Release Notes

Photo & Graphic Designer+ is only sold and supported by Xara. You can find full details on the Photo & Graphic Designer+ updates in our + Release Notes.

20 December 2022 (content)

New: Calendar Templates

We’ve just added a new category of templates to the Online Content Catalog. You’ll find 12 new calendar designs in Print > Calendars, fully customizable to your brand - just in time to get 2023 off to a great visual start.

One of the new calendar templates in the Online Content Catalog

13 December 2022 (content)

1200 new Photo Filter Overlays

Another major addition to the Photo & Graphic Designer+ Online Content Catalog.

We've added nearly 1200 new photo filter overlays in 4 new categories in Image Resources > Photo Filter Presets > Overlays (Light Rays, Night Sky, Rose Petal and additions to Light Leak).

Photo overlays can be added to your photo, even on top of other photo filters, to provide a huge choice of creative possibilities. For more info see the Photo Photo & Graphic Designer+ Release Notes.

Explore an almost infinite variety of photo effects with 1200 new photo overlays

7 Dec 2022 (v22.5)

Export tables to Word

Tables created with the new Xara Table tool and exported to Microsoft Word (in docx format) are now fully editable in Word.

Other Improvements

As always we're keeping up the flow of small enhancements & fixes in the Plus editions, including:

Line Gallery now opens much more quickly, solving a problem with loss of the current selection.
Error seen when making a copy of a table by dragging on it with right mouse button down. Fixed.
Image export setting sometimes changed unexpectedly when page clipping option changed. Fixed.

Unsupported Characters

No more ▯ when you paste in a character that isn't supported by your current font, such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean letters.

Xara will now check for fonts that support the character and insert the correct character into your text using that font.

Find out more in the Photo & Graphic Designer+ release notes.

Easy access to your Xara account

Photo & Graphic Designer+ now has a new Account menu on the main menu bar, in this first release offering a quick & easy way to manage your subscription including members of your team (if you are a Team+ subscriber).

8 Nov 2022 (v22.4)

Pasting & Tables

Hot off the press, a couple of additions to our new Table Tool to smooth your table workflow:

A new 'paste unformatted' option, so you can copy and paste between table cells without styles if required
And improved handling of multi-line text when copy and pasting data from external applications such as spreadsheets into your Xara tables

Other Improvements

And some other useful enhancements including:

Print options: The Automatic option is now more helpfully described as Actual size.
Second and subsequent pastes of the same clipboard contents now work the same way as the initial paste (a list of formats to choose from is shown, if there is a choice). This means if you don’t like the results of the first format you choose, you can simply paste again and choose a different format, without having to re-copy from the source application.
Lock icons are now shown in an “unlocked” or “locked” state.

Other table improvements

Extending row selections using the Shift key is now more reliable.
Tables don’t always redraw correctly after width/height changes. Fixed.
Error when importing a particular table with color matching. Fixed.
Error when exporting a PDF while table cells are selected. Fixed.
Can’t click/drag on a table’s background to select/move the table. Fixed.

24 October 2022 (v22.3)

Copy external data into tables

Another important step forward for our new Table Tool: You can now copy and paste data from spreadsheets or other external sources straight into your Xara tables.

Other Improvements

And a few other small enhancements and fixes including:

We’ve added an option to apply page setting changes to all pages. So, for example, this allows you to change the bleed margin settings across all pages of a document, even when 'All pages the same' is off.
Error when pasting list items into an existing list. Fixed.

Other table improvements

Table reformatting fixes.
Pasting an image into a selected cell in the Table Tool now works as expected.
Pasting an image into a cell no longer increases the row height excessively.
Error deleting rows that are part of a merged row. Fixed.
Error pasting RTF tables. Fixed.

19 October 2022 (content)

Almost 1300 new Photo Filter Overlays

Another huge update to the Photo & Graphic Designer+ Content Catalog.

We've added nearly 1300 new photo filter overlays in 4 new categories in Image Resources > Photo Filter Presets > Overlays (Bokeh, Color Gradient, Light Leak and Snow).

Why not explore the Photo Filter folder this autumn and see what interest, drama, mood or personality you can add to your photos with our huge range of photo filters and overlays.

For more info see the Photo & Graphic Designer+ Release Notes.

Explore the new creative possibilities with 1300 extra photo overlays

12 October 2022 (Content)

200+ New Templates

Christmas has come early with this massive update to the Online Content Catalog of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+:

57 extra tables, so you can make the most of our brand new table tool
42 social media buttons to help you maximize the potential of your social media
125 'fancy' buttons with creative outlines
3 restaurant menus
1 invoice

Why not check them out right now in the WHAT'S NEW folder in the Online Content Catalog.

For more info see the Photo & Graphic Designer+ Release Notes.

Template bonanza, including menus, buttons and tables

5 October 2022 (v22.2)

Table Improvements

Our great new table tool gets even better. Whatever your table requirements, it'll be quick and easy in Xara:

you can now re-order rows & columns with a simple click & drag
an automatic way to convert old Smart tables to the new tables
a host of other minor improvements & fixes, listed in full in the Photo & Graphic Designer+ Release Notes, including an interim 22.1.1 release

Mouse over the row header and simply click & drag

New Repeating Objects Option

We've made the Repeating Objects feature a whole lot more powerful by introducing a new 'Make Repeating' option. This turns the current selected object into a Repeating Object, without automatically copying it to all pages - you can then copy it onto selected pages.

Other Improvements

As with all + version update this release includes a large number of small enhancements and fixes including:

Inconsistent font sizes when pasting same sized text into ‘Shrink on overflow’ text boxes. Fixed.
Icon line widths wrong when replaced with SVG. Fixed.
Check and (when necessary) fix the Windows Explorer ‘thumbnail view’, automatically during program startup.
When replacing a color in an object, Xara will no longer preserve shading if there is only one shade of the color used. The user’s chosen color is applied directly instead.

