MAGIX Xtreme Photo & Graphic Designer 2.0

MAGIX Xtreme Foto & Grafik Designer 2.0 is a very conventional painting or photo software, by comparison, works with the individual pixels that make up photos and painted images.They're two very different ways of working but Magix (particularly Xara, the company Magix bought last year), here attempts to handle both in one program. There are actually three applications in this collection: Xtreme Graphic Designer 2, Xtreme Photo Designer 7 and a special edition (meaning more basic) version of Facefilter Studio 2. Xtreme Graphic Designer 2 is a close relation of Xara Xtreme 4, which has acquired a strong reputation for everything from photo editing to website design. The key feature separating Xtreme Graphic Designer 2 from other vector programs is its speed. Where other programs use before and after previews of images to show the effects of changes, in most places the Magix software does the same things in real time. For example, if you stretch the frame of a graphic around which text is wrapped, most programs will redraw the image when you release the mouse on the frame. Here the text rewraps itself as the graphics frame is moving. Among new features is the ability to create and edit 3D objects. Although so far there’s only extrusion: you can’t create volumes of revolution as you would on a real lathe, the 3D objects generated are automatically lit from up to three different light sources. And of course all changes including lighting happen in real time.