Image editing done easy with Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 365

by | Jul 8, 2016 | Photography | 0 comments

When I first used Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, I was surprised to discover that this is both a raster as well as a vector editor – all wrapped into one product. That makes it ideal for those who need both to create their final project – no jumping in and out of separate editors until the project finally comes together.

xara phot & graphic designer 365 being used for restaurant menu

For those unfamiliar with the terms, a raster image is basically what you deal with when your digital camera creates an image. Each photo is made up of thousands of individual pixels of color, one next to the other.  You can downsize these images, but you don’t want to enlarge them past their native resolution.

Vector graphics, on the other hand, is what you find in most clip-art packages. The images are actually “shapes” that are defined by points on the page, (defining their fill and border) which can be enlarged or reduced in size, without compromising their sharpness in the final graphic. If you tried to upsize your photo (raster image) like that, the picture would quickly become very ragged and unattractive.

So what’s new?

Xara has moved away from major version releases each year, and is now offering new features throughout the year, as soon as they come out of beta.

Online Content Catalog is also part of your purchase for one year from date of purchase. Here, you’ll find hundreds of print and web images, templates, layouts, photo grids and so much more.

Here some examples of calendar projects, just waiting for your images.

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Any project can be enhanced with the right combination of dividers or flourishes.  Xara’s catalog has dozens to choose from.

dividers_and_flourishes_-_dozens_to_pick_from

You’ll never know what new content you might find, as they update the content regularly. Just browsing through the catalog will give you inspiration for countless photo and graphic projects. You’ll have access to this library for 365 days from purchase, and then have the option to renew.

Photographers that create collages of multiple photos are going to appreciate the Photo Grids available online in the catalog. There are both static grids and ‘smart’ grids available. Static have a certain number of photos, while smart grids enable you to increase or decrease photos per row and number of rows. Cropping within the grids is problematic at present, but a future update promises to resolve this issue.

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Additional features that may appeal to photographers include cross processing effects, blend modes (dodge and burn), filter pre-sets and a magnetic lasso.

When placing a graphic in your text, if you right click the object and select ‘Anchor to Text,” the object will move right along with the text as the text is expanded or contracted. You can now also choose to have either rectangular or shape following text wrap (repelling.)

repelling

This just touches the surface of all that Xara Photo & Graphic Designer can do.  Check out their introductory video here and their full list of features here.  With the ability to work on PSD and PDF files as well as the other more common photo types, this is one whale of a deal at $89.99 MSRP.

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Disclosure:  Xara provided a copy of Photo & Graphic Designer 365 so we could do this evaluation, but the opinions expressed are strictly our own.

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