Copyright: Copyright ©


32-bit program

CorelXARA has been designed from scratch as a new 32-bit application. This means it runs straight away on 32-bit operating systems such as Windows NT and Window 95.  Using a feature called Win32s, it is also able to operate under the existing Windows 3.1 (and 3.11) operating system. Indeed the same 32-bit program  is used on all three operating systems. When running under Windows 95 or NT, it detects and takes advantage of new features such as long filenames and new common dialogs and the new look-and-feel.

Internally many features such as the coordinate system are held to 32-bit and, in some cases, 64-bit accuracy allowing extremely high levels of precision and dynamic range. For example CorelXARA works to 72,000 dpi internally, offers zoom levels of over 25,000% and also allows page sizes larger than A1 (594 x 840mm, 23.39 x 33.07 inches).

By using a powerful rendering engine we can also provide all the advantages of this precision and range, not to mention speed, on the existing Windows 3.1 operating system.


Accuracy and Precision

The program uses 32-bit, and in some cases 64-bit co-ordinates for numerical positioning of objects. This allows not only a huge range, but also a very high degree of accuracy.  Internally the program works to 72,000 dpi, (greater than half a micron accuracy) many times higher than the highest resolution printer or imagesetter.

This degree of accuracy allows an incredible amount of detail to be put in drawings, meaning they are more scalable than ever before (and of course one of the inherent advantages of object-oriented graphics, compared with pixel-based bitmap graphics, is the ability to scale objects without introducing visible pixel artifacts).  The ability to work on minute detail is vital not only to give drawings and illustrations realism, but to allow them to be scaled up without loss of detail.  At a very simple level it means you can print a poster sized image from the simplest drawing and it will still look pin-sharp.


Anti-aliasing

This is a software technique designed to reduce or remove the pixel "jaggy" edges that are so common in graphics on screen. While some photo retouching programs now offer an anti-aliasing option, CorelXARA is the first object based drawing and illustration program for Windows to offer fast, high quality, real-time anti-aliasing of all drawn objects and text. The result is a far higher quality screen display than is normally possible. Anti-aliasing not only provides a much more smooth accurate display of lines and polygons, but it also allows much more detail to be seen. The advantages of anti-aliasing are rather like having a graphics card and display of four times the normal resolution.

The effect of anti-aliasing on text.: left, without anti-aliasing, right with.

Anti-aliasing is particularly effective with italic text or text at an angle

These show the same drawing without anti-aliasing (left) and with (right). Notice how much more realistic it is with anti-aliasing.

Anti-aliasing provides a much more accurate screen representation of detail

Multimedia and presentation graphics

Because anti-aliasing is primarily a technique to improve screen display quality, it is ideally suited for producing screen based graphics, e.g. multimedia, presentation graphics and World Wide Web graphics.  The best Web pages always use anti-aliased graphics, but traditionally these have been created on specialist graphics workstations.

Anti-aliasing provides a level of professionalism, class and quality to screen graphics that is simply not achievable any other way. CorelXARA allows everyone, with just a plain PC, to produce graphics of quality. For more information on CorelXARA and the World Wide Web, see Multimedia and the Web.


Balls
A simple but very effective example of the use of a few circular graduated fills. The window reflection is a simple overlaid transparent shape. The floor shadows are blended ellipse shapes. By using transparent shadows it gives the correct visual results no matter what background you put the balls on (note how the wood grain shows through the shadow).


Bitmap Textures

CorelXARA has an unmatched ability to use bitmap textures for fills. The package includes more than 230 natural, high-resolution textures on the CD-ROM.

This example heading uses a stone texture as a background, the lettering uses various textures from CD. In order to fill text, it is simply a matter of dragging the appropriate texture from the fill gallery window onto the lettering - there are no complex import or control dialogs - just direct, intuitive drag and drop operations. The object orientated nature of CorelXARA even allows the text to be edited directly on the page, even after it has been texture filled.

The above heading illustration also uses a variable transparency applied to the shadow, which has been perspectivised using the 3D perspective tool - note how you can see the ground through the shadow. An illustration like this takes only a couple of minutes to produce.

