Customer Reviews

Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful book - easy to ready, humorous, very understandable and with great detail. As a novice in the field I appreciated being able to understand everything. The book is also great for advanced design professionals.

It's a great guide for a fabulous design tool.

Length:: 1:02 Mins

The best way to explain the approach I used to write this book is with a little animation. I promise that the book has the same energy, pace, and sense of wonder. It just don't move around quite as much...

Gary Bouton has at least two great strengths, he is a graphics genius and he can explain how it is done in terms that anybody can understand (I know because I'm definitely in the bottom end of the "anybody" category when it comes to graphics ability). Gary has used these strengths, in addition to his 30 years as a very talented graphics artist, to create Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide. He has written a book that is as comprehensive in its coverage of Xara as it is well organized and easy to use; a book full of detailed explanations, step-by-step instructions, and notes, yet it is attractively laid out with a large number of gorgeous illustrations that show you how a graphics element is created. Gary not only shows you how to get the most out of Xara, he also helps you become a much better graphic artist.

To paraphrase Charles Moir, the principle designer of Xara and the company's founder and CEO, Xara Xtreme is the Swiss Army knife for graphics document creation, providing a single application that fuses the best of vector graphics, photo editing, website building, animation, and document layout. With such power and versatility in a program, you would think explaining how to use it would be complex and difficult to get across. Gary, though, has made it clear and easy to understand, as well as fast paced, not getting bogged down in the minutia while providing all the explanation you need. At the same time, the book is also interesting and even fun to read and use.

If you haven't tried Xara, I recommend that you download the free trial version, and then get Gary's book to see what great graphics and document pages you can easily create. You will be very impressed with both the product and the book, but more importantly, you will be even more impressed with what you can create with this combination.

Marty Matthews

My general attitude towards computing books is that they are too expensive but fill a void created by unscrupulous software developers too idle to produce intuitive software with a decent Help System and manual. Not so Xara! I've been using the package for about 8 years now, as a scientist with a passion for graphic design, not as a professional. It has always beeen super-fast, well-priced (if not downright cheap), unique in allowing design with bitmaps and/or vectors and is brilliantly functional with a good Help System and hard copy manual. I used to use Illustrator, but that was relegated to file conversion years ago. Now, to the book!

With Xara Xtreme Pro 5, Xara has so much added functionality - fully integrated Web site design and development, 3-d ability etc. etc., with no compromise in speed or price, that it is hard to imagine anyone having the time to learn to use all its power properly, least of all amateurs like me. Not any more! Gary Boulton's book is the best software support guide I have ever seen. With humour, intelligence, and a great deal of skill, he guides you through every aspect of using Xara Xtreme, ranging from invaluable insights into professional graphic design to personal interface tweaks that make the system work the way you want it to. Suddenly, I realised that I've needed this book for years! The designs I've done with Xara over that time would have been immeasurably easier, and so much more professional.

This is a great book; informative, entertaining, and beautifully produced - a perfect marriage with the best graphic design software on the market. Buy them both - together they are less than half the price of the inferior leading software competitor!

Xara Xtreme 5, especially in its Pro version, is one of those wonderful applications that takes minutes to learn and forever to master.

Xara is a vector drawing program and competes in the same space as Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. Xara has been an innovator in the field and is the preferred tool of many professional illustrators - and a lot of amateurs like me.

Xara Xtreme can be used for many, many purposes. It has excellent bitmap handling capabilities, can be used to create full-fledged web pages, animated GIFs, text effects and much more.

Xara has always been big on support, providing manuals (usually in PDF form), tutorials, teaching movies and with the help of a large, very supported and often extremely talented user community.

The Xara Xtreme manual has 450 pages and is pretty much like most manuals in that it explains each function and feature in detail. What Gary Bouton does is to demonstrate how to meld various Xtreme features into real-life projects so the user can really grasp the techniques of using the program and its power.

Bouton pulls it off marvelously well. It helps to have some basic familiarity with Xtreme. Lessons are downloadable from the web and each one is complete. None of them are extraordinarily complex and all of them teach you facets of Xteme. The first few chapters sort of deal with the basics of Xtreme; sort of in the sense that it is the basics on steroids. Lots of little tricks and tips that go beyond Xara's manual. This is real-life Xara Xtreme From Chapter 5 onward, Bouton moves into specific aspects of Xtreme, such as blends, contours and moulds; creating photorealistic effects, logos and typography, web animations, building interactive web pages, changing and creating photographic elements and tracing bitmaps. All in all, this is one of those relatively rare teaching books that is a lot of fun to learn from. All of the examples are fresh and original. Bouton's writing style is crystal clear.

