Performance

We found that loading in raw images as thumbnails seems to take an age with Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11. The images we tested were uncompressed TIFF files and took several minutes to load in 12Gb of images.

Sadly, due to the program not exclusively being for photographers, there's no batch processing for raw to JPEG. We did find that making adjustments that we then decided against took a while to revert back to their original state. Much longer than making the initial change.

Conclusion

The problem we had with version 9 and which is still an issue now with Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11 is the lack of simple instructions for newcomers to the program. Simple tasks such as looking at the layers you've created or the edit history – that are simple processes or done for you in other programs – are difficult to find with no direction on how to locate them (Layers are in the Page & Layer Gallery on the right side of the window and we couldn't find a History tab anywhere).

The Help section tells you what you can do but not how to do it. The Xara website shows some features working and what you can accomplish but not which buttons to press to do it yourself. It leads to a lot of playing around, hitting dead ends and trying again. Logically, this means you get to learn the system and what everything can do as you explore. Realistically, people simply aren't like that. We don't have time these days for a program that won't allow us to edit without thinking too much.

The features on Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11 are plenty and very powerful. They work well and will provide ample help for small businesses. However, Xara could do with addressing the lack of instruction and help available to first time users. Previous owners will likely have no problem at all, but newbies may run into difficulty.

Small businesses will find a program such as Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11 very useful. It will help create stationery, one off gifts and allow you to take more creative control over the end products that you're dishing out to clients.

Ratings (out of 5)
Features	4
Ease-of-use	3
Value for money	3.5

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