• An integrated, ultra-fast, non-destructive photo tool

    The new photo tool offers instantaneous editing for even huge photos. All operations are non-destructive, meaning the original image is not affected and all edits are object orientated and undoable. This also means edits like this take practically no file space and so allows ultra compact lossless files. The features include:

    • Ultra-fast, live & interactive Enhance (brightness, sharpness, saturation etc)
    • Levels (histogram, color correction and more)
    • Interactive crop. Again this is non-destructive so you can adjust or un-crop images at any time.
    • An automatic panorama maker photo-stitching feature.
  • The world's fastest, highest quality vector 3D extrude tool

    Xara 3D Maker has been integrated so you can now extrude objects in 3D. This provides industry leading speed, usability and quality of 3D rendering compared with any other drawing package. It provides live on-canvas 3D dragging and extrude, 3 colored lights than can be dragged around in real-time, and Xara's renowned high quality 3D rendering.

  • Major text tool improvements, including real-time 'liquid' text flow around shapes
    • A new text repel feature allows text to flow around shapes and photos. As you'd expect from Xara this provides super-fast text re-formatting allowing live and interactive flow of text as you drag the text objects
    • New live reformatting while resizing text columns and frames
    • Text underline
  • A new 'website creation' feature. Build complete multi-page websites, with the world's most advanced WYSIWYG page layout controls

    Many professional graphic designers already use Xara as their primary web graphics tool. Now it can save complete HTML web pages (using XHTML and CSS standards) and using layers it is easy to add mouseover effects and even add pop-ups.  

    The advantage of using Xtreme to create web pages is that you get almost complete freedom to position graphics and text anywhere on the page – including semi-transparent graphics and even rotated text - things which would be difficult or impossible with normal web authoring tools.  Plus the multi-page feature can be used to create complete multi-page websites. And Xtreme creates all the HTML for you.

  • New super-high quality vector and photo rendering

    A new simplified Quality Control provides five quality steps:

    • Outline only. This is now fully anti-aliased for higher quality screen display
    • Outline with blend steps
    • Full color (no anti-aliasing)
    • High Quality (full anti-aliasing. Same as previous top quality. Provides image smoothing)
    • Very high quality (new higher quality, industry best anti-aliasing. New bi-cubic photo display considerably improves the quality of scaled down photos).
  • Multi-page documents
    Xara Xtreme now supports multiple page documents, which means you can use Xtreme to produce leaflets, newsletters and much more. Pages can be single or double page spreads (left and right sides) and are arranged vertically, like a word processor or DTP program, with full support for text flow across pages. Xtreme's ultra-fast rendering means you can scroll through pages quickly and smoothly, even on very large documents.
  • Photo Levels
    The new Photo Tool includes a Levels control to adjust brightness levels of images. This single controls offers:

    • Histogram view of the brightness levels of the image.
    • Control over input black, white and gamma and output black and white levels. These controls provide a far more powerful way of adjusting brightness, contrast and gamma than the traditional simple brightness and contrast controls.
    • Single click before and after compare.
    • Color correction e.g. to adjust for a color cast from using the wrong white balance settings.
    • Overlaid before and after histograms. As you adjust the levels you can see the original and the modified histogram.
  • RAW file import
    You can now import RAW digital camera files (either using the Import menu option or just drag n drop the file onto the Xtreme window).
  • Improved color picking and editing including an enhanced eye dropper color picker on the color line
    • You can now use the eye-dropper color picker directly without having the color editor on screen.
    • The Color line now indicates the color under the eye-dropper as you're dragging around, highlighting the named or palette color.
    • There are new live color values shown next to the eye-dropper as you move over objects, showing not just the RGB color but the correct named color and color model of the object under the pointer. e.g. whether it's a spot, Pantone, CMYK or RGB color, and its value.
    • The current fill and line colors are now indicated on the color line even if they are palette colors, not just named colors. 
    • The Name Gallery now shows used palette colors and edited colors, not just named colors.
  • Flexible new Selector tool options
    • A new option for marquee select provides an Adobe-like selection so that any objects that the marquee rectangle touches are selected. An alternative option selects only those objects entirely inside the marquee rectangle.
    • Selection has been made live - objects are selected as you drag, rather than only when you let go. This mkes it easier to know whether objects are or are not selected as you drag, rather than waiting until you let go of the mouse.
  • New and improved import and export of industry standard graphics formats

