Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ Changelog

What's new in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 23.7.0.68432

Feb 23, 2024

Changing the height on a text column:
Text columns have a fixed width into which text is formatted, but unlike a Text Area (text box) they do not have a fixed height. This could be confusing for users, because dragging the top/bottom height handles in the Selection Tool did nothing. Now upon dragging these handles on a column, the user is asked if they would like to convert the Text column into a Text Area, so they can then adjust the height.
Import/Export Improvements:
PDF export: With some fonts some characters were displayed incorrectly in Adobe Reader. Fixed.
PDF Import: Some PDFs with form fields did not import. Fixed.
PDF Import: Non 8-bpp images could import solid black from some PDFs. Fixed.
Other Fixes & Improvements:
Improved error reporting on program activation failure.
Serious error copy/pasting page from one document to another. Fixed.
Project file very slow to open/save/publish. Fixed.
Serious error using Live Effects Tool on Blend. Fixed.
Replacements of a repeating logo/symbol did not always replace all copies. Fixed.
Tables: Serious error when setting padding to 0 on some tables. Fixed

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 23.5.0.2533 (Nov 15, 2023)

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 23.2.0.67158 (Jul 6, 2023)

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 23.1 (Jul 6, 2023)

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 22.5.1.65716 (Jan 27, 2023)

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 12.7.0.50257 (Jul 26, 2017)

PHOTO
Easy Move, Rotate & Scale for Photos:
Select a photo in the Photo tool and you’ll see some new handles on the photo, for scale, rotate and crop. It’s a lot easier and more intuitive than using the Fill tool for these simple but frequent actions, and it’s smarter too – ensuring you never see any gaps around the edge of the photo when you move it in its frame or change the shape of the frame. Top Tip – it’s great for horizon straightening!
UPDATED – February 2017: Now as you drag the handles to adjust an image, a faint copy of the full uncropped image is shown behind
New Cross Process Photo Effect:
Create some dramatic contrast and saturation effects with this new option on the photo enhance toolbar, which simulates a traditional photographic effect created by using the wrong chemicals (digital photo editors such as PGD achieve the same effect by manipulating the red, green and blue channels).
New Blend Modes (dodge and burn):
We’ve added two great new transparency blend modes, compatible with the W3C standards: Dodge (which generally brightens) and burn (which generally darkens).
Photo Filters & Overlays:
A wonderfully quick and easy way to apply popular effects to your photos.
You’ll find 25 ready-made effects in the Online Content Catalog (image resources > photo filter pre-sets). Simply select your photo and hit Import! What’s more you can continue to edit the effects using the Enhance tool or Brightness Levels dialog, and if you replace the photo the effects are retained. See some examples.
NEW - October 2016: We've added 50 new photo filters and we've also categorized the filters to make it easier to find just the right filter to achieve the effect or ambience you're looking for!
NEW - February 2017: We’ve added another 40 filters, making 115 in total. We’ve also introduced Photo Filter Overlays, which can be applied on top of existing filter pre-sets, such as pattern, texture and transparency Overlays. Filters can now be applied & removed with a handy right click menu option.
NEW - June 2017: 10 new Photo Filter Overlays with camera effects such as burn and flare, perfect if you want to make your social media profile stand out from the crowd!
UPDATED - OCTOBER 2016: Magnetic LassoL
Cutting an object out of your photo is now as simple as clicking along the edge of the object to be cut, and hitting Cut!
UPDATED - OCTOBER 2016 Photo Effect Painter:
Check out the new paintbrush tool on the photo fly out. Now you can simply ‘paint’ on photo effects such as the new dodge and burn. And what’s more you can still edit the values of the effect, or edit the painted region with the Region Painter or Erazer.
EXIF Tool Improvements:
The EXIF tool has been enhanced, so it now supports IPCT and SMP tags.
TEXT HANDLING
Symbols & Icons:
Check out Insert > Symbol. These are not just useful symbols and icons that you can add to your text, but fully editable vector shapes!
The popular Font Awesome collection has been updated, and is now supplemented by a collection of Google Material Design Icons making more than 1500 symbols in total
We’ve added a search function for the symbols, eg search on ‘Face’ and it will show you Facebook symbols, smiley faces etc
The symbols will be automatically updated as new versions become available
Plus there’s improved handling of symbols that have been added to your text (so for example they aren’t affected by font changes to the text)
A new right click Replace Symbol option (including symbols in bullet lists)
Improved List Editing:
You can now select just the bullets/numbers in bulleted/numbered lists, so you can then adjust the color, size or font independently of the list text NEW - October 2017
Two separate numbered lists can now be linked (so for example you could have a graphic in the middle) UPDATED - February 2017
An extended List Properties dialog for easier list editing NEW - February 2017
Further list editing improvements UPDATED - June 2017
Other Text Enhancements:
Improved subscript / superscript positioning
A new rectangular text repelling option
Option to change the case of selected text, switching between UPPER CASE, lower case or Sentence case
The spell checker menu now allows you to set the language for your whole document
An optional extra toolbar for the advanced text options, positioned under the InfoBar by default
Improvements to the auto-kerning (now supports kerning between character classes, so many newer OpenType fonts now render with the correct kerning)
Better handling of text on buttons (so font and font size changes are synchronized on the mouse off and mouse over state)
Delete Style option added NEW - October 2016
Option to align text vertically in Text Panels NEW - June 2017
Ability to select single objects embedded in or anchored to text NEW - June 2017
Ability to hide styles in the Styles menu (Chart labels are hidden by default) NEW - June 2017
Improved support for multi-weight fonts NEW June 2017
And other minor enhancements
NEW - JUNE 2017 Ligature Support:
Many modern OpenType fonts include typographical ligatures, which allow sequences of consecutive characters in text to be displayed with a single glyph. These are now supported in Photo & Graphic Designer, and they can be used to improve the legibility and presentation of text and to introduce stylistic flourishes.