CorelXARA can tile (seamlessly repeat) any bitmap as a fill. What's more the user can interactively resize and scale the texture fill, in real time. It also offers a wide variety of fractal fills which, using transparency, can be combined with other artificial or natural fill types.


Bitmap support

CorelXARA is not a bitmap painting or photo retouching program. However it can be used for many types of job normally associated with these programs.  For example, because bitmaps can be made semi-transparent, it can be used for photographic composition work. And of course, because of the inherent object-oriented nature of the program, the picture is never "flattened" into just a single non-editable bitmap. The component parts remain editable at all times.

Bitmaps are objects, like all others and so, for example, you can cut them;

This is achieved by simply drawing a shape across the picture and selecting the "slice" option.

Bitmap fills

You can also use any bitmap as a repeating fill, automatically tiling the pattern as necessary. The CorelXARA CD-ROM includes hundreds of high quality, real-world natural texture fills. Like the other direct action tools the size and angle of the bitmap fill tile is directly controlled by dragging the mouse and yet this is real-time. One of the best demonstrations of the sheer speed and power of CorelXARA is to see a 1Mbyte scanned bitmap being used as a repeating pattern fill, and for this to be repeated a hundred times or more inside a polygon. Yet this repeating fill can still be scaled, stretched, and rotated in real time, on a 486 Computer!


Cat

Even without any of CorelXARA's advanced features, like transparency, this picture shows that a few simple shapes with well placed graduated fills can produce very high quality drawings.


Chess

The pawns are simple shapes filled with a wood texture (one of those supplied with CorelXARA) along with some overlaid transparency to produce the highlight and shadows. The board itself is given an extreme perspective using the CorelXARA perspective tool. A simple skewed fractal is overlaid to create the reflective surface effect.


Compatibility

CorelXARA can import vector files from a wide variety of sources including WMF (Windows Meta Files) and EPS files from the most common sources, such as Adobe Illustrator and MacroMedia Freehand.

It also has the ability to load CorelDRAW CDR files from CorelDRAW versions 3, 4 and 5. It can also load a huge variety of bitmap files, including all the common formats such as TIFF, BMP, JPEG and PhotoCD.

Because many of the features of CorelXARA, such as transparency, are not available on other vector based graphics programs it is not always possible to export illustrations in a completely editable format to these programs. However it can export vector files in the most common industry-standard EPS formats that are loadable by all good drawing programs. It can also export images, or any part of an image, as a bitmap of any required resolution in a wide range of formats including TIFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP etc. Bitmap formats are perhaps the most common and universally accepted by almost all programs.

The ability to export anti-aliased bitmaps, including interlaced and transparent GIF formats which are particularly useful for multimedia or Web uses.

Import & Output formats

ArtWorks EPS	(import & export)

.BMP bitmaps	(import & export)

Brook Trout bitmaps	(import only)

CALS bitmaps	(import only)

CorelDRAW (3, 4 , 5)	(import only)

DCX bitmaps	(import & export)

Freehand EPS	(import only)

GIF bitmaps	(import & export)

GX2 bitmaps	(import only)

Halo CUT bitmaps	(import only)

IFF bitmaps	(import only)

IMG bitmaps	(import only)

IOCA bitmaps	(import only)

Illustrator (88, 3, 4)	(import & export)

JPEG bitmaps	(import & export)

KOFAX bitmaps	(import only)

LaserView bitmaps	(import only)

MacPaint bitmaps	(import only)

Microsoft Icon bitmaps	(import only)

Microsoft Paint bitmaps	(import only)

PCX bitmaps	(import & export)

PhotoCD bitmaps	(import only)

Photoshop bitmaps	(import only)

PICT bitmaps	(import & export)

Sun Raster bitmaps	(import & export)

TARGA bitmaps	(import & export)

TIFFs	(import & export)

Windows Metafiles (WMF)	(import & export)

WordPerfect Group bitmaps	(import & export)

XWindows bitmaps	(import only)

Operation compatibility

CorelXARA follows many industry standard conventions. It has a Microsoft Office look and feel, so includes configurable button bars, ToolTip help, extensive online documentation and a multi-document interface. It even follows the latest Windows 95 guidelines with respect to areas such as drag and drop and right-mouse button pop-up menus.

