By pitting Lightroom vs Xara Designer Pro, you’ll notice that both programs have similar features. However, while Xara Designer Pro includes all the tools necessary for creating illustrations, enhancing images, making page layouts, designing web graphics, and so on, Lightroom is mostly focused on advanced retouching and photo management.
Ideal for non-destructive batch editing and image management, Lightroom synchronizes all your data via cloud to help organize your files across different devices. Being a relatively affordable subscription-based option, it can be of great use to both beginners and professionals.
Xara Designer Pro offers an array of web design features like WYSIWYG as well as tools for image enhancements all wrapped into one software. You can use it to design illustrations or web elements and create multipage layouts while relying on top-tier artistic tools and functions. This option will be to the liking of students, freelance graphic designers, and small-to-medium business owners.
Convenient sliders for controlling basic photo parameters. You can manage the overall brightness of an image by adjusting a variety of sliders including exposure, contrast, blacks, whites, shadows, and highlights, meaning you have full control over the tonal balance of the shot. You can also access the same sliders when editing a picture with the adjustment brush or another selective tool, which allows you to edit photos in Lightroom with maximum ease.
Allows making multiple versions. The software allows you to compare 2 or more edit versions. To take advantage of that feature, click the "Versions" button on the bottom-right of the adjustments section to have the corresponding panel show up on the left, allowing you to conveniently check out various versions.
It should be noted that said versions can't be altered. Once they are created, all their adjustments are permanent, however, nothing is stopping you from using one of the versions as a base, copying it, and making any further adjustments you want.
Allows taking advantage of Adobe RAW color profiles. The RAW profiles of this RAW photo editor include Adobe Raw and Camera Matching. The former consists of Adobe Color, Monochrome, Landscape, Neutral, Portrait, Standard, and Vivid. Adobe Color is the default option used for imported images. It offers slightly higher contrast and increased warmth compared to Standard photos.
Portrait was made to offer perfect skin tone accuracy while Landscape significantly increases vibrancy, which is only a problem if the photo features human faces since then it can cause distortion. Neutral goes very easy on the contrast, making it perfect for suboptimal lighting conditions, and Vivid pushes saturation and contrast to the acceptable maximum.
Meanwhile, Camera Matching profiles just copy the camera brand's picture rendering and are designed to replicate the image you see on the camera’s display when taking the photo.
Automatic face recognition. This feature relies on Sensei AI which allows this automatic photo editor to automatically detect any faces included in an image. They will be displayed in circles when switched to My Photos view. Moreover, all photos that feature the same face will be located next to each other. Lightroom lets you merge circles of the same person, which can be particularly useful when dealing with duplicates or going through pictures taken from different angles, in different lighting conditions, etc.
Terrific management functionality. If you compare Lightroom vs Photoshop, you’ll notice that the latter doesn’t have such advanced image management options. You can use Lightroom’s search feature to sort photos while categorizing them by format, camera, place, etc. Additionally, the Sensei AI allows you to automatically detect what is featured in your images and tag them with relevant keywords.
Texture slider allows increasing and decreasing the level of medium detail. This feature is useful for making both global and local edits. It can be used for face smoothing while maintaining the model’s natural look. Simply try moving the Texture slider to the right and you’ll notice that it increases detail without adding noise, which is a common drawback of the Sharpen tool.
Recommended Presets offer single-click enhancements. This addition relies on artificial intelligence to evaluate your photo, compare it to images that have similar histograms and subjects, and then produce a selection of thumbnails that were enhanced with different presents. The user can let the AI know if they want Subtle, Black-and-White, Strong, Bright, or Dark recommendations. The provided presets can also be of great help to professional photographers and regular Lightroom users.
Ability to add your own presets. Other than built-in tools, you can expand the software with Lightroom presets that were created by professional retouchers. With their help, you can enhance the colors, add brightness and contrast, or completely change the mood of a photo in just one click.
Supports creative effects. Xara Designer Pro is compatible with Adobe Photoshop plug-ins. Additionally, it has one of the most innovative Live Effects features in the industry, as it allows you to use said plugins for images and vector graphics to achieve an array of stunning visual effects.
