Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide

Book excerpt: Master the world's fastest drawing program! Learn the principles of vector drawing as you learn technique, composition, and other art essentials--then apply your skills to creating websites, animations, logos, photographic retouches, and more. Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide shows you how to customize the software, use QuickShapes, draw vector paths, use fills for photorealistic effects, and compose professional desktop publishing documents. This hands-on resource brings you from concept to completion with examples that span a range of art styles--using the vector drawing program that thinks it's a bitmap editor. With these tutorials that apply to Xara Xtreme, Xtreme Pro, and Magix Xtreme Photo & Graphic Designer, you'll: Work with vector paths that look like paint strokes Tag colors to dramatically change complex drawings in seconds Build multi-page, graphically rich websites in a few hours Convert bitmap web graphics to resizable vector shapes Design artwork in minutes that looks like it took days Create and export original Flash animations for the web in no time Create 3D text and apply special effects to imported photos and vector shapes Invisibly retouch photographs with feathering, fractal fills, multi-step gradients, and transparencies Inside you'll find an inspirational Xara GrandMasters Gallery of award-winning artwork from around the world. Get started today by downloading free trial software from www.xara.com! Download lesson files from www.mhprofessional.com/computingdownload and www.theboutons.com. Gary David Bouton, an international award-winning illustrator, has authored 25 books on graphics software, including CorelDRAW X4: The Official Guide. He practices what he teaches: his work can be seen on Graphics.com, TalkGraphics, The CG Society, and YouTube.