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 11.2.3.40788 (Jun 10, 2016)

PHOTO:
Easy Move, Rotate & Scale for Photos:
Select a photo in the Photo tool and you’ll see some new handles on the photo, for scale, rotate and crop. It’s a lot easier and more intuitive than using the Fill tool for these simple but frequent actions, and it’s smarter too – ensuring you never see any gaps around the edge of the photo when you move it in its frame or change the shape of the frame. Top Tip – it’s great for horizon straightening!
Scale & rotate with the curved arrow and push the photo with the hand. You can change the shape of the frame with the edge handles
New Blend Modes (dodge and burn):
We’ve added two great new transparency blend modes, compatible with the W3C standards: Dodge (which generally brightens) and burn (which generally darkens).
Magnetic Lasso:
Cutting an object out of your photo is now as simple as clicking along the edge of the object to be cut, and hitting Cut!
Click the Magnetic Lasso icon in the Freehand region tool to discover a much quicker way to cut out objects
Photo Effect Painter:
Check out the new paintbrush tool on the photo fly out. Now you can simply ‘paint’ on photo effects such as the new dodge and burn. And what’s more you can still edit the values of the effect, or edit the painted region with the Region Painter or Erazer.
A region painted using the Desaturate-medium effect. The ‘marching ants’ dotted outline shows the region is selected and active still.
New Cross Process Photo Effect:
Create some dramatic contrast and saturation effects with this new option on the photo enhance toolbar, which simulates a traditional photographic effect created by using the wrong chemicals (digital photo editors such as PGD achieve the same effect by manipulating the red, green and blue channels).
Create dramatic photo effects with the new cross process option
Photo Filter Pre-Sets:
A wonderfully quick and easy way to apply popular effects to your photos.
You’ll find more than 25 ready-made effects in the Content Catalog (image resources > photo filter pre-sets). Simply select your photo and hit Import! What’s more you can continue to edit the effects using the Enhance tool or Brightness Levels dialog, and if you replace the photo the effects are retained. See some examples.
Just a few of the pre-set photo filter effects in the Content Catalog
EXIF Tool Improvements:
The EXIF tool has been enhanced, so it now supports IPCT and SMP tags.
TEXT HANDLING:
Symbols & Icons:
Check out Insert > Symbol. These are not just useful symbols and icons that you can add to your text, but fully editable vector shapes!
The popular Font Awesome collection has been updated, and is now supplemented by a collection of Google Material Design Icons making more than 1500 symbols in total
We’ve added a search function for the symbols, eg search on ‘Face’ and it will show you Facebook symbols, smiley faces etc
The symbols will be automatically updated as new versions become available
Plus there’s improved handling of symbols that have been added to your text (so for example they aren’t affected by font changes to the text)
A new right click Replace Symbol option (including symbols in bullet lists)
You can now choose from over 1500 icons and symbols
Other Text Enhancements:
Improved subscript / superscript positioning
A new rectangular text repelling option
Option to change the case of selected text, switching between UPPER CASE, lower case or Sentence case
The spell checker menu now allows you to set the language for your whole document
Improvements to the auto-kerning (now supports kerning between character classes, so many newer OpenType fonts now render with the correct kerning)
Better handling of text on buttons (so font and font size changes are synchronized on the mouse off and mouse over state)
List editing improvements
And other minor enhancements
CONTENT:
New SmartShapes:
SmartShapes are an amazingly quick and easy way to create and edit some of the most commonly required shapes. There are improvements to the way SmartShapes work (eg improved handles) plus some great new additions to the library of these ultra-editable ready-made shapes:
New Chart SmartShapes for percentage ring, bar chart and column chart
New Text Panels and Photo Panels
A new and more flexible version of the popular Spiral SmartShape
Other new SmartShapes include some simple shapes such as a rectangle where you can edit corners individually and custom lines
New variants of existing SmartShapes such as arrows and speech bubbles
We will soon be offering a public API for SmartShapes for anyone interested in developing their own (programmed in Javascript). Contact Us.
New SmartShapes include bar charts, column charts, pie charts and percentage rings
Other New Templates:
A selection of new designs for buttons, cards, invitations, certificates & vouchers
Handy placeholder images for common aspect ratios (4:3, 16:9 etc)
Some additional photo clipart
View previews of a selection of the templates.
A New Online Content Catalog:
An enhanced Online Content Catalog will be included free for one year as part of our new Update Guarantee. Based on the v11 Content Catalog, this new and improved version will now offer:
Fully integrated access to a free library of over 500,000 quality royalty-free photos
Regular updates to the templates as part of the Update Guarantee
Full keyword search of the entire catalog
A new more logical structure to the content offering a better work flow
The Designs Gallery (now 'Local Designs Gallery') will now be used to display only your current assets (those downloaded from the Online Content Catalog or from the optional back-up CD) making it quicker to access the resources you are already using.
Finding the right content is now easy with the Search feature in the new Online
CONTENT CATALOG:
Photo Grids:
These are a cool new way to display your photos. We’ve added both fully editable Smart Photo Grids (Smartshapes) and simple photo grid templates.
The Smart Photo Grids let you display any collection of photos, even those with different shapes and aspect ratios, in a compact grid on your website. Drag and drop your photo onto the grid and it automatically updates to fit your photo in, no matter what shape it is!
Photo Grids offer a cool new way to display your photos
Other:
Update Guarantee: Access New Features As They Are Developed
We know that many of you find it frustrating that you have to wait a whole year for our next update - knowing that we are working on (and likely finished) new cutting edge features and on-trend content. We have the answer! For the first time you’ll have access to new features and content as we develop them, at any time during the 365 days after you purchase. You’ll be able to download and use these new features, for no extra charge, in addition to the version that you buy today.
The Update Guarantee gives you 365 days access to:
The new Online Content Catalog, including any new templates released during that time
Upgrades and patches to Photo & Graphic Designer released in the 365 days after you purchase and register. Note: these updates continue to work after 365 days in any installations at the date of expiry, but if you reinstall the software after the Update Guarantee expires (and you don't renew) then these updates will not be included (the software will revert to the version at your date of purchase or registration).
More info on the Update Guarantee.
Other Enhancements:
You can now give individual objects names in the Page & Layer Gallery, to help find objects and to organize your designs
Distribute operations have been added to the Align toolbar