While CorelXARA includes many new and advanced features we are aware that many customers are accustomed to other packages. It is for this reason we have made sure that many operations and tools work in a familiar and traditional way. For example while we provide a new and advanced bezier curve editing tool, we also provide an industry standard bezier editor that works exactly like those provided by CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator.


Contents

CorelXARA Viewer includes two multimedia movies of the full CorelXARA program in action. Please read the Demonstration Notes before watching the movies.

Introductory demonstration of CorelXARA and its tools

Demonstration of using CorelXARA to create a stunning picture

CorelXARA is a new low cost, high performance drawing and graphics illustration tool. It combines all the best features of object-oriented drawing packages with some new and outstanding capabilities more commonly found in bitmap programs.

CorelXARA is exceptionally fast - this not only means that graphics can be produced more quickly and effectively, but also makes it easier to experiment. CorelXARA also offers one of the simplest user interfaces around, excellent on-screen display quality and some unique new graphics tools. It has been designed to enhance your creativity.

The use of anti-aliasing (jaggy free screen display) and support for Internet formats such as JPEG and GIF, including interlaced and transparent GIFs, make CorelXARA particularly suited for World Wide Web publishing (or any other on-screen presentation).

To see some examples of what can be achieved with CorelXARA, load some of the examples off the CD with CorelXARA Viewer. There are also a few examples in the CorelXARA Examples section below.

Key Features

CorelXARA Examples

Ordering

Corel and Xara on-line

This documentation is Copyright Xara Ltd. 1995-1996

Corel & CorelDRAW are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation in Canada, the United States and other countries. XARA is a trademark of Xara Limited. Microsoft and Windows are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft in the United States and other countries. TrueType is a registered trademark of Apple Computers Inc. Made with MacroMedia is a trademark of Macromedia Inc. Illustrator and PostScript are trademarks of Adobe Systems Inc.

All other products and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.


Convertible

This drawing was created by the same artist as Sports Car. The windscreen glass on the car consists of two overlaid transparent shapes, one to give it a tint, the other to simulate the sunlight reflection (elliptical graduated white transparency). The cars uses the unique 'linked-colour' feature of CorelXARA; all shades of the main car colour are linked together, so editing the master colour will recolour the entire car including all the lighter and darker shades in one go.


Corel and Xara Online

Corel Corporation and Xara Ltd. (developer of CorelXARA) are both accessible using the Internet.

Corel Corporation

Email	custserv@corel.com

WWW	www.corel.com

Xara Ltd

Email	info@xara.com

WWW	www.xara.com


CorelXARA Examples

Below are some examples of the outstanding images that can be created with CorelXARA. To view an image, click on the name. Don't forget you can use CorelXARA Viewer to load many more example images from the CD!

Xara Watch

Cat

Lion

Leaf Girl

Ghostship

Fog

Sports Car

Convertible

Spitfly

Sports Car 2

Watch

Chess

Floating

Firestorm

Island

Balls


Demonstration Notes

These demonstrations show you more of the features available in the full CorelXARA package.

Windows 3.1 and 3.11 users: CorelXARA multimedia demonstrations require Microsoft Video for Windows to be installed. This is supplied with CorelXARA Viewer. Windows 95 and Windows NT users do not need to install Microsoft Video for Windows.

If your machine uses a screen-saver, we suggest you disable it during the demonstration (The Windows User Guide describes how to disable a screen saver). Note that you will only hear the sound track of the demonstration if your computer is fitted with a sound card.

Introductory demonstration of CorelXARA and its tools.

Demonstration of using CorelXARA to create a stunning picture.

Starting the Demonstrations

The demonstrations start when you click one of the demonstration buttons above.

Pausing playing

Click the Pause (bottom left-hand) button on the movie window. Click again to restart.

Rewinding/Advancing the demonstration

Drag the slider at the bottom of the movie window

Full screen/Normal mode

For maximum image size you can run the demonstration in full screen mode. CTRL+click on the Pause button in the movie window to enter full screen mode. Press any key to return to Normal mode.

The Demonstration menu

To display this do one of the following :

Click on the Menu button (to the right of the Pause button)

Right-click anywhere on the window.

View	Lets you select from several pre-defined window sizes.

Volume	Lets you alter the volume from external speakers connected to your computer.

