A fundamental problem with conventional photo editing software is that each time you load and save a JPEG image, it deteriorates slightly. Load and save an image more than a few times and this becomes noticeable. This cumulative distortion is unavoidable if you use JPEG format photos.

Xara Xtreme overcomes this problem by keeping a track of the original 'master' image, much like keeping a photographic negative. When you re-load any JPEG photo saved from Xtreme, it finds the original master and uses that as the source for all further processing, so Xtreme's photo editing is 'non-destructive'. It remembers all edits you ever performed to any photo and lets you undo or alter those at any time.

Xara Xtreme has another trick to help with photo quality - a new bi-cubic photo display that considerably improves the on-screen quality of scaled down photos compared with all other photo software. Simply select the 'very high quality' option on the View Quality slider.