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 11.1.0.39728 (Jun 30, 2015)

Art Brushes:
There's a big step forward for the Brush Tool with significant improvements to the existing Scatter Brushes and a totally new type of Art Brush.
Scatter Brushes repeat shapes along a line and you can now create them using any type of object (so for example you could include feathering or extrusions). Art Brushes stretch a vector shape or bitmap along the line.
New Blend Modes / Transparency Types:
5 new W3C standard, web-safe and PDF-safe blend modes in the Transparency Tool (Overlay, Hard Light, Soft Light, Luminosity & Color).
nb Bleach and Stained Glass have been renamed (Multiply and Screen) to match industry standards.
Liquify Shape Editing Tools:
Fans of the Shape Painter Tool will love the extra flexibility offered by a new selection of vector shape editing tools (in the drop down list in the Shape Painter InfoBar).
Auto-Correct / Abbreviation Expansion:
Create your own list of abbreviations that will be automatically expanded as you type, so for example PGD could be expanded to Photo & Graphic Designer as you type. It's great for symbols too - for example you might set up yen to render ¥
Other Text Enhancements:
A text background color option so you can easily highlight words
An easy way to replace one font with another throughout a document (especially useful for replacing missing fonts in imported PDFs)
'Update style to match' option (useful for copying styles from another document or applying styles to unstyled documents, particularly imported PDFs)
More detailed information on font permissions in Document Information
Update of the Font Awesome Symbols (a quick & easy way to insert symbols from the large and growing Font Awesome selection. The full set is displayed via the Insert menu)
Google fonts updated
Fonts will look correct in exported documents where fonts are missing if outlines are embedded (for example from imported PDFs, most of which include embedded character outlines)
Option to show extended Text Tool InfoBar, instead of some controls being in a flyout bar.
Document Sync With Dropbox or GDrive:
Photo & Graphic Designer can now sync files via Dropbox and Google Drive. So if you have the same file open on multiple computers, and you make an edit and save the file on one computer, it will be updated in Photo & Graphic Designer on the other computers.
And there's another bonus: Dropbox and Google Drive maintain older versions of your files, and provide easy ways of viewing and reverting back to earlier versions (in Dropbox simply right click on a file and select 'View previous versions'). This is a safe, easy and storage-saving way of maintaining multiple versions of your files.
Other Misc Enhancements:
A new option Arrange > Combine Shapes > Intersect all shapes (the overlapping areas of shapes become separate shapes)
Improved support in the drawing tools for modern touch devices, including the Microsoft Surface stylus
Two new SmartShapes, a photo text panel and a spiral (you can find SmartShapes in the Designs Gallery / Content Catalog or Insert > Shape) doubleclick to show the edit handles
Objects are automatically resized down to column width when you insert them into a text column
InfoBar pulses on tool selection
New insert rule-off option
Option to export retina version of web graphic at the same time as 96dpi version
Auto-creation of links when you type a URL so for example typing xara.com will automatically create a link to the Xara site (useful for PDFs).
Import & Export Enhancements:
PDF Import
Improved text editability (improved text reconstruction, margins, better text link import, better underline import)
Better support for import of PDFs with embedded font subsets, where fonts are not installed locally
Many other minor fixes and improvements.
Other Import / Export
Improvements to Word import.
Other Bonus Software:
The Premium version of MAGIX Online Photo Album, free for one year. Share your photos with friends, families and colleagues with an online album
Photolooks 2 will be bundled again with v11. Photolooks is a powerful and flexible plug-in that could change the way you approach color in photography! It includes over 100 presets, but you can dive deeper by exploring the PhotoLooks tools and their powerful way of manipulating color and light to create your own custom effects.
New Content:
v11 includes a selection or new templates in the Designs Gallery, and of course new brush designs
a new category of dividers & flourishes
the 2016 calendars
some additional invitations
more logos (in Page Elements) making over 120 in total
a selection of brush designs for the new Art Brush feature, in the Line Gallery

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 10.1.0.34843 (Jul 17, 2014)

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 9.1.0.28010 (Sep 24, 2013)

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 8.1.0.22207 (May 17, 2012)

