Version 3.2 offers significant updates to our most popular product. This new release contains a large number of useability improvements, particularly to fill, color and text handling, as well as many completely new features such as Flash support, the addition of significant new import & export file format options and many new templates. For more details read on...

• Animated Flash export
  
  

  Xtreme brings one of the easiest ways to produce really efficient Flash animations. Flash animations use vector graphics. Unfortunately existing Flash tools have a reputation for being unintuitive, difficult to master and over complex. As a result Flash has been restricted to those willing to dedicate substantial time to mastering these tools. On the other hand, the Xtreme drawing tools have the reputation of being extremely easy to learn and slick. So now we bring the ease of Xtreme to Flash animations. Xtreme Flash animation doesn't use complex time-lines. Instead it's more like traditional animators art, where you produce snap-shots or key frames of your animations at points in time. Xtreme automatically produces in-between frames to create smooth, really compact Flash animations. Note: Xtreme Flash animation does not support complex advanced features such as scripting, sound or embedded movies. Instead it's Flash animation for the rest of us.

  More examples | Demo movie

• Enhanced text tool
  
  

  Xara Xtreme now includes an enhanced text tool providing high-end DTP-like features, such as: • Margin and tab control (left, center, right and decimal tabs) • 1st line indent or outdent control provides support for hanging indents, such as numbered or bulleted lists • Guidelines when dragging tabs and margins • Three types of text object: Simple text, text columns and text areas • Linked flowing text stories across text areas. Shown opposite. • You can now copy / paste text from Word which retains all styles • �Smart Quotes� when typing text • Soft and hard hyphens • Control over paragraph spacing • A key short cut for paragraph select • Character and word count on the status line • Optimized text placement (produces sharper text for common text sizes at 100% view) • Lorum Ipsum generator • Swap case for selected regions • Key short cuts to increase / decrease text point size • Key short cuts for common special characters e.g. � � � � �

  Linked flowing text stories Move your mouse over

• Adobe Photoshop® PSD import and export
  
  Full support for importing and exporting Photoshop® PSD files including layer support (Xtreme layers exported as PSD layers and PSD layers imported as Xtreme layers). Note: only Xara Xtreme Pro supports 16 bit and CMYK PSD files.
  
  Photoshop® is the industry standard bitmap editing solution, and for many professionals Xtreme is their standard vector graphics tool. Now the two are more closely integrated than ever.
• PDF export improvements
  
  PDF has become the industry standard way of transferring documents of all types from one person to another, ensuring exact WYSIWYG fidelity. Xtreme's PDF support has been dramatically improved so it can now output PDF directly, catering for the novice user to the professional.
  
  

  Xtreme now includes class leading PDF support including these features: • Choice of PDF version from version 1.3 through to version 1.6 standards. • Full support for vector transparency (PDF version 1.4 or later) • Font embedding and font subsetting options • Export any selected page range • Optional down-sampling of large bitmaps (reduces the size of PDFs for designs containing large photos) • Full control over bitmap embedding options and compression (native, Flate, JPEG) • Full control over bitmap transparency flattening, bitmap effect rasterization, to any required resolution and compression type • Embedding of native JPG files for lossless JPEG transfer • Support for Adobe Reader Layers. For PDF 1.5 and above you can now output and control Xtreme's layer visibility in Adobe Reader • File embedding. You can embed .xar files into your PDF and launch them from Adobe Reader • Document encryption, with full control over document permissions: • Password protect any PDF file, with 40 or 128-bit encryption • Control over exact permissions, e.g. allow / disallow printing or commenting or text copying or extraction.

  Thankfully for those that do not require such full control over PDF features, Xtreme provides a simple choice of 3 typical PDF profiles for the novice user: Draft, Email and High Quality.
• PDF import
  
  Xara Xtreme supports PDF import and loads PDF files as true editable vector graphics and text (note, in common with most PDF importers it won't open PDF documents that are encrypted or include embedded subset fonts).
• TIFF import
  
  TIFF import support for a wider range of TIFF variants. This further extends Xtreme's compatibility with other graphics programs.
• Other import / export filters
  
  And there are several other new and improved filters:

  •	RTF (Rich Text Format) import and export. You can now copy 'rich text' from other applications such as word processors and paste into Xtreme as text, and the fonts, margins and line spacing will be preserved. This also works the other way around
  •	EMF import and improved WMF import
  •	SVG Export (incomplete)

• Bitmap and Photo Handling Improvements
  
  Xtreme now integrates with external photo editors. Double-clicking on a photo (or bitmap fill) will open the image in your favorite photo editor, where you can edit the photo as required. Clicking save automatically updates the image back into Xtreme. You can even work with both editors side by side � each Save from your photo editor updates the image in Xara Xtreme.
  
