While it is not design software on the level of Indesign, Xara handles text quite well. You can build complex designs and scale them down or up, from small to as big as you want and maintain the same quality. Xara is mainly a program for working in scalable vector graphics, which are graphics that can be resized up or down without losing quality. While not perfect (especially on something with a straight path) it worked reasonably well and functions similarly to the tool in Photoshop CS5. Common uses of this tool might include stretching or shrinking an image without changing the size of the people in the photo.Īnother useful tool is the Magic Photo Eraser that allows you to remove unwanted objects from photos by cloning areas of the background and filling them in. It also offers some special tools including one-click panorama making and content-aware scaling, which lets you re-size a photo while maintaining the proportions of the major content. brighten a shadowy area or change the focus. For instance, you can edit just a section of an image, i.e. One of my favorite features is the ability to work on a portion of an image. and you can view the results in real time.
It has all of the standard editing tools you would expect, such as tools for adjusting the contrast, saturation, red-eye reduction, cloning, sharpening, special effects filters etc. There is RAW support for close to 300 popular camera models. It is object oriented, which means non-destructive photo editing (so you can edit an image multiple times without loss of quality) and it uses a much lower RAM than most other photo software. Xara is powerful, lightening fast and responsive and because it offers lossless vector-based photo editing, it produces files that can be much smaller than in other programs. The only thing it lacks is a photo organizer. While you still have to know your way around a computer, the software is easy to learn, unlike programs such as Photoshop or Illustrator which both have extensive learning curves. The interface is uncluttered and uses easy drag and drop functionality.
Benefits: Lightening fast, easy interface, non-destructive photo editing, all-in-one photo editor, vector drawing + desktop publishing, very inexpensive (approx $89).īesides offering a wide array of exceptional editing and design tools, other pluses are its user-friendly interface and interactive tools.