Speed	Usually demonstrations are run at normal speed. You may want to slow down a demonstration to view the actions more carefully.

Copy	Copies the current demonstration to the clipboard as an AVI movie clip.

Config	Lets advanced users set the default options.

Command	For advanced users only.


Direct action tools

Once you have used our direct-action tools you will never want to revert to any other way!  Perhaps the best example of this feature is the use of the fill tool, although almost all tools offer the same advantages.

Trial and error design vs. right first time design

Traditionally to create a graduated colour fill in an object, you select the appropriate tool which brings up a dialog control box. Into this dialog you type numerous values into various fields, such as the angle of the fill and the offset of the start and end points. You may also want to select the start or end colour by bringing up yet more dialog boxes. Finally you press the OK button and wait for the screen to redraw to show the effect.  If it's not right, you go through the whole process again.

To create a graduated fill with CorelXARA, you simply select the fill tool and then just a single click-drag-release on the document creates a fill-arrow.  This single operation allows the start point, end point, extent, and direction of the fill to be specified. What's more the object is filled as you drag. There are no complex dialogs boxes or buttons. No waiting for the screen to redraw and hoping you've got it right.

To alter or edit the graduated fill simply involves clicking and dragging the ends of the fill arrow around as required. Again straightforward, simple and direct. Many other tools in CorelXARA work the same way. For example the transparency tool.  Many controls or sliders are also direct action - e.g. the transparency slider. This controls the degree of transparency from 0% (completely opaque) to 100% (completely transparent) of the current object. The program is fast enough to be able to adjust the transparency as you drag - so again you can get the exact degree of transparency you want, directly, in a single action.


Firestorm

A perfect example of the airbrush effect that can be created with the use of graduated transparency and overlaid objects. In this case elliptical transparency. Would you guess this picture was produced by a vector illustration program in less than 30 seconds ?


Floating

They don't come much simpler than this! Just five simple shapes using fractal textures and graduated transparency. the right-hand side shows the drawing in 'wire-frame' mode and shows the simplicity of the drawing.


Fog

Another fine example of the use of overlaid semi-transparent areas of colour combined with a low-density fractal to give the effect of a swirling fog


GhostShip

A superb example of the capabilities of CorelXARA. This 'Turneresque' picture involves only a few simple shapes. The key to the picture is the extensive use of transparency with multiple overlaid areas of colour combined with a subtle fractal texture. What other vector program could produce anything like this?


Infinite Undo

"The biggest problem any artist faces is going too far with experiments-

infinite undo is an invaluable feature because you can always return

to the last place that the drawing looked 'right'. About half the work

I did on this microscope was undone and then retried until I got

exactly the results I wanted."

                                                                                                            Alan Burns - Designer of the microscope graphic

The ability to undo operations is one of the great benefits of modern computer software. CorelXARA is very forgiving not only because you can undo your last action, but all your previous actions. All operations are recorded and so you can freely experiment in the sure knowledge that you can't mess things up, it won't matter. And, because it's only the action that's recorded (and the inverse undo action), this undo record doesn't require huge amounts of memory that would typically be required by painting or bitmap programs.

Skill reduction

Painting, bitmap programs, are very like traditional paint and canvas. Once you've put your paint on the canvas you cannot undo any mistakes. If you want to go back and change something usually the only way to do this is to paint over what's already there. This obviously requires a certain amount of artistic skill, not to say confidence. Computer based painting programs are sometimes better in that they may offer one level of undo, but inherently require this artistic skill since things are not editable after you have drawn your work.

By combining infinite undo with the inherent ability to edit objects after you've drawn them, CorelXARA provides a very high level of freedom and requires a lower skill level than painting programs. In addition the new features such as transparency allow the quality of work to compare with the best painting programs around.


Island

By copying objects, flipping them, and applying graduated transparency, it is very easy to create excellent reflection effects.


Key points

CorelXARA adds new and unique features to those typically found in a top quality object-oriented drawing and illustration program - features such as real time on screen anti-aliasing and flexible transparency control, as described below. It also offers the fastest redraw speed around and great accuracy. But more than this, our aim has been to create a new class of graphics program by adding many of the capabilities which are usually only found in photo retouching programs. As a result CorelXARA can produce images combining vector drawings and bitmaps of a quality that have not been seen before.

