Xara Xtreme

Has anybody bought this / used it, seems reasonable value at about £45....

Yeah I've used it. Nice program.

Have hardly touched the surface, but created some flash animations for webpages.
Only problem is that they have 'simplified' it by not having a timeline, so if you get it wrong you have to go back to the begining and start again.
http://www.xara.com/uk/products/xtreme/tutorials-demos/

I own the extreme edition and i am very satisfied with it. It's even useful when it comes to texture creation and interface design. A real bargain. You can download and try the demo.

Check out http://www.xaraxtreme.org

The Linux, FreeBSD and OSX version is open sourced (more or less) and available for free. I believe it lacks a couple of the features found in the Windows version, but is still a nice tool. I've used it on Linux only, and last time I checked the OSX version was a bit behind.

Recently purchased Xara Extreme 4 and am very happy with it. great value and came with Magix Photo designer ( a bitmap editor) as well.
Matthew

Xara Extreme is brilliant!

I use it for cutting up textures, modifying them, the blend modes are cool. And the vector aspect is great. It can create pdf files too. I love it :o) Well worth the cash i say.

I've tried the Pro edition too, it's great...

Although, they have a flaw in their demo version. You can use the full program indefinetly, by putting the date of your computer back. Pretty poor security :o)

Also look at this:

Ulead Photo Impact 13 Pro now comes with Real Draw, a PHENOMENAL texture creation and painting program!

Mike

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 11 is not bad.

Inkscape (opensource) combines vector editing with many picture editing tools.

My favorite is Ulead Photo Impact 8 at all. It is the perfect pixel tool (includes some plugins)!