Xara Photo & Graphic Designer offers one of the easiest ways to create 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 Photo & Graphic Designer drawing tools have the reputation of being extremely easy to learn and slick. So now we bring the ease of Photo & Graphic Designer to Flash animations.

Photo & Graphic Designer Flash animation doesn't use complex time-lines. Instead it's more like traditional animator's art, where you produce snap-shots or key frames of your animations at points in time. Photo & Graphic Designer automatically produces in-between frames to create smooth, really compact Flash animations.

Note: Photo & Graphic Designer 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, perfect for creating banner ads, text and photo effects like the examples below.

There are plenty of helpful resources that will help you get started with Flash in Xara Designer, here are just a few:

» Movie: An intro to Flash Animations in Xara Designer
» Movie: Creating Flash Animations in Xara Designer

» Tutorial: A Beginner's Guide to Flash in Photo & Graphic Designer
» Tutorial: A simple Flash animation created in Photo & Graphic Designer
» Tutorial: Creating animated Flash photo transitions in Photo & Graphic Designer
» Tutorial: Advanced Flash controls
» Tutorial: A Flash Christmas card