There is a lot of different ways of getting creative with graphics, and fulfilling all those needs can call for an entire library of applications. Perhaps, though, there’s a another way. Xara Designer Pro 6 is a photo editor, yes. But it’s also a vector drawing tool. A web graphics creator. An excellent desktop publishing tool, with templates to help you build calendars, greetings cards, brochures, business cards, CD covers and labels, newspapers and more. An easy to use and very capable WYSIWYG web designer, a useful collection of 3,000 clipart items, and more.

There’s a down side to this level of graphics ability, : the user interface can be puzzling, at least at first. Open a photo to edit it, for example, and the toolbars remain jammed with options that you probably don’t need right now (extrude and transparency tools, “snap to objects”, link properties and more). The menus offer little help, too, so it’ll likely take some exploration before you find the options you require.

This Is not an issue for too long, though. After a bit time spent pointing and clicking, or maybe referring to the excellent Help file, you soon learn where everything is and be ready to begin using the functions on offer. Photo editing improvements include HD Photo/ Windows Media Photo import, and an enhanced Panorama Studio for stitching together any amount of photos, and even creating 360 degree web panoramas.

The assorted improvements do mean that Designer Pro 6 can now be accepted seriously as a photo editor – you might never have to use anything else. New to the version is live shape drawing, where you view a solid shape (not just an outline), with the correct fill and line colours, as you drag. There’s one likeable addition in the form of the new opacity masks, which will rapidly create an irregular transparent shape around any object, or group of objects.

There’s good support for image slicing and image maps, with Designer Pro 6 doing most of the hard work. The real star in Designer Pro 6, though, is the revamped web designer, delivering feature-packed and professional-looking pages even if you’ve no previous web design experience. Multi-core CPU support improves performance, while the option to reconfigure shortcut keys may help your workflow.

If you’re a newcomer to the package, Designer Pro 6 provides plenty of creative power and could be enough to handle all your illustration and design needs. There is many more features that can’t be mentioned in such a short space here. But if you like the sound of it so far, its well worth checking out at Xara.com

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