Xara & Graphic Designer is a full-featured program that provides advanced graphic design tools and layer-based image compositing. This program is popular among graphic designers, photo editors, picture content creators, etc.
Adobe Photoshop is the most popular program for picture retouching and manipulation of our generation. It isn't just for editing photos, it is extremely universal.
Let’s compare Xara Photo & Graphic Designer vs Photoshop and figure out which software is better for Instagram picture lovers and amateur photographers.
What Is Xara Photo & Graphic Designer?
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is a program for editing photos and working with vector illustrations. It is developed by Xara – British software company.Xara Photo and Graphic Designer is a great program for handling and storing images. With its help, they will occupy less space on the computer than in similar programs.
Xara is very good at performing creative picture compositing, as well as vector drawing and standard desktop-publishing tasks. It can cope even with web-page design and offers many templates so that it’s easier for you to begin working on your project.
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer: Strengths and Weaknesses
Non-destructive photo editing. Due to this, you will be able to change your photos multiple times without losing its original quality. All the changes made to photos in Xara software can be selectively undone later.
Almost 300 packages of additional content. Xara has a large library of free photo content that you can use for your projects. Besides, this program offers media templates, web pages, cards, and invitations.
Over 500.000 free images. Photo content is significant for image editing programs. Xara offers its users many images divided by themes. You can find these images using keywords.
You can use these images how you want. You will be able to change their sizes and shapes, remove backgrounds or different objects from them.
More than 200 ready-made filters and plug-ins. With Xara Photo and Graphic Designer, you will be able to easily change the colors and textures of your images by using ready-made filters, such as Summer, Cold, Intense, and Black & White. These filters will make your photos stand out.
Top-level of text editing. One of the main features of Xara software is its range of tools for working with text. You can add text to your projects, edit them, apply different effects and filters. In Xara, you can put text blocks wherever you want on your images, resize them, change their angles, and set texts along a curved path.
Color palette from a picture option. You can easily connect the colors of a document to the colors used in the key photo in this document using the new advanced Xara tool. It analyzes the photo, selects the prevailing colors, and creates a color palette with these colors and tones.
This will give your projects a more professional and harmonious look.
Supports many formats. Xara supports almost 60 various image formats, including JPEG, PNG, PSD, PDF, TIFF, animated GIF, etc. Also, you will be able to optimize images for web publishing.
You can use guides and tutorials. If you don’t know how to use the features and tools of Xara, you can check out free tutorials and study guides. Look at the FAQ section on the official website, as well as a forum for users where you will be able to find answers to all your questions.
Also, there is technical support where you can ask for help if you have some problems.
Lack of batch processing. In Xara Photo and Graphic Designer, you won’t be able to edit multiple pictures at the same time. That’s why if you need to add the same effect or filter to several images, you will have to do it with each photo separately.
No image organizing system. Xara lacks an image organizing system. So, if you need to manage your photos, you will have to get separate software for this.
RAW support is limited. You can’t work with RAW files in Xara. Although it can read many DSLR’s RAW outputs, it loses the EXIF data while importing.
What Is Photoshop?
Photoshop is the most famous photo editing and retouching software. Using Photoshop, you can create all types of projects, including flyers, greeting cards, business cards, professionally edited pictures, and animated GIFs.This software is popular among photographers, artists, image creators and editors, and other specialists working with visual projects.
Photoshop: Strengths and Weaknesses
Offers professional layers. Photoshop is layer-based software that lets users take control over the entire photo editing process in one click. Layer allows you to draw or design different elements of the document independently in layers and put them in order of display.
Has an integrated stock library. You can improve your Photoshop projects using free stock images. You will find many pictures on different themes and will be able to change their parameters. Libraries are also synchronized via Photoshop, which allows you to quickly switch from task to task and save time for creative work.
Enhanced selection tools. Different tools give different results. For instance, Magnetic Lasso defines any form without limitations in its ability to repeat the contour of objects, adhering to lines, contours, and edges.
Marquee is another standard selector. It allows you to draw around the selected area or add texture to the element.
These tools let users separate a particular area to apply effects or edit it.
Offers shape tools. Although Photoshop is raster software, it contains some tools for creating vector graphics. It offers a collection of simple shapes that you can combine to create more complex objects.
You can use such shapes as Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line, and Custom Shape tools. You will be able to change their sizes, colors, add gradients, transparency, etc.
360 panorama feature. With Photoshop, you can create 360-degree panoramas, which is something you can’t do in Xara software. In Ps, you can do it through Photomerge tools that combine a few photos in one. You will need to take five landscape pictures and place them close to each other.
3D editing tools. Using Photoshop, you will be able to import 3D objects straight to the editor via the Cloud and begin drawing textures on the Photoshop canvas. Besides, it is possible to extrude text and shapes, apply textures, adjust lighting, and utilize various rendering options to achieve realistic or stylized 3D effects, adding depth and dimension to designs.
Provides 80% Creative Cloud connectivity. Photoshop operates as a part of the Creative Cloud subscription. That’s why you can use it with some other Adobe software, such as Lightroom and Adobe Illustrator. It greatly expands the possibilities to create and edit visual content.
Complicated interface. Photoshop is not suitable for beginners due to its complicated interface and tools. Even professionals can struggle with it from time to time. However, you can solve this problem and check out Photoshop tutorials on YouTube.
Not the best vector tools. Even though Photoshop has some tools for creating vector graphics, they are quite poor for complete processing. Also, not all releases have this minimal set of vector graphics tools.
High price. As for the official version of Photoshop, its price is very expensive compared with similar programs. It costs $20.99 per month or $239.88 per year. However, you can find many free Photoshop alternatives, that will help you save money.
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer vs Photoshop: Prices
If you want to understand the Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Photoshop capabilities, you can start with these graphic design programs free versions. When they are over, you will have to buy Photoshop or Xara full version.
Xara Photo & Designer offers a one-purchase payment option.
- Xara Photo & Graphic Designer - $59.99
Adobe offers various plans and you can select the most suitable one.
- Adobe Photoshop Photography Plan (20 GB) - $9.99 per month
- Adobe Photoshop Photography Plan (1 TB) - $19.99 per month
- Adobe Photoshop CC Plan - $20.99 per month
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer vs Photoshop: Who Wins?
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is one of the best graphic design software. Besides, you can use it for editing images and texts, and it has a wide library of free ready-made elements. It’s intuitive and affordable, so it will be a great option for inexperienced photo editors.
Adobe Photoshop boasts many advanced photo editing tools for working with raster graphics. It also offers drawing and creating complex projects in connectivity with other Adobe programs. It’s quite difficult to use so it is mainly targeted at professional image editors.
Freebies
Here are free brushes for you to achieve amazing and realistic results. I have collected a set of such brushes that you can download and start using right now.