    This includes:

    • Improved PDF import
  • Improved international font and text (Unicode) handling

    Improved Unicode support for foreign language alphabets, such as Chinese.

  • A new hierarchical Font menu with WYSIWYG font display

    Completely new WYSIWYG Font menu, now showing fonts grouped in families, showing full length font names and rendered in the corresponding font (high quality anti-aliased, compare with Word), so making it much easier to preview a font before selection. This is a hierarchical menu, so it's more compact and shows all variants of each family in a sub-menu.

  • Live in-document font preview and live font size selection

    Live Font Preview. As you traverse the font menu, the selected text in the document is updated. Similarly there is now a live font size preview, and a new interactive font size pop-up slider for fast, live, fine grained text size control.

  • Many new Live Effects added
    There are nearly 40 new Live Effects plug-ins, including Art, Color, Deformation, Distortion, Sharpen & Soften filters.
  • A large number of new fully customizable templates including HTML web pages
    A large collection of new top quality editable templates have been added, including more brochures / flyers, newsletters and new categories such as web pages and scrapbooking.
  • A completely new automatic panorama photo stitching feature

    This is a new photo plug-in included in all copies of Xara Xtreme. It offers:

    • Automatic stitching of photos to create a panorama
    • Automatic detection of overlap and join positions
    • Automatic calculation of focal length 
    • Adjustment of pictures to reduce fish-eye or focal length distortions
    • Seamless blending to remove dramatic color changes in the sky, for example.

    The best bit is that it's utterly simple to use. Import your pictures, position them in the correct left to right order and then just click the Panorama button for them to be automatically stitched together.

  • Flash export is now automatically clipped to page size
    Flash export is now automatically clipped to the page size. So, for example, if you want to create a banner ad at 468x60, you can set the page size to 468x60 and all animations on or around the page will be clipped to that page size.
  • Quick & easy photo optimization option

    A new optimize photo / bitmap feature to reduce resolution and convert images to embedded JPEGs (to make designs smaller and photo operations faster).

  • Improved shape intersection
    Path clipping has been improved, so Combine Shapes operations are now more accurate.
  • Improved photo handling including a new 'photo document'
    There is a new concept of a ‘photo document’. These are documents that consist primarily of a photo, as opposed a design on a fixed sized page. When working with a photo document, Xara Xtreme works in a way that is more consistent with traditional photo editors - but with all the vector tools still available of course. A photo document is created automatically when you open a JPEG or drop a JPEG onto a blank Xtreme document. The page dimensions are set to the match the dimensions of the photo, expanding automatically if you add any objects such as text or a shadow. So you don’t need to continually manually adjust the page dimensions and, unlike most photo editors, you don’t need to plan in advance the dimensions of your finished photo.  On loading a photo the document zoom is set so that the photo fills the view, and the photo tool is selected.
  • Zoom out now retains the image in the center of the screen even down to small zoom
  • Photos show the Megapixel size in the bitmap gallery
  • Single tile bitmap fills now show transparent around the outside, in order to avoid edge aliasing effects (and it's also more compatible with Adobe clip regions).
  • New 'import to new page' option in the clipart gallery
  • Improved feather slider (and pop-up sliders generally)
  • An option to maintain the geometry of a photo fill when you drop a different photo on the fill
  • Optional automatic underlining of hyperlinks on text
  • Ability to save original imported JPEG data from Bitmap gallery
  • Outline mode is now anti-aliased, giving a much higher quality display.
  • You can now right click copy / paste text when in Text tool