Baltic Blog Design exists to promote our blog design service, however we feel it’s definitely worth giving some of the software we use a mention, especially when it’s software we’ve known and loved since its creation and even more so when it’s from an independent software company from the UK.

Xara Xtreme Pro 4 is Xara’s latest addition to its vector illustration software range, and with PDFX support and many other print orientated features, it’s aiming to be a serious contender against the likes of Adobe Illustrator and now discontinued (but faithfully used) Macromedia Freehand.

Pre-Press flight checking is serious and costly (if it’s done wrong), and it would take a miracle to get professional printers to swap with the industry standard software such as Adobe Illustrator and Quark Express. We’re not sure Xara has got quite there yet, as the trouble seems to lie with some “alternative” vector effects, which look great but are not compatible with any other vector software which could lead to trouble when sent to print.

Exporting some vector based effects like shadows and feather to Adobe Flash will convert your vectors to bitmap images and cause problems in programs such as Adobe Illustrator. This has lead us to end up having to redraw bits of images within Flash and Illustrator, costing us time and something you would not necessarily want your printers to redo before they send your artwork to print.

However if these vector effects are not included, Xara EP4 has amazingly for the first time managed to export brilliantly to Adobe Illustrator, and we have sent various printers files exported from Xara EP4 to PDF and had no problems whatsoever with getting our artwork printed.

Why is Xara EP4 even bothering to try and compete with the big league software names in graphic design then? That’s easy. Xara Xtreme Pro is around £120 ($249) where as Adobe Illustrator will set you back £300 ($599).

Not only that, but in the time it takes to open Adobe Illustrator, it’s almost possible to have already set up an initial design idea. Xara EP4, as all previous releases is the fastest vector software illustration tool we have ever seen.

With super fast real time rendering of effects such as gradients, bevels, shadows and colours, alongside one of the simplest and effective user interfaces we have used – Xara has the ability to make our clients stare in amazement as we build a full design concept before their cup of tea has had a chance to cool down!

Design for web is where all Xara Illustration software excels. Many web designers would not think to begin their designs in the environment of an Illustration package, using Fireworks or Photoshop as a complete graphic solution.

However as designers, it’s nice to have a virtual “desk” to chuck images, fonts and illustrations all down onto, giving the feeling of the old cut and paste methods used in the days before computers.

The benefit of this is that it’s easy to swap logo’s, images and text around on a concept design without having to mess around with inflexible layers that are used in popular bitmap editing packages, with the added bonus of being able to resize, rotate and change the colour of objects very quickly.

The gradient, transparency, shadow and bevel features allow anyone to achieve some impressive designs for print and web layout. For illustration it’s so effective that this is the only vector program we have seen anyone attempt – with great success – to recreate oil paintings or draw almost photo realistic technical drawings.

Xara Xtreme Pro has now included some impressive bitmap editing capabilities such as image levels, hue, brightness and contrast which are also updated in real time. This is a vast improvement over previous releases of Xara and for the first time should allow all artwork to be completed within Xara.

At Baltic Design we admittedly use both Adobe Photoshop and Xara Xtreme Pro for the graphic elements of web design, as we feel that as an illustration package can fall down at the levels of pixel perfection needed in good web design. However unless we are dealing with photographs, we only end up using Photoshop to crop, resize and compress images, as Photoshop’s algorithms seem to be better than any other software for this.

We have yet to fully test the bitmap editing capabilities of Xara EP4 though, and for individuals or companies with a low budget for web or graphic design, we cannot recommend any other more Illustration software more highly.

Xara Xtreme Pro is easy to use, Xtremely fast and for its capabilities; the cheapest professional Illustration tool available today at roughly £120 (£249). Not only that, but there is another version of the software available; Xara Xtreme sells for around £45 ($89). This version has almost all of the functionality of Xtreme Pro 4 without the advanced capabilities for professional printing.

At £45 Xara Xtreme is the perfect design tool for anyone who wants to create a slick looking website, poster or presentation. University students, teachers, business professionals and musicians could all do well to use this as a desk top publishing tool instead of all too often attempting to use Microsoft Word. MS Word is for writing letters!

As usual it’s possible to download a free 30 Day trial of Xara Xtreme and Xtreme Pro from their website. Try them for yourself!