Speed & Performance

Anti-aliasing

Transparency

32-bit program

Zero memory blends

Direct action tools

Accuracy and precision

Infinite undo

Compatibility

Linked colours

Bitmap support

Bitmap textures

Text

Multimedia & Web page design

Smooth graduated fills

Other utilities included

What's in the Box?

System requirements

To see what you can produce with CorelXARA, visit the CorelXARA Gallery


Leaf Girl

This drawing makes extensive use of two key CorelXARA features - transparency and texture fills. The outline of the girl on the beach was drawn by hand. This was filled with one of the repeating leaf textures supplied with CorelXARA. The shadow and white highlights use transparency. The Sky is a fractal fill. The ground is stone texture recoloured to a sandy colour. Both use transparency to fade into the distance.


Linked colours

CorelXARA colours can be dynamically linked to the hue of other colours. By drawing using 'Shades', darker or lighter variants of a colour, you can radically alter the appearance of the entire image by simply editing one colour. This simple yet powerful feature lets you instantly adjust the colours in your drawings at any time (perhaps my car would look better blue?)

Linked colours allow you to quickly and easily make changes to drawings so they match existing colour schemes or you can just use them to experiment.


Lion

A very simple outline was filled with the three colours. The wavy effect is a very simple overlaid grey shape with fractal transparency.


Multimedia and the Web
Multimedia and Web page design

CorelXARA has the best on-screen quality of any drawing program. This is great for producing "normal" graphics designed to be printed because it gives a more realistic on-screen representation of what a high quality print will look like - it's more' WYSIWYG.

But this on-screen quality means the program is particularly suitable for any application where graphics are used on-screen. e.g. multimedia applications, computer presentations, and new Internet applications such as World Wide Web publishing. For examples of CorelXARA being used for WWW publishing, visit the Xara WWW site at http://www.xara.com/ .

Transparent and interlaced GIFs

Web publishing has two main forms of static graphic - JPEG and GIF compressed images. CorelXARA can save and load in either format. However, recently a variation of GIF format has become popular, called interlaced GIF. This allows faster progressive image loading. CorelXARA not only supports input and output in GIF but is one of the few programs around that outputs interlaced GIF format.

Transparent (masked) GIFs are another variant being used increasingly in WWW publishing.  CorelXARA also supports transparent GIF export where the background is transparent. This allows graphics to be overlaid on the background so you can "see through" the parts of the picture that are not covered by the drawing.

Compare the quality of these two exported 8-bit GIFs. The top image is typical of what most packages produce; below the equivalent image from CorelXARA.

The conclusion is that if you want to present the best image to the world, you need the best quality graphics.

_______________

See also

Anti-aliasing


Ordering CorelXARA
To find out how to order a copy of CorelXARA, contact your nearest Corel customer service point.

Corel Customer Service North America

Tel.	1-800-772-6735

Fax.	1-408-644-2000

Mailing Address

Corel c/o UCA&L

P.O. Box 3595

Salinas, CA

93912-3595

Corel Customer Service Worldwide

Call Corel toll-free on one of the following numbers :

UK	0800 581028

France	0590 6512

Austria	0660 5875

Denmark	800 18755

Germany	01308 15074

Norway	800 11 661

Sweden	020 791085

Switzerland	155 8224

Belgium	0800 1 1930

Netherlands	06 022 2084

Italy	1678 74791

Spain	900 95 3538

Ireland & other countries not listed :  353-1-706-3912 (Toll Line)

Fax.	353-1-295-7723

Mailing Address

Corel c/o UCA&L

P.O. Box 3878

Dublin 1

Ireland

Corel Corporate

Customer Service	613-728 3733 (Toll Line)

Fax	613-728-9176


Other utilities included

CorelXARA not only offers technical excellence, but also competes by being low cost, and including a huge range of valuable fonts, clipart, bitmap textures and support utility programs. Rather than supplying these as separate, standalone programs, they are integrated directly into CorelXARA, so they are available where and when you need them.

Bitmap tracer

Not only is this useful for converting bitmap scanned images, such as logos and other simple shapes, into editable outlines, but it has modes for producing almost photographic quality traced output from colour photographs.