Clone Tool (Clone and Magic Erase):
The Clone Tool has been significantly improved. When you clone, copy or magic erase an area it now uses the current edited photo as the source, instead of the original photo (for manual clone and magic erase objects), which makes the whole process far more WYSIWYG.
Color Erase / Selection tool:
This powerful new tool serves two purposes; to erase (make transparent) parts of photos based on colors, and secondly to allow only those color-selected areas to be adjusted using the Photo Tool Enhance operations (such as Brightness, Blur, Hue Adjustment etc).
So you can, for example, easily adjust the brightness of the blue sky in your photo or remove it completely, or change the color of a flower, without affecting other parts of the picture.
If you don’t want to select/erase colors across the whole photo, you can exclude any parts of the photo from the color selection operation using a mask.
Make soft mask:
If instead of just erasing areas of your photo, you want to adjust the brightness, sharpness, or color, etc, then you can use the ‘Make soft mask’ option to turn the erased areas into a mask, so that subsequent Enhance operations affect only the erased areas.
One of these photos shows the real colors. Can you guess which one?
Note that a wide range of shades of the flower color, from light to dark, are being re-colored, but the green leaves are not. And as with most operations in Designer this is fast, real-time, and non-destructive in nature!
Hue Adjustment:
The Photo Enhance tool now includes a new hue adjustment feature, allowing a photo (or parts of a photo when using a soft mask or the new ‘color select’ feature, see below) to be tinted with any color.
Other Photo Improvements:
An updated ‘Optimize all images’ function will scan all graphics and images in your document - now including PNGs as well as JPEGs - and convert them to the optimum size and optimum image type.
This can substantially reduce memory use and .web file sizes. (NB this is a destructive operation).
You are also given the option to optimize images to JPEG when importing, if Designer recommends it.
The integrated Panorama stitching tool now stitches up to 8 photos (previous limit was 6) and processing is multi-threaded for higher performance on multi-core computers.
Photo replacement is now smarter. When you drag and drop a photo onto an existing one, other existing copies of that image are not all replaced together by the new photo, unless they are inside the same soft group.
TOPShape Builder Tool:
This tool enables you to ‘paint’ onto an existing shape to enlarge it, add new areas or adjust the shape or outline. It does this in a vector way, and is a much more direct and often easier way than using the Shape Editor tool. You can adjust the size of the ‘brush’ as well as its aspect ratio and rotation angle.
The Shape Builder Info Bar provides controls over brush size, the roundness, brush tip angle and the softness, as well as a smoothness control which adjusts how accurately the brush stroke follows your mouse movement.
Note: This tool can be used on photos, but it’s only useful to enlarge an already edited or cropped photo outline.
Text Styles:
Designer now supports Text Styles, a powerful way to alter the appearance of text throughout your document with just a few clicks. Update an element of your Text Style eg font, color, line spacing etc, and all text with that Style applied throughout your document is instantly updated – headings, titles or body text. Consistent text styles help you create professional looking documents, and now it couldn’t be easier.
What’s more we offer ‘live’ Style preview; Simply select some text and then traverse the Style menu - the selection will change to show your text in each Style. It’s a quick and easy way to try out your Styles without having to actually select and undo each in turn.
New content & usability improvements:
We’ve added a selection of modern new print templates, including greeting cards, brochures, business cards, CD covers and certificates, plus a selection of new clipart.
The Designs Gallery has been completely re-arranged and re-ordered to be more easily navigable.
Live Designs Gallery. The Designs Gallery is now completely server linked, so we can update and add more templates, clipart, Widgets etc.
Page & Layer Gallery improvements
Re-position / Delete / Cut or Copy multiple pages
It’s now possible to select more than one page in the Page & Layer Gallery and re-position them with drag & drop. Plus there’s right click access to menu options to Delete, Cut or Copy the selection of pages to the clipboard. You can go into another document and paste whole pages.
You can now also drag objects into and out of ordinary groups in the Gallery (note this is not supported for special groups like anchored groups, repeating groups, etc).
Resizable Color Editor:
The color editor is now resizable, which is particularly useful when editing very pale shades of a color in the top right area of the color picker.
Shape Eraser Tool:
This is really two powerful tools in one, and can be used to perform hard-edged vector erasing of shapes and photos, or soft erasing.
Hard Erase:
When used with a hard edge, it’s a fast and direct way of adjusting the vector outline of a shape inwards. If you stroke around the edge of a shape with your mouse, it just moves the outline inwards. (In Pro: It acts as a great complement to the above ‘shape builder’ tool in that it can be used to adjust the vector edge of shapes and photos.)
Dragging a hard-edge erase stroke completely across an object will cut it in two and create two separate objects. If you click and hold (i.e. don’t perform a brush stroke), it will simply cut a hole in the shape.
Soft Erase:
You also have a soft erase option; strokes over any object (which can be any shape, text or photo) will erase, ie make transparent, the brush-stroked area. The softness control adjusts how soft the edge of the brush stroke is.
Non-destructive editing:
One of the great things about this soft erase feature is that it’s not destructive, that is it doesn’t change the underlying erased shape or photo at all, unlike most other photo editing programs.
This has some important benefits: not only can change your mind at any point and re-adjust the erase, but you can also un-erase and even remove all the erase strokes and recover the original, unmodified shape, text or photo. What’s more you can, for example, apply a soft erase across some text, or perhaps a 3D extruded shape, and then still edit that text, or adjust the 3D extrude, after the erase has been applied.
Support for inline graphics:
Designer MX now allows you to embed 'inline graphics' in text using a simple Paste operation. Embedded graphics are great for really small items on the line such as symbols, icons etc, and are treated just like a 'character', in other words they flow and follow the same formatting rules as a character embedded in the text.
Media Exchange via the Share Menu:
The new Share Menu puts the MX (Media Exchange) into Designer! All titles in the MAGIX/Xara range can share media files with each other and with some important third party services.
Using the new Share menu, the current selection (whether it’s a photo, or any other object) can be passed as a JPEG to other installed MAGIX MX applications (eg Movie Edit Pro MX), to MAGIX Online Album, and to Flickr and Facebook.
Import & Export:
'Import graphics from the Web' has been improved and now imports graphics and text from a web page, and places them in the right position on the page. Note that since most websites use scripts, mouse-over effects and hidden objects and text, this will rarely produce a WYSIWYG result, but it is very useful for importing all graphics and text from an existing website.
Improved Copy / Paste of HTML items from other applications such as web browsers (Note the same restrictions apply as above).
SVG Import. It's now possible to import most SVG files (we say ‘most’ because there is no industry agreement for SVG format - for example different web browsers support different sets of features).
Beta import of OpenOffice Impress (.odp) and PowerPoint (.pptx).
Improved PDF import.
Update of camera RAW import.
Pantone Update:
The set of Pantone colors in the Color Gallery has been updated to Pantone’s latest offerings. TOPAutomatic object positioning & smart page resizing
