Feature: Xara X is really geared to Photo Composition
Motivation: Xara offers substantial creative attractions to PhotoFinishers
Xara X has always had a deserved reputation for being a very fast vector draw program. But how fast is not really documented until recently. In porting the software to Linux Xara has been making comparisons between its Windows C++ code and its Linux. We are not interested in that comparison.

Rather what is of greater interest is the speed of operations in Windows versus other popular graphics programs. And if you take a look at this page you will see documented in benchmarks what is obvious when you work in Xara and drag and drop 20MB files - its rendering engine is blazingly fast. And this is the underlying reason why XaraX is able to move/edit huge files and imges while other programs stutter. Now this means one important thing: users can do a lot more in Xara tools because the basic operations are so fast. Users can try bigger images and more complex techniques and know that they can back track and try a new route very quickly - without waiting 5-30 seconds per step as in other programs. So Speed is the first name of the Xarax game

But Speed is not the only story. Reliability and Ease of Use stand out as well. Also

Xara X is also capable of storing its results in remarkably compact files. And now Xara X has added two more traits that make it particularly suitable for doing photo compositions - flexible bitmap fills into Vector designs or shapes and very fast operations on huge bitmap images.

The second trait is that Xara has enabled the rapid handling of enormous 10-40MB bitmap files in their workspace. This is not insignificant. For example to create the 40MB test image in Jasc PaintShop Pro took approximately 8 minutes for the Resize + Save operations. In Adobe Photoshop CS for a slightly larger file (but no competing programs for memory) the Resize+Save operations took about 5 minutes. However, Xara X was able to import, change the brightness and contrast, and rotate a 40MB bitmap in less than 2 minutes. And the size of the stored Xara file was ¼ that of the original ima ge. In sum, Xara has added impressive large scale image processing capabilities to its repertoire.

Photo Composition Exercise

So the balance of this review will concentrate on the use of Xara X for creating a photo composition of gymnastic stars from the Athens Olympics. We start by creating the star frame that each gymnast will be showcased in. The screenshot at the top of the page shows this star filled with black and outlined in gold using the Color Editor. This along with the layer gallery are the most frequently used dialogs in Xara X. Nonetheless, because many of the operations in Xara are drag and drop easy to do I found myself editing directly more often than using Xara's eight gallery dialogs. This happens because every time users choose a tool from the toolbox along the left side on the Xara workspace, a new property bar appears just below the menu and Standard toolbar. I found my self using these settings and needing the special gallery or panel dialogs less often.

For example, by clicking on the Mould toolbar icon (bottom left in the screenshot above) it is fairly simple to stylize the 5 pointed star into a more curvy and ample equivalent. Which will then allow us to load gymnasts images as fills.

But first right click on the star and choose Duplicate Mould – this will create a copy of the fat-star which can be easily individualized by clicking on it with the pointer tool twice. This brings up the rotate and skew handles which allow us to create a different look for each star . Next we load the images to be used as fill into the Fill Gallery. Click the Utilities | Galleries | Fill Gallery menu command (or click the Fill Gallery icon on the standard toolbar). The Fill Gallery is important to Xara because each bitmap is indexed in a special fashion which allows the fast loads and manipulation of huge bitmaps that has been mentioned earlier.

Click the second button in the second row, Disc Fills... to browse to the directory containing the fill images. In this case it is a special directory I created just for Xara X photo compositions called “album”. This is an important step because only images in the Fill cache can be used to fill various vector images or "containers". The whole idea is to replace color or gradient fills in interesting vector drawn shapes with bitmap fill images. The next step completes the task.

Click on the “album” descriptor at the top of the Fill Gallery and it opens to reveal all the images. In fact these are Athens Olympic medal winning gymnasts which we will be using in our photo composition.

Now Xara X makes it trivial to add an image to any graphic object. Just drag and drop an image from the fill gallery onto any star or other vector graphic object. Want to change the image used for fill? Just drag and drop a new image from the gallery over the top of the first one. Voila, its changed. And consider that these could be huge, 10-40MB images used as fills. Most surprising these operations are done in a flash. This is one of the most compelling features of Xara X, it is able to use and manipulate huge bitmap files so quickly unlike any other bitmap or vector program that I have used. For those who have had to wait for Corel Draw or Adobe Photoshop to handle 10-20MB++ files, this is no small feat.

By the way, do you need to change from image over to some other fill ? First select the graphic to change then click the Fill Tool midway down in the toolbox. Then go to the top upper left of the Property bar (just under the menus and Standard toolbar). The first pulldown is for Fill Type and currently is set at Bitmap. Change it to whatever you want – say Flat Fill. Again – the change is made instantly.

In the screen shot above we have started to add the gymnasts with a shot of one of the team gold medal winning gymnasts from Romania. Note the two axis arrows emanating from the fill image. These allow users to manipulate fill image. Click on the center point and you can move the image relative to its graphic container. Click on one of the arrow end points and you can skew and lengthen the fill image in one dimension.