Bitmap effects

The program includes a range of image processing facilities so you can alter the brightness, contrast, or blur or sharpen bitmaps etc.

Font support utility

Available from the font gallery, this enables you to see an anti-aliased preview of all fonts - those installed in the Windows system as well as uninstalled fonts available from the huge range we include on the CD. It also includes simple one-click font installation and de-installation of fonts.

As with the clipart and fill galleries, items can be dragged from the font gallery. So for example you see a font you fancy in the gallery and want to use it on some text it is simply a matter of dragging the font from the gallery onto the text on the page. No pop-up menus - you don't even need to know the font's name. (This will automatically install the font if you happen to try this with a non-installed font.)

Other galleries

CorelXARA includes clipart and fill texture galleries. These present small thumbnail representations of the clipart and bitmap fill textures. The clipart is all categorised and searchable by keyword. It's possible to use the gallery system to build your own libraries of picture files.


Smooth graduated fills

Because CorelXARA uses its own unique graphics engines it does not have to simulate graduated fills unlike other traditional drawing programs. They do this by splitting the shape up into bands or strips, and drawing each of these individually as a slightly different colour.  The bottom line is that each shape has to be drawn from dozens of sub-shapes, not only slowing the program down enormously, but giving a striped appearance to all graduated fills.

With some programs, you can choose how many bands the program splits each graduated shade into. The choice is simple: you can make the graphics looks better by having more bands at the cost of a considerable slow down. Or you can make the program go faster by reducing the screen quality.

CorelXARA has no such compromises. By using its own rendering engine it can not only draw the graduated shade in one go, meaning fewer polygons to draw, but it also means that you get perfectly smooth graduations all the time.  A huge gain in both speed and quality.

Smooth dithering

In addition CorelXARA uses a special dithering system to provide super-smooth graduated fills and a huge range of colours. This is particularly useful in 8-bit, 256 colour screen modes. Dithering in 8-bit modes includes a special greyscale system that provides 256 shades of grey in addition to a full spectrum of colours using only 256 colours!

CorelXARA also uses dithering for 16-bit screen modes giving improved screen display with less banding on graduated fills.

Note the illustrations show exactly what you see in a 256-colour screen mode.


Speed & Performance

Graphics quality

Not surprisingly, the quality of graphics is usually dictated by the amount of time spent working on a particular image. Therefore speed does not just make a more productive program, but allows the user to create higher quality graphics in a shorter time. This is as true for simple knock-together graphics as it is for complex professional illustrations.

"Creating an illustration as complex and detailed as the gold-watch would not be something I could even contemplate using a traditional drawing program"

Alan Burns - designer of the watch graphic.

Speed & Performance

Graphics programs are one of the few areas of software that are still severely computer-bound. Anyone who has ever tried creating or editing even relatively simple drawings or bitmap graphics will be aware that you can waste a lot of time just waiting for the computer to catch up with your actions - usually just waiting for the screen to redraw. By making the program (particularly screen redraw)  faster, you not only have a less frustrating time, but save time and money. As CorelXARA is faster it is more productive.

By using unique graphics engine technology, designing the program for speed from the ground up, and having a 32-bit design, we can provide not just a small gain in speed, but a huge improvement in speed. We can typically display complex graphics ten times faster than other drawing packages. The timings below are from a plain 486 DX2/66 computer and demonstrate that this performance is achievable on "standard" PCs.

A standard test for any graphics program is the Corel "Snowbarn" picture. This is a complex file containing not only a great deal of detail, but also a large number of graduated fills, blends and shading. On a two year old Dell 486 DX2/66 with a standard graphics card, rendering the Snowbarn takes 2 seconds in a SVGA 256 colour screen mode. On the same machine other drawing packages tested take around 20 seconds and often much more.

Performance Comparisons

Where these programs can control the number of steps in each graduated fill we have reduced the number of steps to sixteen per fill in order for the tests to be fair. In some cases programs default to a higher number of steps, but are usually slower. CorelXARA always renders smooth, step-less graduated fills!