If you use Xara Xtreme or are thinking about it, get this book. It is a delight and you'll learn a lot.

Jerry

This is a very well written book with tutorials that broaden the reader/user's horizons on methodologies on how to use Xara Xtreme in artful ways they may not have thought of.

The author uses wit and humour to keep the book interesting every page and gives numerous practical examples of the strength and power of Xtreme.

In my opinion, this is a must have for any serious user of Xara Xtreme 5/5 Pro.

KarateEd......:-)

I just finished my first reading. Although I had some familiarity (I thought) with Xara Xtreme 5 prior to obtaining Gary's book I've been captivated by all the capacities which had escaped my attention. With "The Official Guide" you be introduced to setting up Xara Xtreme 5 and gain a familiarity with all the tools available, perfect for beginners. Then less obvious techniques of using those tools is presented as well while we're shepherded through creating a workflow. With my level of familiarity with Xara those were the tips which I found immediately valuable. Those less obvious tool use tips were followed by exercises which allowed even a beginner to experience techniques which a real expert would use.

The whole of these lessons of were presented with such clarity that I followed along without even thinking about just how sophisticated the levels of instruction actually were. Take Gary's excellent use of the English language, add a solid dash of humor, leaven with hundreds of screen shots and graphic examples and you have the recipe of one of the best software manuals I've ever read. Both Xara Xtreme 5 and "The Official Guide" are six star items and my enthusiasm has to be dampened to fit in a five star rating format.

I've been a fan of Gary's wit and wisdom for decades. After just finishing his book, Photoshop CS4 QuickSteps, I was excited to get involved with this program. His new guide to Xara Xtreme 5 continues to blow me away every time I pick it up. He makes learning this application not only easy, but eXtremely fun with his detailed illustrations.

Whether you're a novice or power user, you're bound to gain informative and useful insight into the depth of the program. It's definitely worth it's weight in paper and worth every moment of your time.

The Official Guide to Xara Xtreme 5 is a great learning resource for a new user of Xtreme and a great reference for an experienced user.

Whether you are an experienced user of raster (bitmap) graphics applications, other vector applications, or a total novice; this book will make learning Xtreme exceptionally easy.

For nearly 10 years I have used Xtreme or one of it's predecessors. I highly recommend Gary Bouton's book for getting to know the ins and outs of Xtreme quickly and enjoying every moment.

A little about me: I'm experienced in other forms of computer-generated graphics, but vector formats are still fairly new to me. I've been an off-and-on Xara Xtreme (XX) user since version 4, and a user of Xara Web Designer since it was first released. I mention that latter title because the two have been merged into what is now released as Xara Xtreme 5.

There is a plethora of tutorials out there for XX, as well as a thriving on-line community. Still, given my experience looking through all that material, I've suffered from the kid-in-a-candy-store syndrome: all that "stuff" is great but it lacks focus. Where to start? What's a good workflow? Where's Waldo?

Enter Gary's book. He starts you out with a brief discussion of vector graphics in general: what are they? Why are they useful? Who cares? He then leads you by the hand on a guided tour of the XX interface, and quickly assigns you some simple but illustrative hands-on examples to showcase a few of XX's great features. From there he works you through some not-so-trivial exercises to show you how the basic building blocks are created, and from there it's fasten your seatbelt time! In less time than you might think possible he'll have you exercising these building blocks to create effects that I never knew you could accomplish in a vector-based form. His approach isn't scatter-shot--far from it. He takes you on a task-oriented workflow from concept, through application of tools, to final product in a way that's both thorough and easy to understand and follow.

Here's a personal recommendation: when you're doing the invisible ghost exercise (one of the first in the book), break from the script. Unlock the layer holding the room itself, and pick apart the image. You may not immediately realize it's a vector image built in XX itself, and the way Gary combines shapes (including some 3D extrusions) to form the final composition was, to me, as impressive a learning tool about what you can do in this medium as anything I could think of.

Gary is well-versed in this material, having been an XX power user since before it was called that, and his in-depth knowledge shows--as does his wit and humor. This book is far from a dry laundry list of click-this-and-drag-that, and the narrative is further spiced with outstanding full-color (if you get the print version) illustrations clearly showing you what's what.

If you're in my situation, an XX newbie somewhat overwhelmed by the task of navigating a path towards being an effective user, you really, really need this book! Even if you're already an accomplished XX wizard I predict you'll find his take on its uses and powers a compelling read.