In previous versions of Designer Pro you had to manually adjust the position of items on your page as you edited or added more text. Similarly you had to drag the bottom of the page down to make it longer as your content grew.
No longer! Designer Pro now has the ability to make growing text areas automatically push other objects down the page, and also lengthen the page automatically to accommodate the enlarged text areas. Creating websites based on templates will now be considerably easier and faster.
MP3 player:
Just drop an MP3 audio file on to your web page to add audio to your website. You can choose whether or not the audio starts automatically when your page is viewed.
New Chart & QR Code Widgets:
There is a new chart drawing Widget included which lets you create interactive charts and graphs for your website.
The Charts use interactive DHTML and SVG to render the chart in the browser, which responds to mouse-over to highlight particular chart values. You can also click on the key names (in this case John, etc) to redraw the chart with those values excluded.
The new QR Code widget allows you to communicate text or the web address of the page that it is inserted on.
Presentations:
We've enhanced presentations in Designer Pro in a number of ways.
Slide navigation:
Move your mouse to the lower left corner of the browser window in any page of your presentation and you’ll now see a pop-up page navigation control that includes a menu of all slides, allowing you to jump directly to any slide. Plus there’s handy Previous, Home and Next controls.
Layer-less bullet lists
The new graphical bullet and numbered list feature (see below for more info on this feature) creates automatic presentation steps (each bullet or numbered item is treated as a separate step in the presentation). This makes a huge improvement to usability and productivity when creating lists.
Page & Layer Gallery - Change page transition
You can now select multiple pages in the Page & Layer Gallery – this is handy for presentations because you can then use the right-click menu ‘Web page properties’ to alter the page animation transition for all the selected pages.
Graphical bullet & number lists:
Pro X introduces the ability to use your own graphical designs for the bullet character or the number at the start of bullet or numbered lists, which can make a significant improvement in the presentation quality of any list.
You can use any of the in-built drawing and text tools to create your own bullet and number graphics and we also supply a collection of ready-made examples in the Designs Gallery.
New web templates:
3 new web themes (usually sold for $10 each) and new web graphic templates.
Existing themes in Pro have been updated to support new features, such as the smart page resizing or graphical bullets and numbers.
Embedded fonts:
Designer Pro’s font embedding technology overcomes the serious design limitation of having to stick to the very small selection of so called ‘web safe’ fonts. Our technique is compatible with the vast majority of modern web browsers and works by embedding a special version of the font on your website which the web browser can download and display.
New re-sizeable JavaScript Widgets:
In previous versions of Designer Pro only Flash Widgets could be resized, DHTML or JavaScript Widgets were fixed size. This release introduces re-sizeable JavaScript Widgets. All existing Widgets have been updated to this new level, and several new ones have been added.
Unlike Flash Widgets they are compatible with all modern devices including iPhone, iPads and Windows Phone 7, and do not require a Flash plug-in.
This is an example image effect Widget in mid-transition from one photo to the next. You can now resize this Widget to any size you require, and Web Designer automatically optimizes any images to be right for the website. It’s also possible to overlay any objects, text or graphics on top of Widgets, as shown here.
Enhancements to Widget handling:
You can now preview a Widget in the Widget document directly (you do not need to Close & Save it back to the original).
When linking to other pages of your website from within a Widget editor, you’ll now see a list of all pages, making it very easy to link to any page in your website from within a Widget.
Pop-Up Layer 'click to close' option:
You can now choose whether you want your pop-up layers to close automatically, or only when a viewer clicks a close box.
In document pop-up link checker:
When you click on any item with a web link in Designer Pro (not on the web page), a small pop-up appears giving you the option to follow the link, change it, or remove it - very useful if you want to test a link or view the linked page while you’re working on the document.
TOPIncremental Publishing:
Improved Incremental Publishing, making it smarter about publishing updates.
NavBar button ordering:
We’ve added an option to make the button order in a NavBar match the order of pages as shown in the Page & Layer Gallery. With this option on, if you re-order pages your NavBar buttons will reflect this change.
Alt text on images:
Images that are created during the export process from objects that include text, now have that text set as ‘Alt’ text on the image. So for example a graphical heading that shows the text “Widgets From John Smith” will now have that text set as image Alt text. This means the text can be indexed by search engines even though it’s presented as an image on the page, and it will be picked up by ‘read aloud’ tools used by the visually impaired.
Fly-out galleries:
A new option to turn off the fly-out galleries.
Easy access previewing
The 'Preview Page' and 'Preview Website' buttons have been placed beside each other on the top bar, for easier, quicker access and provided with new F5 and Shift+F5 key short cuts.
Auto showing of guides:
Page Guides are now turned on and 'snap to guides' enabled automatically if you attempt to drag a guideline onto a page when the guides are turned off.
Ctrl+rotate alignment:
When rotating objects if you hold Ctrl down it now snaps any significant straight edge to the horizontal or vertical. This applies to text lines, columns and blocks, photos, Quick Shapes, lines and even freehand drawn shapes that have significant straight edges.
Link handling on iOS devices:
Also v8 is smart about the lack of mouseovers and mouse pointers on iOS devices – the first tap on a button or link will now follow the link, a second tap isn’t necessary.
Optimize all images:
An updated 'Optimize all images' function will scan all graphics and images in your document - now including PNGs as well as JPEGs - and convert them to the optimum size and optimum image type. This can substantially reduce memory use and .web file sizes. (NB this is a destructive operation).
You are also given the option to optimize images to JPEG when importing, if Web Designer recommends it.
Free domain name:
One year's free top level domain name included with the free MAGIX Online World hosting.
Character based languages:
Improved formatting support for character based languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Right click options:
Right clicking over any empty area of the button bars on the Web Designer window will show a context menu to quickly enable or disable any tool bar.
Lock page size option:
A new 'Lock page size' option has been added in the 'Page Options' dialog. This can prevent accidental drag resize of the lower or right page edge.
New keyboard shortcuts
Delete Page: Delete
Move Page Up: PageUp
Move Page Down: PageDown
Push margins dialog: Ctrl+Shift+H
Toggle Push attribute on selection: Ctrl+H
Preview Website: F5
Preview current web page: Shift + F5
AVI animation frame rate control:
You can now set the AVI frame rate of exported animations, and the animation preview window now has thumb track control on a timeline.
Soft mask
Mask mode now supports soft as well as hard masks. You can place semi transparent objects on the mask layer to form a soft mask, so that you have fine control over the placement and strength of Photo Enhance effects such as Hue, Saturation or brightness adjustments. With this new release you can paste any semi-transparent vector object, including complex groups and alpha-channel bitmaps onto the mask layer.

