Totally agree with you man. Xara rocks the house for speed and efficiency. Yeah I use illustrator too (but not nearly to it's fullest potential) -- I'm buying Xara X for vector when I get my tax returnpakana wrote:You're right, it requires saving them as .xar. Having them in a menu in every document would surely be more comfortable. Although I must say that doing basic things like shadows, bevels etc. is a lot faster as in image editing programs and presets for them is not my nr.1 feature request for Xara.grymmjack wrote:Xara's isn't the same in terms of saving your presets. They can do similar things, but not as comprehensively as PS. I've tried to duplicate the workflow in Xara Xtreme and it's possible to a point. The copy/paste attribute helps, but AFAIK there is no "save all these different modifications/effects as a "group" and put them somewhere I can get them and drag them to other things/assign them en masse." in Xara X not the same as Photoshop which lets you do that with flair.pakana wrote:Xara has the same, and Corel too. But you don't need to right-click, just press ctrl+shift+a.
Dunno about Corel, I avoid their products as much as possible as I prefer the Adobe way of working over Corels.
I don't like the Adobe way of working, and investing horrible sums of money to their programs would not make output any better, but I have the feeling that CS is something inevitable... being Adobe-compatible would just make life easier.
Do you use Illustrator btw?
I've tried the inkscape route and it's just not there for me yet. It's awesomely incredible, gimp + inkscape = powerhouse, and rival to the adobe/corel offerings in these categories which is great, but..Yeah I use CS one, it's partly because I learned on photoshop 4 long long ago, and from there, the adobe dependency grew. I'm fully aware of my addiction/problem to the "Adobe way".
You should be able to find a copy of CS v1.0 (CS2 is just a bunch of crap that slows things down and nothing jawdropping enough to me to upgrade) for a very reasonable price online if you are interested I get offers almost every day from OEM software houses selling them. Adobe doesn't even sell CS1 anymore that I can see, so you can't buy it direct
If I didn't do such repetitive stuff with graphics, I would totally use Xara for evertyhing, but the web workflow and optimization/slice with Save as powered by ImageReady directly in PS makes my life/production a dream. And because clients constantly change their minds about things, I need to have total non-destructive control over every piece of a design, so layer comps, blending effects, and intrinsic vector layers (shapes) with the editable type engine make it a no brainer decision.
Xara has great features that rival and exceed adobe in several respects, and for vector it cannot be beaten IMO. It's the most elegant and useful vector app I've used, but there are certain things that it cannot do that photoshop can. It's back to the whole uber-host/uber-program debate. Trying to find a single app to suit ALL your needs for every possible scenario is literally impossible, and it's wisest to just take the hit and buy what you need to stay competitive/agile in your industry of choice. KVR has taught me a great deal about this.