Selection Improvements

Some changes to selection in response to user feedback and requests which should make object selection, the most basic and frequent of actions, more intuitive and consistent:

Selector tool transform handles are now slightly offset so they can't obscure any part of the selected object
A new rotate and skew mode
Double-clicking on a SmartShape now switches to the Quickshape Tool where all the handles are always available (just as double-clicking a photo switches to the Photo Tool)
If you don't want to maintain the aspect ratio when stretching, Alt+Stretch now consistently allows you to do so.

Check out the Photo & Graphic Deisgner+ release notes to see the full info on these changes.

Stretching without distortion vs stretching with distortion (stretch + Alt)

Align Toolbar

The distribute options on the Align Toolbar (Window > Bars > Align) have been changed from Distribute centers, to Distribute equally spaced, a more common requirement because it works well with objects of different sizes.

September 2022

NEW Table Tool

We have a brand new table tool, so now it's a snip to enhance your document with any shape or form of table, of your own design or from the templates in the Online Content Catalog

You'll find the new tool at the bottom of the left hand toolbar, full instructions in our Release Notes and more than 20 new professional table templates in the Online Content Catalog (all old ones are revised to work with the new tool too so that makes almost 50 - and you can easily create your own tables from scratch).

Other Improvements

As with all Designer+ updates, this release includes a large number of small enhancements and fixes including:

Missing handles in Mould Tool. Fixed.
Issue with pasting list items from external sources. Fixed.
Occasional error when opening Docx file. Fixed.
Inserting components via the Insert menu will now always automatically brand the components with the current document styles and colors.
Scrollbar thumbs now more visible against scrollbar backgrounds.
Installation problems for some users caused by missing MS VCRUNTIME DLL. Fixed.
Can’t scroll to all pages in Page & Layer Gallery due to new page name position. Fixed.

July 2022

New Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+

We’re happy to introduce a brand new subscription option called Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+.

It offers all the advantages of a subscription model, namely frequent delivery of new features and content, as they are developed, and the fastest possible response to new compatibility issues and bug reports. You can always be sure you’ll have the latest version. What’s more Photo & Graphic Designer+ comes with direct support from Xara, via chat.

Online Help

The Help file has been moved online, which will allow us to update it between software upgrades, and integrate it with the online knowledgebase articles, to create a more comprehensive and up to date help resource.

Shape Tool

A nice improvement for vector illustration, with the introduction of an easy way to maintain the angle of the bezier curve when you drag its handles to change its length in the Shape Tool.

Extra control in the Shape Tool

Multi-Line SmartFields

SmartFields are another great time-saving feature of Photo & Graphic Designer, offering an efficient way to deal with commonly used text phrases that you want to insert in multiple places in your document.

In this release we've increased your opportunities to benefit from SmartFields by adding support for multi-line SmartFields, postal address being a common example.

Other Improvements

This Photo & Graphic Designer+ release includes a large number of small enhancements and fixes to smooth your workflow - too many to list here, so check them out in our v22 Release Notes!

New User Interface

To mark the release of our new subscription version, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer+ has a brand new clean and modern look that will enhance your everyday usage:

The new darker background puts more focus on your design, with less user interface distractions
There are new, clearer icon designs throughout
All icons and mouse pointers are now High DPI, so they look sharp and clear on high resolution displays
And other minor tweaks and improvements - for example in the Page & Layer Gallery, the Page names are now separated from the page thumbnails, so both are clearly visible.

New Live Copy Options

Live Copies allow you to create multiple copies of any image that can be updated simultaneously with a single edit (similar to Repeating Objects, but more flexible since you can have multiple Live Copies on a single page and they don’t have to be in the same position). It’s a valuable time-saving feature for illustration and document creation.

We’ve made numerous improvements, which will make working with Live Copies easier and more flexible, you can find full information in the Release Notes.

Flexible new options for Live Copies include splitting into Live Copy sets

More intuitive Auto-Fit

Auto-Fit is a great time-saving feature that automatically adjusts the font size of text to its container as you type (we also offer Shrink Text on Overflow, that only fits the text to its container when it runs out of space).

Based on user feedback we've changed the behaviour, so that if you try to change the font size of text with Auto-fit or Shrink Text on Overflow on, it is automatically switched off and the font size change applied.

Extended Support for Numbered lists

Now you can insert more sophisticated numbered lists, including a parent number.

More control over numbered lists

March 2022

Improved on-screen Colors

The 'Show Printer Colors' options has been replaced with 'Show Profile Colors', so onscreen color (HSV and RGB) will vary with the color profile selected, and should more closely match the colors in your PDFs.

Other Improvements

As with every release, we've included a host of small but useful enhancements and fixes. In this release that includes:

21 new Google fonts offering new and interesting typography options
PDF and Word import improvements
Fixed an issue with AI files in the Online Content Catalog
When pages are re-ordered, page breaks are now added to prevent text moving between pages

amongst others, you can find all the details in the Release Notes.

Xara Cloud

Photo & Graphic Designer benefits from seamless integration with Xara Cloud, which makes it a great additional service.

Xara Cloud is an ultra-simple way to edit and share your Xara documents online in a web browser, using any computer or tablet. The Premium version of Xara Cloud also gives you the ability to work on Xara documents or Xara Cloud templates in collaboration with friends, colleagues and clients, commenting and editing together in real-time.

Xara Cloud is being constantly enhanced, and new features are made available as and when they are ready - you can find news of the very latest updates here.

You can find out more about the Free and Premium Xara Cloud options & register here.

Edit your Xara designs in a browser using any device