Spitfly

A great drawing using a number of unique CorelXARA features. Transparency is used for the cockpit and propeller effect, but also some of the more subtle highlights and shading is done with overlaid transparency. The ground is covered by a single rectangle containing a low-density transparent fractal fill to simulate the clouds. In CorelXARA the transparency of a shape is altered by a single slider control. Altering this for the sky can interactively adjust the density of the clouds and so make the ground fade in and out as you desire.


Sports Car 1

One of the classic CorelXARA drawings, using many different effects. Note the semi-transparent shadow under the car. The sky is a fractal texture and the road is one of the stone textures from the full CorelXARA package. Both use transparency to fade to white in the centre to give the effect of going off into the distance.


Sports Car 2

A drawing which makes full use of blends and transparency to provide highlights, shadows, and realistic windows. Note the reflective highlights on the bonnet and windows, achieved with several layers of transparent fractal-filled shapes. All colours on the car are linked to the base red, so that the paintwork can be changed to a different colour at a moments notice.


System requirements

CorelXARA ships as a single version (on CD-ROM only).

Minimum system requirements include:

486 or Pentium processor

8Mbytes of RAM

8Mbytes of hard disc space

Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51.

CD-ROM drive

VGA card and monitor

mouse or tablet

 A sound-card and speakers are optional for the on-line demonstrations that are included on the CD.

The package includes Win32s so that the program functions perfectly well under Windows 3.1 and 3.11. It runs native on Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.51. (Intel x86 Windows NT only).

As with all graphics programs, the more memory you have the better. However the sheer speed of CorelXARA does compensate to a great degree. For example, CorelXARA on a 25MHz 486SX is faster than other drawing programs on a 120MHz Pentium.

Because of the special dithering and smooth graduated fills CorelXARA does not require very high powered graphics cards. It's able to produce near 24-bit quality in 8-bit screen modes and perfect 24-bit quality in 15-bit and 16-bit (32K and 64K colours) screen modes.

Because CorelXARA uses the OS blit function it does prefer to have local bus graphics cards as this operation is usually significantly faster on this type of graphics adapter.


Text

CorelXARA is not a DTP program and does not pretend to be suited for producing complex page layouts incorporating columns of text - it is primarily a graphics creation tool. However we realise that text has a very significant role to play in many graphic situations, for things such as headings, annotations and so forth.

CorelXARA supports a wide range of text handling abilities including fitting and editing text on a curve, kerning and tracking. It supports TrueType  and Type 1  fonts and over 500 fonts in each format are included on the CD.

It is even possible to fit some text to a curve, rotate this and then apply a texture fill to the inside of this text and still edit it, as text. If you want to edit the actual outlines of the characters then this is also possible.

The effect of anti-aliasing: left without anti-aliasing, right with

Anti-aliased text

Like all objects in CorelXARA text is anti-aliased. This is particularly beneficial for small point sizes, rotated or italic text.

Compare the screen quality and legibility of normal text as it might appear in other programs (left) and anti-aliased text as it appears in CorelXARA. (Both examples in 8pt.)


Transparency

The ability to create objects or bitmaps with varying levels of transparency is an incredibly powerful feature. Some recent photo retouching programs have had the ability to support semi-transparent overlays. However, CorelXARA is the first object-oriented program to allow all objects, polygons, text and bitmaps to have any degree of transparency and even graduated transparency. The uses of transparency go beyond the obvious ones such as simulating glass. In fact the uses of transparency are almost endless.

Soft Shadows

The difference between simple "flat" artwork and illustrations that have depth and much more realism is often only a matter of a few well-placed shadows and highlights. Look at any real-world picture and you will see shadows everywhere - and nearly all shadows simply consist of areas that are slightly darker or less colourful.

In CorelXARA you just draw a shape around where you want the transparency to occur. Give this a black or dark grey colour and then make this object semi-transparent or, more usefully, a graduated transparency so the shadow fades. This object now becomes a "floating shadow" and because of the inherent object-oriented nature of CorelXARA, you can move, edit, resize or recolour this object at any time.

Notice how much more realistic the semi-transparent shadow on the left looks compared to the solid shadow on the right.

A drop-shadow such as this takes only a couple of seconds to produce, but compare the difference between a traditional non-transparent shadow and a transparent one.

Transparency brings greater freedom, greater levels of realism and greater simplicity.

