Magix Extreme Photo & Graphics Designer 2

When German media-software company Magix bought British graphic-design software company Xara, it improved its foothold on the imaging market. Extreme Photo & Graphic Designer 2 is the latest product from that union. While Xara (www.xara.com/uk) still brands software for the higher-end professional market, Magix has taken elements of Xara’s software and plugged it into this powerful image-editing and design program, aimed at the home user.

Features:
The software comes in two parts. The photo side of things provides everything you’d expect from a photo-editing package. One positive difference, however, is that it converts photos into its own proprietary format while you’re editing, which dramatically increases the responsiveness of the package when you’re moving large photos around. If you find your current photo software sluggish, particularly when you’re using big photos and lots of layers, this may improve matters. You can also perform standard tasks like fixing red-eye, cropping your photos and saving them into smaller files for sending over the web.

The second part of the package borrows a lot from its graphic-design heritage, letting you create logos, simple illustrations and even Flash animations.

Performance:
One of the benefits of Xara’s software has always been the speed that it works at. Thankfully, this hasn’t been lost under Magix’s ownership. The software stays nippy and, despite doubling up on features with the addition of the graphic-design element, the separation of the two keeps things from getting too bloated.

Ease of use:
the photo-editing nor the graphic-design software is the kind of thing you’d expect to sit down and start using straightaway. Learning how it operates is likely to take a bit of time. Once you’ve grasped the basics, however, you should get going fairly quickly, but there are more user-friendly options available elsewhere.

Value for money:
If you’re looking for photo and graphic software in one box, then this is great value for money. The software is powerful and has far more features than we have room to go into here. It’s worth noting, however, that there are some excellent image-editing and organising packages available that are easier to use and free, if the graphic-design element is not so important to you. Having said that, if you’re even thinking of dipping a toe into this kind of thing, this software is excellent for the price.