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 7.1.1.17261 (Oct 14, 2011)

Photo Magic Erase Tool:
There is a new 'magic' erase feature, which can quickly and seamlessly erase unwanted objects from photos. Just draw around the feature or object you want removed, then one click on the 'magic erase' button and the object is automatically erased and replaced with an appropriate background texture sampled from other parts of the photo. This can often work better than any manual clone and can produce perfectly seamless object erasing.
Photo Clipart:
There's a new 'photo clipart' category in the Designs Gallery, handy for websites and for DTP work from brochures and adverts to posters and packaging. You can see some examples here.
Live copies:
You can now create multiple ‘Live Copies’ of an object - vector or photo - on a page or pages, and they all update when one is edited. It’s still possible to apply transformations such as skew, scale or rotate independently. A powerful feature and a great time saver (sometimes called ‘Live Clone’).
Edit inside groups and other composite objects:
At last a really easy way of editing grouped objects and adding new objects into an existing group. Double-click on a group or other composite object to edit it in a separate document window, simply click save when you’re done.
Improved page management:
A new default Page & Layer Gallery ‘pages’ mode displays a narrow list of page thumbnails – for quick and easy page selection, access and management (a real time saver, especially in combination with the new fly-out galleries).
Designer initially displays an uncluttered single page view. Use the Page & Layer Gallery to quickly move to different pages, or switch to multi-page view by right clicking on the page and selecting the multi-page view option on the menu.
Non-axis aligned snapping:
You can now also align to lines that are neither vertical or horizontal.
Tabbed document windows:
Tabs at the top of the Designer window show at a glance all the currently open documents, which document you are currently viewing, the document type and whether there are unsaved changes. Switch documents by simply clicking on the document tab.
New paste operations:
New paste operations bring much more flexibility to pasting operations, allowing Paste position, Paste size, Paste replacing selection (replaces the selected object with the copied object), Paste in current layer and Paste in place in current layer.
Cut, copy & paste of whole pages:
You can now cut, copy and paste whole pages both within and between documents. This copies the page dimensions, layers and other page attributes in addition to all the objects on the page.
Improved anchoring of graphics & repelling text:
If you are using Designer for page layout you'll appreciate these significant improvements to anchoring and repelling. Creating anchored objects is now a one-click action, and objects that you anchor in text now also repel text, helping you easily create a smooth flow around effect. Repel margins can also now be defined separately for the margin width and height. And anchored objects can be constrained to move vertically only, which is very useful where you have objects to the right or left of the text that need to move only up and down. All of which helps to make the anchoring and repelling features more flexible and much easier to use.
Brand new ‘magic snap’ for object alignment:
Designer now provides ‘magic’ magnetic object snapping. As you drag an object, it ‘snaps’ to points and lines of interest nearby and indicates what it has snapped to by displaying dynamic snap lines and points. This makes it easy to align objects with each other, and/or (at the same time) with guidelines, the grid, the page center or edges. You'll soon wonder how you ever managed without it!
Fly-out galleries for instant viewing and flexible docking:
A new gallery bar gives instant access to all galleries, which now fly out as you hover the mouse pointer over a new gallery bar. It's easy to move galleries around the workspace, and you can pin and dock them wherever you want, either individually or in groups or 'stacks' on top of each other. You'll find it makes a significant improvement to workflow.
Export animation documents as AVI files:
Designer now allows you to export any animation or non-animation document as an AVI file, or even an AVI with transparency, helping you create your own web-ready movie content.
Quick alignment of selected objects:
Quick alignment of selected objects is made possible by the new right click menu option 'Align'. This enables you to directly align multiple objects horizontally and vertically, without having to open the alignment dialog.
Widgets:
Make your websites eye-catching and dynamic with our smart new 'eye catcher' widgets that enable you to add an advanced selection of slick photo and text animations to your web pages without the need for coding knowledge. More widgets will be automatically downloaded and added to your gallery over time.
See the 'eye catcher' widgets:
Plus there's a neat new 'embed a website' Widget - perfect for embedding blogs, microsites and other sites within your page.
New animated transition effects for layers and page links:
Designer Pro makes it easy to add a wide range of animated effects to the layers and page links in your website. You can add animated transitions to any page link or pop-up layer in your web pages.
Quickly preview your pages in all the most popular web browsers:
If you have Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari or Chrome installed, you can preview exactly how your page will appear in each of these popular web browsers with a single click.
Create your own distinctive 'favicons':
Designer Pro now supports the addition of favicons, allowing you to customize the tabs of your web pages by displaying a custom graphic, such as a logo, on the document browser tab.
Built-in preview window now includes navigation buttons:
The navigation buttons in the top bar of the preview window allow you to move back or forward, just like in a web browser, and the Home button returns you to the page you started the preview on.
Explore your FTP web space:
You can browse and delete files and folders on your FTP server using Designer Pro's built-in Web Space Explorer. Presentation websites
Create web-based 'slide-show' style presentations that your website visitors can step through using the keyboard arrow keys. Apply animated transition effects as each step and page is displayed. You can also easily remotely host a web meeting (a 'Webinar') to showcase your presentation, step by step and page by page, to a group of invited participants.
Intelligent repeating headers / footers / watermarks:
Designer now automatically updates all occurrences of a repeating object when you edit it, so you don't have to manually update when you make a change. When one instance of a repeating object is edited, the updates appear instantly on all other instances of that object on other pages of the document. What’s more, Designer is smart about positioning, so objects in the top half of the page are positioned on other pages relative to the top of the page, and objects near the bottom are positioned relative to the bottom of the page, irrespective of page sizes.
Sitemap support:
You can now automatically generate a sitemap to assist search engines crawling your site.
New templates:
A new range of web page/website and presentation templates give you an even greater design choice when creating your websites.
Preview your web page in full screen:
You can now preview your web page in full screen by clicking the new View Full Screen button in Designer's built-in Preview window. When you next use preview, Designer remembers the last used mode (normal, maximized or full screen). and displays subsequent previews in the same way.
HTML 5 video:
MP4 movie files added to your website will now play without Flash installed if the browser supports HTML5 video, so movies play on iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads.
Other improvements include:
Greater control over clipping objects to page. A new option in the Website tab of the Website Properties dialog allows you to choose whether or not to clip objects to web page edges. If you do not clip, then any objects overlapping your page on to the pasteboard will be displayed in full, rather than cropped to the page border. In addition, any animated transitions you apply will now start from the browser window edge rather than the page border.
Improved context sensitive menus. There are some new context sensitive menus which give direct access to useful actions. Right-click on objects, page or pasteboard for instant access to many useful operations relevant to the object.
Clearer InfoBar text rendering. Brings greater screen display quality and clarity to all Designer toolbars, if ClearType text is enabled in your Window's control panel.
Add your website to Xara/MAGIX User Galleries. When you publish your website, you can now choose to include a thumbnail of your site in existing user website galleries hosted by Xara/MAGIX.
New Photo Optimize Dialog Control. The Optimize Photo dialog now includes the option to maintain the photo’s current resolution.
Text repelling within layers. You can now prevent objects on the current layer from repelling text on other layers using the new "Text repelling within layer" option in the Layer Properties dialog. This option also stops text on the current layer being repelled by objects on higher layers. This is useful for (and is set by default on) popup layers in web documents.
Easily add header code to a page or website. Designer Pro now allows you to enter HTML code into the head of your web pages, as well as the body, giving you greater versatility to customize your website. You can easily add your own code (or code from a widget provider) into individual pages or all pages in your website. Also code entry for either the head or body is easier with a new larger pop-up code editing dialog.
New languages added to the spell checker: Czech, Polish, Slovak, Turkish and Hungarian.
Further improvements to the PDF import filter.
Improved EPS import reliability.
New cameras supported for RAW import.

