Brother MFC-L9570CDW Multifunction Printer
A printer that is efficient, reliable and can work seamlessly with your systems and software.Read this solicitor's review to find out more!
Although not a high-end product, X1 is a powerful program that'll let you create polished vector drawings in minutes, even if your creative skills are limited.
Even if you're an experienced digital illustrator, you may find Xara X1's ease-of-use a refreshing alternative to Macromedia's FreeHand, Adobe's Illustrator or even Corel's CorelDraw. In addition, it promises to be up to 500 per cent faster than other leading vector software and its photo and bitmap-handling tools are second to none.
There's no symbols feature for repetitive graphics or a spelling checker for text, but it's still excellent value for money.
Targeted at print and Web designers, Xara X1 supports real-time bitmap anti-aliasing, offers smoother feather and shadows, pressure-sensitive brush stroking and multi-stage graduated fills as well as real-time interactive transparency controls.
This aggressively priced package comes with full 32-bit alpha channel bitmap support and CMYK for print illustration work including onscreen plate preview.
Xara X1 is packed full of video tutorials, wizards and a context sensitive help system. Its clean interface is also free from the excess of floating palettes and dialogue boxes that plague high-end tools. Thanks to Xara's NavBar tool, image-slicing capabilities and Dreamweaver integration, you can easily create Web-ready graphics or animated GIFs as well as prepare vector art for animation in Flash format. What's more, all Xara's features and tools work in real-time - updates are shown before you release the mouse button to make them permanent. For instance, drag the eyedropper tool on an image and the colour of your selected object alters continuously.
You can create and export frame animations to multiple PNG files to be imported into Adobe Photoshop or ImageReady as layers or frames for further editing.
Other new tools include Picture Editor, which you can use for basic photo-editing operations such as cropping, rotating, enhancing and sharpening. You can also adjust contrast, brightness, sharpness/blur and saturation.
Unfortunately, there's no support for third-party filters, but this is promised as a free update later in the year. There's also no local pixel editing (painting or retouching), unlike Macromedia's Fireworks which lets you paint on artwork as easily as you draw.
Photo and bitmap handling is still faster and more powerful than any other vector graphics application, however. In addition, almost anything you can do to vector shapes you can do to bitmaps.
Images files (such as JPEGs, GIFs, TIFFs and so on) are embedded in a separate Xara file, cutting down on file size in the process. For instance, an uncompressed 20MB photograph would double in file size every time you copy it. As a result, you may end up with a file that's as big as 60MB. Xara uses a proprietary "zero-memory footprint" approach, which means that each new copy and edited copy requires no additional memory or file space. This technology makes Xara X1 an ideal platform for creating compositions that mix native vectors and imported bitmaps.
A printer that is efficient, reliable and can work seamlessly with your systems and software.Read this solicitor's review to find out more!
The latest business news, reviews, features and whitepapers
Visit our shop for the best deals on hot products
Watch our video news and reviews from around the world
Comprehensive buying guides, features, and step-by-step articles
Brother MFC-L9570CDW Multifunction Printer
Touch screen visibility and operation was great and easy to navigate. Each menu and sub-menu was in an understandable order and category
Brother MFC-L9570CDW Multifunction Printer
The printer was convenient, produced clear and vibrant images and was very easy to use
WD My Cloud Home
I would recommend this device for families and small businesses who want one safe place to store all their important digital content and a way to easily share it with friends, family, business partners, or customers.
Brother QL-820NWB Professional Label Printer
It’s easy to set up, it’s compact and quiet when printing and to top if off, the print quality is excellent. This is hands down the best printer I’ve used for printing labels.
Sharp PN-40TC1 Huddle Board
Brainstorming, innovation, problem solving, and negotiation have all become much more productive and valuable if people can easily collaborate in real time with minimal friction.
Brother QL-820NWB Professional Label Printer
The print quality also does not disappoint, it’s clear, bold, doesn’t smudge and the text is perfectly sized.