But be careful! Click anywhere else including on one of the arrow axis and its as if you are starting from scratch – dragging the mouse outward enlarges the fill image while dragging sideways rotates the image. So if you are close to placing the fill mage exactly the way you want – be mindful that you must place the cursor on the arrow heads or the center point to make any fine adjustments.

Finally tryout the second bitmap pulldown – Fill Tiling. Users have three choices:
Single tile – only one copy of the image is used – watch out for complete fill;
Repeating tile - a repeating pattern is guaranteed to fill the container;
Repeating inverted tile – alternate revere images tiled to fit the container;

All of the gymnast images used the Repeating inverted tile for a pleasing effect.

Critical Role of Fill Images

The strength of Xara X is its ability to use not just stand alone, imported bitmaps but also bitmap fills with a great deal of flexibility. For example, users can apply filters, adjustments and Adobe plugin effects to any fill image. As well Xara has its own bitmap effects and color adjustments that can be done to bitmap files.

The screenshot at the left shows Bitmap photo enhance dialog at work on a Fill image. In effect users have a mini-bitmap editor at their disposal. Along the bottom are color adjustments for Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, and Gamma. On the top row are adjustments for scale, enlargement, flips, rotations, color desaturation and cropping.

Admittedly this is just a basic set of operations. But Xara can perform them so fast even when the underlying bitmap image is huge - that I tend to stick with Xara until an operation requiring a mask or perspective or other distortion or perhaps advanced sharpening is required.

Equally nice is that any edits done to a fill image are actually performed on a copy of the original. Finally none of the edits are committed to the fill copy until the user clicks the check mark.

But what is even more important is the operations that can be done on a fill image directly.

The screenshot above gives a good example of what can be done on the fill image - unavailable in Adobe Illustrator CS2 or Corel Designer 12 or many other vector draw programs. First users can set repeat of the fill image on or off. Next the repeat can be horizontally inverted as is done in the screenshot. Next, the drag and drop operations allow users to rotate or shear the fill image. Finally the fill image can be scaled up and down in size.

The image we used here is just less than a megabyte in size. But we used huge 20MB fill images performing the same operations with no noticeable degradation in speed of operation. Again the speed and ease of use is very attractive - as is the ability to edit the fill image in place. In short, score Xara X very high for its image fill capabilities.

Xara Vector Tools

Xara has a full complement of vector tools like scale, shear, distort, Blend, Envelope, Bevel, and others. But what sets Xara apart from the other vector draw tools is most of Xara's operations provide drag and drop simplicity to their use.

Take the Bevel tool shown in the screen shot above. After setting the various Bevel properties in the Property bar at the top of the screen, I just dragged and dropped the Bevel arrow in the figure to determine the direction of the lighting and the thickness/width of the bevel. Change the bevel corner from sharp to rounded on the Property bar plus try a couple more settings and we are quickly done. Natural drag and drop operations like these really make for quick work.

While working with the bevel tool I decide that the image of the second gymnast looks too static especially given the photo has caught her in full swing on the uneven bars. So I add

another gymnast star. And then use the Blend tool to move from one to the other. What changes is the external stroke/border of the container not the contained fill images. In fact one fill image, the one for the start object, is carried through each Blend step. I have only five intermediate Blend steps and have it fade as it approaches the end image of the Japanese gymnast on the rings. The net result is that changing border adds drama to the gymnast on the uneven bars suggesting the motion involved at that point in her routine.

Notice that I have added a drop shadow to all the images. Also note that the drop shadow is carried through on all the intermediate Blend images. This is an important point. Users will find the vector tools so easy to use, they will have to be careful in which order they are applied. In this case the unintended consequences worked out reasonably well.

Finally, Xara is fairly versatile in applying its vector tools to all objects, text, drawing, etc.

For example, in the screenshot above we have applied the Bevel Tool to the headline text we added to our photo composition. Again, this was trivial to do so - just select the text, then the bevel tool and drag and drop. one can get outstanding results very quickly in Xara.

But as you can see from the screenshot- one can produce some pretty garish results too. I did not like the early purple blue background so I added a photo of some gymnast swinging in action. I scaled the image up and moved it to the back of the canvas. I even tried a complimentary green drop shadow - uugggggghhhhhhhhhhly.

But not to worry, just colorize the background image a dark blue and add a slightly lighter

blue drop shadow and we are back in the money. The lighter blue is taken from the Greek flag just as is echoed in the text headline colors. Much better.

Summary

I wanted to try out a few more stylings, but unfortunately my free download trial ran out of time. Nonetheless my first impressions of Xara are very positive. Speed, compact filesize, able to handle huge bitmaps with great aplomb and a whole array of intuitive and easy to learn, easy to remember how-to-use drag and drop operations. Nearly one hundred screen cam demo tutorials on Xara's website also helps flatten the learning curve.

But Xara does leave some things to be desired. It does not have the huge selection of filters, object combinations and effects available in say Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. Also I would love to have some of the gravity/nearness-to-other-objects smarts of Corel Designer. Or give me the smart Layer and Objects panel of ACDSee Canvas (select an object it is selected in the Layer panel or vice versa). But for sheer creative gusto, especially in photo compositions - Xara X really leads the parade. And at a current price of $179 Xara is a bargain for photo composition work.