The Online Content Catalog also offers over 120 premade image filters that you can drag and drop onto an image to add popular effects and moods like “summer”, “vintage”, “exposed”, as well as an array of textured filters. Lastly, Xara Designer Pro comes with an Effect Painter, flexible mask, and region tools that allow you to focus on editing specific parts of an image.
Advanced smart image scaling. The software has a "content-aware scaling" feature that allows you to enlarge or minimize photos while preserving their original aspect ratio and all key details. The produced results look extremely impressive, as you can significantly change the scale of the image without distorting its subject or background. Designer Pro also comes with a "content-aware zooming" function that has a similar purpose but also lets you change the size of the subject without altering the size of the picture as a whole.
Smart tools for creating web and graphic designs. This graphic design software contains tools that will make your job easier: liquid text flow around objects, convenient mouseover, thumbnail, and popup design, auto-resolution image adjustments for different web purposes, auto color matching of important objects like buttons, and smart object relocation and page resizing that occurs whenever you add or remove text.
Convenient image manipulation tools. The Magic Eraser is the closest thing you’ll find to Photoshop’s Patch Tool that automatically deletes unnecessary objects from a photo in a natural, realistic way. The Magnetic Lasso is suitable for conveniently cutting out parts of an image with speed and precision. Meanwhile, if you’re working with an image that has a complex outline (the model’s hair, etc.), you can take advantage of the Background Erase feature.
Color Enhance control is another advanced picture manipulation feature. Using it is incredibly simple and it allows you to perform an array of adjustments including those related to brightness, contrast, or specific color tones.
Solid feature set for vector art enthusiasts. Xara Designer Pro comes with a large collection of vectorized lines and object drawing utilities that are extremely user-friendly. For instance, the QuickShape tool allows you to pick from premade objects to create professional, appealing images while the Blend tool invites you to combine a broad range of shapes. Lastly, the 3D Extrude feature allows you to adjust various 3D graphics such as shades, depths, etc.
Collaborate with other users in the Xara Cloud. Other than the software itself, you’ll also be able to use the Xara Cloud to store, update, and share your projects with ease. All files are synchronized across all connected devices and if you’re doing graphic design for commercial purposes, you’ll be able to grant access to your projects to customers and other designers to view and comment on them to improve your workflow.
Lightroom can be tested for free for 7 days. If you'll like what you see, you can purchase a subscription for $9.99 a month. Moreover, you can also use it to subscribe to Photoshop without a price increase. However, instead of 1TB of storage space, you'll only have 20GB.
If you also need other Adobe software, then you should get the Creative Cloud All Apps plan that offers 100GB of cloud storage for $52.99 a month. You’ll receive over 20 apps for your PC, phone, or web browser.
Xara Designer Pro can also be tested for free for 2 weeks. Afterward, you’ll have to choose a subscription plan. You can purchase either a single-user subscription for $16.95 per month or a team-based plan for at least 3 users, with the price amounting to $9.98 per user per month.
As a photographer, I consider Lightroom to be the winner of the Lightroom vs Xara Designer Pro battle. It’s the ultimate tool for in-depth color correction, image management, and RAW editing. The software allows you to quickly sort images, export/import DNG RAW files, add keywords, create albums, and much more. Moreover, Lightroom has a Texture slider and an AI-based Detail Enhancement feature along with Super Resolution, which was only recently added to Photoshop.
Xara Designer Pro offers a lot of features that resemble Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. While that is definitely great, it can also be viewed as a drawback. Since this tool comes with an array of features aimed at drastically different editing tasks, some of its capabilities are limited in what they can achieve.
If you also factor in its Windows-exclusive nature, you’ll realize that Xara Designer Pro isn’t as flexible as it might seem initially. That said, it’s still an incredible all-in-one graphic design utility that is offered at a reasonable price and can be used for lots of different purposes.
If you want to improve your editing workflow in Lightroom, use the presets from this collection that was developed by professional retouchers. Inside you’ll find over 500 presets that can be used for enhancing shoots in RAW and JPEG formats. These presets can be used with all popular versions of Lightroom including Lightroom 4-6, Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic, and Lightroom Mobile.