  Xtreme still contains the Xara Picture Editor as the default photo editor, but is now also bundled with an alternative Magix photo editor. There are a number of other significant photo handling improvements:
  
  

  •	Drag and drop photos onto bitmap fills or photos to replace them, even if inside groups
  •	In the fill tool (automatically selected when you drop a photo on a shape) dragging the end arrows will resize and rotate
  •	Dragging on the center fill handle or fill arrow lines will push the photo within the shape (or Shift drag anywhere on the photo)
  •	The dropped bitmap is shown as a single tile (you can select 'repeating tiles' from the Infobar is you want it to behave like a tiling texture fill).

• Color & Fill Handling
  
  

  •	A simplified and clearer color line: Applying palette colors to objects no longer creates Named Colors; unused Named Colors are deleted when saving or loading files; Linked Colors are now drawn slightly differently to make them more obvious.
  •	Left clicking on a color will set the line and fill color of lines (open paths)
  •	Right clicking on a color will display a context sensitive menu with relevant options
  •	You can now push fills by dragging on the fill arrow (or Shift drag anywhere on the fill)
  •	In the fill tool clicks will now select the shape clicked on, even if it's inside a group
  •	Dropping colors onto a bitmap filled object now contones it rather than sets it to a solid fill.

• Vista Compatibility
  
  

  This release is now fully operational under Windows Vista e.g. it can be used from non-Admin accounts (on both Windows XP and Vista).

• New templates
  
  

  A large collection of new top quality editable templates including more greetings cards, newsletters and calendars, plus new categories such as photo albums and collages, newspapers, documents, certificates and coupons. See new templates

• Other significant user interface enhancements
  
  There are many small changes to the user interface that bring significant useability improvements:

  •	Rounded corner rectangles can now be resized in the rectangle tool (including aspect ratio changes) while maintaining circular corners
  •	Ctrl+ scroll wheel has improved zoom
  •	Automatic zoom out when importing photos, so the whole image is instantly visible
  •	New '100% zoom' operation added to zoom toolbar and key shortcuts for common zoom actions
  •	Easy object copy: Just right drag to make a copy (and left clicking while dragging drops a copy at each click)
  •	You can rotate objects with the Selector tool without going into Rotate mode. Drag just inside the corner selection handles
  •	Space bar is a short-cut to the push tool (to bring it into line with other industry standard products)
  •	Name gallery improvements - it now shows more detail on the fonts used in a document, using the full font name as shown in the font gallery. It also shows variations of a font as a separate selectable font name, as well as the font family (e.g. "Arial Bold", "Arial Italic", "Arial Regular"). It shows at a glance which fonts have had to be synthesized and which are not installed.
  •	Print dialog completely re-designed
  •	Document Info dialog improved
  •	Frame (animation) gallery order reversed, so it now shows first frame at the top
  •	Line width now shown in pix if the page unit is Pix
  •	The main toolbar should automatically show small icons on small screens
  •	Dragging a file onto the title bar no longer opens MDI windows
  •	New option in Grid & Ruler to allow the ruler origin to be top left and coordinate values to increase downwards

• And many other miscellaneous improvements including:

  •	Improved support for accented characters, Unicode and non US keyboards
  •	Improved clipboard compatibility with MS Office and other applications - e.g. you can just copy and paste direct into Outlook and it embeds a JPEG
  •	Copy / Paste attributes on text now works more reliably. You can more easily create 'text styles' using small snippets of text
  •	Improved support for using Xtreme with multiple monitors
  •	Error handling improved so that in the event of a program crash you�ll normally get the chance to continue and save your work