New in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ 6.1.0.13048 (Jun 16, 2010)

Totally re-designed application appearance:
There's an all-new look to Designer, including modern skin and icons. You can see some screenshots here.
New fly-out tools and buttons:
Fly-out tools and buttons present a simpler user interface, but with direct one-click access to a wider range of common functions. Many buttons now have a fly-out menu with related options. These buttons have been carefully designed so that you can still get to the main function with a single click of the button, but also very quickly access any of the additional options without any extra clicks.
Hierarchical Designs Gallery:
A hierarchical arrangement of the Designs Gallery makes it far easier to find the template you're looking for at a glance.
Auto-updating Designs Gallery:
The Designs Gallery includes new 'download' sections and content, that can be updated remotely by Xara.
Automatic backup of all open documents:
A new set of controls in the Options dialog provides an automatic backup facility where the program can regularly save copies of all open documents. You can set the folder where these backups are saved, and how often the backup occurs.
Automatic save and restore of open documents on application closedown
You can now just close Designer (or shut down your computer) and Designer saves all open documents and restores them the next time you start the program.
Drawing Tool improvements:
A new straight line /arrowhead tool. This provides a really simple way to draw single-segment straight lines and a new way to control the arrow head and tail on any line
Solid, live shape drawing. When creating new shapes such as rectangles, ellipses and quickshapes you'll now see a solid filled shape as you drag across the page (instead of an outline). It's far more WYSIWYG, you'll see the correct fill and line color as you drag
Similarly drawing lines with the Freehand tool is now solid WYSIWYG live line drawing. This works even if you have a fat line, feathered and with a line profile
A new Sketch Mode button on the Infobar of the Freehand tool removes the automatic line joining feature, so that you can rapidly draw lines without worrying about them being automatically attached, great for sketching
Balanced bezier editing. Using the Shape Editor tool, simply hold Shift down and both ends of the bezier control points will be equidistant from the center point. This enables more rounded or balanced bezier curves to be drawn going through a point
Solid blend update. When you edit one end of a blend, (Ctrl+click to select the shape inside the blend) this is now also real-time solid update.
Enhanced pressure support:
Support for pressure sensitive tablets has been re-written so it's much more accurate and responsive. This also works as solid real-time variable-width rendering as you draw with a pressure pen on a tablet.
Opacity Masks:
A new and powerful way of defining and applying transparency. Sometimes you need a more advanced transparency shape than simple flat or graduated transparency can provide, for example if you wanted to apply a soft variable transparency around a central object in a photo. Opacity masks are a way of defining irregular transparency shapes based on a drawn object or group of objects.
New Enhance Transparency Type:
Enhance Transparency allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, color saturation and color temperature of any part of your document, including text and drawings.
Simply create your floating ‘enhance transparency shape’, and use the Photo tool controls to set its brightness, contrast etc. Objects with Enhance Transparency are just perfectly normal objects which can can be placed over any drawing, not just photos. They act like other transparency types, showing the objects underneath the shape, but the items under it are 'enhanced'.
You can use the Transparency slider to adjust the overall transparency or 'blend' of the effect and even apply graduated transparency to create a gradual fade of the enhance effect.
Improved Page & Layer Gallery, with Objects and new 'Solo' mode:
The Page & Layer Gallery (replaces the Object Gallery) now shows all the objects on the page, and includes thumbnail views of all objects. This makes it easy to find, select, lock or hide objects inside complex drawings, or objects inside groups or even hidden under other objects on the page.
The updated Page & Layer Gallery now also offers better page and layer management, including a new 'Solo' mode which allows a specific layer to be viewed and worked on in isolation, and a new 'Layers' mode which adjusts the Gallery to show just the layers for the current page. You can also move directly to any page in a long document by clicking on the page in the Gallery. Plus there's a new 'Find' mode which automatically adjusts the Gallery to find and show the currently selected item in the tree structure, collapsing everything else.
Selector Tool perimeter and area info:
The InfoBar in the Selector tool has two new fields displaying the perimeter length of any selected closed shape or the line length, and the area of any closed shape. Particularly useful for plans where you have set up accurate unit scaling.
Easier control of graphic styles (attributes):
There is a major change in the way that attributes (the appearance or 'style' of an object) are applied to a newly drawn object or line. Now a new object can take on the style of the last selected object, rather than the last drawn. It sounds like a small change, but is more intuitive and more powerful - for example you can copy the style of any object by just selecting it then drawing a new object.
New paste style fly-out:
There is a new copy / paste fly-out bar on the top toolbar, which provides direct access to the common clipboard operations: Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste in same position, Paste Attributes (an easy way of copying the style or appearance from one object to another) and Paste Opacity Mask (see above).
Enhanced Text tool:
The Text tool has been improved to include bullets, numbered lists and indents.
Text Tool Find & Replace:
A real-time search and replace function has been added to the Text tool which can search the current story, page or whole document.
Content Aware Scaling and Zoom:
This has been enhanced with some innovative new intelligent scaling features.
Content-aware photo zoom. An alternative to content aware scaling (CAS) whereby the photo remains the same size and the content is intelligently zoomed inside it.
Alternative 'Content Aware Scale'. When stretching photos there is now two alternative ways to scale the image. The existing method of just dragging the size arrows works as before, but is not so good with some image types. Now, holding the Alt key when dragging one of the side handles in the content-aware scale tool performs a different intelligent scale using an alternative algorithm that will work better with some photos.
