vector images and design the first thing a designer thinks of is Illustrator or Freehand. There is a more financially viable, but just as powerful software solution...Xara Xtreme! Xara is a fully functional vector program that not only has the same features, but also improves on some of them. I am a designer that was trained in and have used the main stream programs over the past five years, in school and professionally, and I will say Xara is nothing to be snubbed off. Xara is capable of creating impressive finished pieces. Xara isn't meant to be the answer for any Do-it-yourselfer since it has advanced options and a wide variety of palettes to create a variety of results. In addition to creating beautiful vector images, Xara allows a user to alter bitmap images and create breath taking photo montages. This is a fully able, and affordable, design program.

Let's take a drive through with the program...

Xara features a variety of tools familiar to those working in graphics programs. Tools such as the pencil and pen give either a natural or more mechanical feel. A shapes tool provides basic and complex shapes that can also be altered through manipulation of anchor points. When you select a tool in the toolbox a gallery at the top will change to a variety of options allowing you to create a more unique image.

What Xara is used for...

Vector Imaging - Xara is great for creating illustrations, icons or logo marks. The tools are versatile enough to have control over the smallest details.

These are some vectors created with Xara Xtreme

Photo Composite Imaging and Effects - Xara can also create composite images and brush effects that match even Photoshop's functionality.

Web Graphics - Xara can also save graphics for web use...taking you to icon & button making heaven.

Tools and features

Pencil - This freeform drawing tool works great with a stylus and will smooth out shapes as you go. A slider bar allows for you to control how smooth or rough it traces to your drawn line. Dragging a line from one point to another will also create a closed shape that you can later fill with color.

Pen - This is a standard tool that allows for the user to create more exact lines using anchor points that can adjust angle and pitch on a shape. The nodes are nice in large so you don't need a microscope trying to click the exact pixel to drag an angle out.

Shape Tool - This tool will draw basic shapes and will automatically allow the user to apply bevels, contours and shadows.

Vector Tracing - Xara can take a photograph and stylize it as a vector illustration. This will give the user a very unique and fully scalable image, perhaps my favorite of all the features.

Xara works in a variety of file formats including pdf and photoshop compatible files.

Xara is a lightweight program that gives heavyweight results, thankfully it also has some very light requirements:

- Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP

- Pentium processor or better

- 128Mb RAM

- 20Mb available hard disk space

- Minimum screen resolution of 640x480

Xara also operate extremely fast and will not bog down your computer like the other graphics programs. Use Xara for your image manipulations, color corrections, logo design and even page layout. You'll be excited at the results!