Xara X1

Xara has a long history of producing versatile graphics packages and X1 is the company's latest flagship product. Designed for vector graphics editing, it lets you create artworks from scratch or add elements such as text to photographs and other images.

Xara touts speed as one of the main benefits of its package, and it certainly seems nippy, with no long delays when you open or save large images. All the effects that you might want to apply are rendered in real time. There are none of the dialogues and panes you'll see cluttering up the screen in other programs; add a drop shadow, for example, and you drag it around to get the angle and distance you want. The same is true of things like bevels, embosses or picture skews.

There are excellent transparency tools, which you can use alongside feathering and cutouts to combine images, but we did find that working out how to create a mask for an image was fiddly - and not helped by a system of selection that seemed to make it harder than it should be to pick up a path we'd just drawn.

The help, fortunately, gives excellent explanations of how to perform tasks that might not be obvious from the menus and once you've got the hang of how the tools work, there's little doubt that Xara X1 lets you create and edit graphics quickly and effortlessly. Whether you're combining photos or creating original artworks, it's well worth a look and is less intimidating than many other applications.

Contact: Xara 01442 350 000
www.xara.co.uk

System requirements:

• Windows 98 or higher
• Pentium processor
• 64MB memory
• 20MB hard disk space

Price:
RRP: $179 (£98.87)(Download and CD)