Xara Xtreme 4 review

Xara's Xtreme is a vector-drawing program in the same vein as CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator, but it's more affordable than these packages.

It lacks a few advanced features, but its core vector-drawing tools and its ability to combine graphics, text and bitmaps on a page are more than up to scratch.

The best creative applications are those that make everyday tasks easy, rather than those that overwhelm users with fancy features. Xtreme is ahead of the competition thanks to a cleverly designed interface and incredibly fast, continuously updating previews.

Handling of bitmap images is excellent, with a new pop-up editor for correcting colours, cropping, removing red eye and applying Photoshop-format plug-ins. All edits are applied non-destructively, so making multiple tweaks won't diminish image quality. Text can now flow around objects by a set number of pixels and documents can include multiple pages, both of which greatly enhance Xtreme's aptitude for desktop-publishing tasks. Meanwhile, the new Extrude tool turns any graphic or text into a 3D object, complete with three movable, coloured light sources. There's no perspective, nor a way to wrap textures around objects, but it's great for creating fun 3D text and simple graphics. The list of other new features is long, although clip art is limited to a few demonstration files.

One of our favourite features is the ability to create Flash animations. It isn't new or sophisticated, but it's perfect for anyone who wants to create simple web animations but is put off by the cost and complexity of Adobe Flash Pro. Keyframes are created in the Frame Gallery palette and, as long as animations are limited to simple operations such as move, resize and transparency, Xtreme will interpolate settings between keyframes for smooth animation. There's no user interactivity and the single list of keyframes is restrictive compared to Flash's multitrack timeline, but it's ideal for simple banner ads or logos. Exported .SWF files are much smaller than animated GIFs, and HTML code is provided to embed into pages. Just bear in mind that bitmaps are embedded at their native format and resolution, so they must be optimised before import.

One export format that's new to version 4 is HTML, which turns Xtreme into a web-design package. We wouldn't recommend it for serious use, as there's no access to the source code and formatting is crude in places, but the WYSIWYG approach is good for designing the odd page. Xtreme's own Flash animations can't be used in pages, though. Other export options include PDF, the standard format for distributing documents. If you'll be sending documents for professional printing, it's worth investing in Xtreme Pro 4, which costs $293 (around £147) and includes support for PDF/X, colour separations and Pantone spot colours, plus multicore processors.

With its unparalleled ease and speed of use and versatile export options, it's hard to imagine a design task for which Xara's Xtreme isn't perfectly suited. Whether you go for the standard or Pro version, it's fantastic value.

Author: Ben Pitt