Single prepare button for CAS and CAZ. We have improved the 'prepare' time and combined the two previous H and V buttons into one.
Vector Based Photo Enhance & Photo Groups
You can now perform selective enhancements (brightness, contrast, saturation, warm/cool color temperature, blur/sharpen, levels) to any part or region of a photo using the Mask feature (now at the bottom of the main toolbar). You can adjust the blend of the effect by using the Transparency tool, for example by creating a graduated transparency you can create a faded enhance effect. And the Feather slider can be used to create soft edges to your enhanced region.
You can create any number of successive enhance areas, one on top of another, using the same technique. This provides a very powerful method of adjusting the brightness, contrast, blur etc of areas of photos in a fully editable, non-destructive, reversible manner.
Such photo edits now create a new 'Photo Group', which acts like a normal photo for most purposes, but is also a Group that contains all the individual edits as overlaid vector objects. Photo Groups can be disassembled into their constituent objects, you can still select the 'edit shapes' that are inside the group and you can 'flatten' a Photo Group into a normal JPEG.
Clone area tool:
This is an entirely new tool on the Photo tool fly-out to make it easier to 'erase' region of photos by copying (cloning) parts of a photo from one place to another, even from one photo to another.
In the Clone tool you simply draw a freehand line around the area you want to erase (the clone shape is shown as a 'marching ants' dotted outline) then just drag anywhere on the photo outside the clone area to pick the new source for this area. You can resize the clone and feather the edge to achieve near perfect results.
EXIF viewer:
In the Photo tool fly-out is an EXIF dialog, semi transparent and configurable, which shows the embedded EXIF values of a JPEG photo. EXIF data is now preserved on export of JPEG photos and across an Optimize Photo operation.
Perspective Correction Tool:
This is a new tool available on the Photo tool fly-out, a simple one-click way to automatically correct common perspective effects.
Simplified photo editing workflow:
Now you can just open a JPEG, edit it, and click Save to get an edited JPEG saved back in its place. It’s a faster and simpler workflow than before, doing away with the need for separate saves of the .xar file and export of the JPEG. And yet the the original master JPEG is still retained and can be recovered or restored at any time, there is still a lossless editing cycle, and you can still open an edited JPEG file and remove or undo the edits you've performed on the image.
Brightness Curves:
In the Levels dialog you can now create a manual brightness curve which provides very detailed and advanced control over brightness levels for any photos.
Edge Trace for freehand drawing:
In the Freehand tool, there is a new option on the Infobar which can assist in drawing of vector lines around the outline of high-contrast shapes or objects in photos. Simply select this option, and then draw around the edge of the shape, and the program will analyse the underlying image and draw the line along the edge.
Optimizing Photos:
Auto-downsizing of imported photos. Most modern digital cameras produce very high resolution images, that are typically unnecessarily large. These take a lot of memory and can produce very large files. When you import a photo using drag 'n' drop from your File Explorer or using the Import menu, the program now offers you the option to reduce the resolution. If you select to have images reduced they are created at 1920 pixels wide, which is typically good enough for any screen and most print work, reducing the memory consumption down to about 300Kbytes on average per picture.
Optimize all JPEGS. A new menu option, Utilities -> Optimize all JPEGs is a quick way to reduce the file size of documents containing many JPEG photos.
1:1 Photo Resize at 100%:
Normally when you resize a photo in Designer it retains the original image and just changes the resolution to fit the required size on the page (this means all resize operations are lossless, non-destructive, and resizing an image back up will result in a sharp non-blurred image again.) Sometimes it's useful however to have a 1:1 mapping between image pixels and screen pixels, so you know at 100% zoom that you are seeing the full resolution, non-scaled image. So now in the Photo tool on the Infobar there is a new icon which will resize the image back to be 1:1 at 100% zoom (in other words 96dpi - the same resolution as the screen).
Free web hosting offer:
Designer now comes with a free website hosting offer from MAGIX, so you can publish your website as part of Magix-Online world. The offer includes 500MB of storage and your own web address.
Auto filling of the photo-gallery via simple drag 'n' drop:
If you drag and drop a selection of image files onto a page of thumbnails, such as any photo gallery design from the templates (each Theme has one 'photo gallery' layout), it will automatically populate the gallery.
Other improvements include:
The Screen Capture tool (Utilities -> Screen capture..) now provides the option to capture after a set time-out period. So, for example, you can capture menus or other pop-up items that would otherwise disappear if you had a key-press capture trigger
New templates, in particular interactive presentations and a new web graphics category
Photo Optimize dialog simplified
Photo tool enhance attributes can now be blended using the Blend tool
Panorama tool: General stitching and blending improvements
Pasting bitmaps from the system clipboard no longer offers the choice of DIB or Bitmap, it just pastes as Bitmap. Advanced users can restore the old behaviour with the registry option: Clipboard/AllowPasteAsDIB
Ctrl-Click (select inside group) on a text line will now select the text object and not the individual character you click on
Pixel units can be entered as px or pix
Automatic crash reporting - dump a stack trace to disk and, with the user’s permission, transmit to Xara
PDF export: Reduced memory requirements when exporting
PDF import improvements
Clipview behaviour changes. Keyhole controls have gone which reduces on-screen clutter, and now there is right click menu to select the clip shape or the contents of the clipview
When adding a new section of a line the smoothing control will now smooth the whole line rather than just the last section
All sliders can now be adjusted using the mouse-wheel by just holding the pointer over the slider. No need to give the slider focus first
There's a new option in the Help menu to reset the Alert dialogs so they can be made to appear again
New cameras supported for RAW import
An updated Xara Xone tutorials CD and Quick Reference Card

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ Changelog

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