Highlights and reflections

Like shadows, highlights and reflections can be created by overlaying semi-transparent areas of colour, usually white.

This drawing shows various uses of transparency - the windscreen, the sunlight reflection on the windscreen, the shadow under the car, the reflections in the car's panel work, even the sky and road use transparency to fade into the distance.

Photographic compositions

Because bitmaps are treated like all other objects in CorelXARA these can be made to be semi-transparent . Here an elliptical transparency is used to overlay the wine glass on a background of films.


Watch

A few well placed transparency highlights and the perfect use of one of the more subtle texture fills (supplied with the full CorelXARA package) for the Watch face really improve the quality of this drawing.


What's in the box?

CorelXARA would be excellent value for money just for the program on its own, but when you consider the technical benefits, the speed and performance and the utilities and other data, it offers unbeatable value for money.

The fastest graphics program around

Over 10,000 clipart and example files

Clipart and picture file managing utility and viewer

250 high quality scanned natural textures

Over 500 fonts in both TrueType and Type 1 format

Font-managing utility (preview, install and de-install)

Integrated bitmap tracer utility

Integrated bitmap effects and image processing utility

500 page full-colour manual including thumbnails of clipart, textures, photos, etc.

Fully illustrated on-line documentation including dozens of live multimedia demonstrations

For details on purchasing CorelXARA, see Ordering.


Xara Ltd

Gaddesden Place is the home of Xara Ltd

Xara Ltd is the developer of CorelXARA and a Corel Reseller

Xara is a new company set up by Computer Concepts Ltd. to develop CorelXARA (originally known as Xara Studio). Computer Concepts have been developing mainstream application software since 1981. CC was one of the pioneer microcomputer software houses of the early eighties in the UK developing applications such as the Wordwise word processor which sold a quarter of a million copies.

With nearly 15 years of development experience, the last six of which have been developing 32-bit windowing based applications for RISC based computers, this has given us an unrivalled experience of developing microcomputer application software. This experience predates the arrival of 32-bit Windows based environments by many years.

The recent arrival of 32-bit Windows programming environments (Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows 3.1 with Win32s) has meant we can now exploit that experience in the wider PC and Windows market, rather than the more niche markets we occupied before.

The CorelXARA project was started at the beginning of 1993 and currently involves 22 programmers based at our headquarters, Gaddesden Place (pictured above).

Xara Ltd have a strong presence on the Internet (see Corel and Xara On-line) and provide a support and feedback service via http://www.xara.com/ .

     	Xara Ltd

Gaddesden Place

Hemel Hempstead

Hertfordshire HP2 6EX

United Kingdom

Tel:	01442 350000

outside UK +44  1442  350000

Fax:	01442  350010

outside UK +44  1442  350010

Email	info@xara.com

WWW	www.xara.com


Xara Watch

The watch graphic is a very good example of the high quality, detailed, realistic images that can be created with CorelXARA. Extensive use of transparency for the metallic highlights, soft shadows under the watch. It is also used very effectively at the ends of the straps so that it fades into the background. This effect would be near impossible in any other drawing package.

Being a vector based object oriented illustration program allows an almost infinite level of detail to be put into illustrations. Unlike painting programs this means you can zoom in, scale and rotate the drawing with no loss of detail or pixelation. The enlarged view of the watch face illustrates this - and you could zoom in a lot further. Anti-aliasing ensures a smooth, realistic look at all times.


Zero memory blends

The ability to "morph" or blend one shape into another is one of the most powerful features of any drawing or illustration program. CorelXARA goes further than most programs by not only allowing "dialog free" blending (see Direct action tools) but doing it near instantaneously. The process couldn't be simpler - you just drag from the first object to the second object and CorelXARA will immediately calculate a series of intermediate steps. This technique is ideal for creating highlights or regular repeating patterns etc.

The zero memory aspect comes because CorelXARA is able to calculate all the intermediate steps on the fly and does not store the intermediate steps in memory. So, unusually, no matter how many steps you create it requires no more memory and your file size does not increase.

Blends can be used for all sorts of effects, such as the multi-stage blends used to create the droplets on this apple image.

This example is simply a blend between a random shape and a star. Note how the graduated fill on the shape is blended to the 'flat' yellow on the star