Feature: Xara has come up with a novel upgrade to its powerful Xara X
Motivation: But the big news is that the product will become Open Source Xara has announced Xara Xtreme as an upgrade to the already very favorably reviewed Xara X . It has also lowered the price to an unbelievably good $79US while adding a slew of new features highlighted below. But the most interesting announcement may very well be the move of Xara X to Linux and the intention to Open Source the tool.

Unfortunately I have not yet been able to obtain crucial info when the Linux version will be available and on what platforms. Also, will the implementation be a complete Xara Xtreme version or some subset while Xara charges for the complete edition. Given the bargain price, users should not begrudge paying for the full system if Xara chooses to go that root. I have seen Borland and others do the same thing - give away the standard edition and charge for extra functionality developer and enterprise editions of their software.

Whats New

Xara Xtreme has added a bunch of new features large and small. But by far the most interesting is the Adobe Plugin support with Live Effects. What this allows Xara users to do is Apply Adobe plugins be to any object, including vector drawings . However these objects can be changed and then the effects are reapplied to the changed,vector, bitmap, or object. (they are called Live Effects because the underlying container objects are still editable).

What will be interesting when we get the full product is how universally this applies. For example does it apply to grouped objects and objects that have contours, blends or other effects previously applied to them? Yes a full review should appear in 2-3 weeks. But the screen shot at the left shows how a live edit can be done with the effect is applied to the changed vector perimeter and fill contents.

As well, Xara Xtreme now includes about a dozen free new plugin tools from Alien Skin, Redfield, Mehdi and others.

The next most important new feature is better compatibility with Adobe products. Xara can export to Adobe Illustrator with much greater fidelity for the nifty f transparency effects possible easily in Xara, but hard to do in Adobe Illustrator.

In addition, Xara Xtreme now also brings better transparency features to PDFs. Unfortunately, PDF still lags in the breadth of transparency options supported so subtle feathering and anti-aliasing effects have to be rasterized with high fidelity but, alsa, now tied to the chosen export resolution and sizing.

But a graphics colleague who does a lot of PDF work is very excited about this capability. Currently she spends "hours in Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw getting the same transparency work" that can be done in minutes in Xara X (and of course the new Xtreme upgrade).

Xara Xtreme has simplified even further its direct action and drag and drop features. Direct action applies to Bevel, Fill, Contour, Shadow and other functions where operations are done directly to the object on screen with mouse drag movements - rather than the trial and error prone setting of dialog values. Drag and drop applies when users just drag an image fill or color to an object or right click and drag a new copy of an object onto the drawing.

Xtreme further extends these operations to grouped objects and transparency and feathering control. The result is that one of the easiest and fastest graphics programs gets even easier to use.
Speaking of which, Xara Xtreme has further improved its already very fast speed of operations with improvements in rendering for blend, contours and other vector operations.

Finally, Xara has improved the bitmap editor in many important ways. First the user now has Adobe plugins at their disposal. Next, repeated edits and leaving of the bitmap editor does not mean edit change information is lost - they are maintained and can be undone/redone for the complete session with the file/image. Finally the editor can do repeated lossless saves to the bitmap image.

Summary

Xara Xtreme is interesting for the feature updates alone. But add a new low $79US price coupled with third party add-ons and the product is even more compelling. Add a Linux (and then Mac) version and an Open Source angle - WOW!