Plus I’d already done similar illustration work in Canvas using vectors and bitmaps so I knew what overall techniques to use. I was inspired to create this type of eye-catching scene by the actual views I see during my commute home in the evenings here in LA.

The subject of the illustration would be the sun setting behind a mountain range with clouds, glowing sky and, in the foreground, a scenic photographic image.

Sure, people do this type of thing in Word all day long in every office in the world, but my aim was a bit higher than slapping clip art on the page… My first self-assigned ambitious task (I say “ambitious” because I didn’t yet know where any tool or function was in Designer Pro X365) was to create an illustration combining both vector objects and an image, plus text. I can drag items from the Mac side to Windows and save my Xara documents directly to the Mac.Įven given the age of this laptop, Designer Pro X365 had no problems at all running and performing its various tasks. As I write I am using a 2010 MacBook Pro (upgraded to SSD) with dual monitors, and have Windows 10 up on the external monitor and OS X on the built in display (shown above). So I installed Designer Pro X365 on both of these systems, which was easy enough (you download the software and register with the provided license number). So how would Designer Pro X365 compare? It remains one of only a handful of graphics apps that allow you to directly work with image and vector objects at the same time in the same document, as opposed to launching separate, dedicated apps for each function and combining the results in yet another.ĭespite my preference for the Mac operating system, I have the capability of running Windows 10, both natively on a home-built PC and as a VM on my actual Mac. Photoshop is obviously a monster at image editing, and Canvas was one of the first DTP apps to combine image editing, illustration and page layout in a single environment. So I can’t help but view Designer Pro X365 from the perspective of my existing image editing and graphic design experience using these other titles as my main design apps. Outside of the Xara world, I have been a Photoshop user since 1992 and a big fan of ACDSee (formerly Deneba) Canvas since 1996.

Xara designer pro mac