Yep, you’re at the right place to download the tutorial files for the Xara Xtreme 5 Official Guide! Files are also available at www.mhprofessional.com/computingdownload.

You have it both ways as downloads go: get all the chapter tutorial files in one fell swoop (18MB download) All Xara Xtreme Official Guide Example Files.zip, or download ‘em as you work your way through the Official Guide book.

The Bonus Chapter-and the Bonus Chapter tutorial files- for “Photographic Retouching” can be snagged here.

The Bonus Chapter is in PDF format—get the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader if necessary. And get the tutorial files. We’re pretty sure after working your way through the bonus chapter, you’ll want to buy the whole book! Mostly because the book isn’t sold by the page…

Removed the Bottle in the Bonus Chapter now?

If you'd like to try your sleight of hand again with photo retouching in Xara Xtreme, here's another assignment. Use the same techniques as you did with the bonus Chapter and the tangerine scene. A classic 1958 Cadi' really shouldn't be penned in like this! Bouton's solution is provided on a locked hidden layer in the XAR file.

Holiday Strokes for Xara Folks

Xaraists don’t buy retail Christmas cards: we make our own!

Here’s a little starter kit I’d like to offer our community: there are 5 or 6 custom strokes in this Christmas ornaments.xar file, all based on the holiday in theme, as you’ll see below.

If you’re new to Xara Xtreme, I do cover how to build and use Custom Brush Strokes in Chapter 3 in The Official Guide, but here’s a recap anyhow:

Custom Strokes are local to a file, so you can only use these strokes if you work in this file, or copy, then save a stroke you’ve used to a new document.

1. You open the Line Gallery (or use the Infobar’s drop-down list when the Freehand & Brush tool is active)

2. Choose the stroke you want from the New Brush Strokes folder. Try double-clicking a thumbnail in the Line Gallery folder.

3. Set a width for the stroke from the Line Gallery or the Standard Bar.

4. And then stroke away.

You can also apply a custom stroke to an existing open or closed path by selecting the path, and then double-clicking on the desired stroke in the folder.

The Xara file is 5MB (sorry) because I used mostly bitmaps instead of pure vector shapes to make the tiny French horns and gingerbread men. However, the source files (you can find them in the Bitmap Gallery) were designed to 300 pixels/inch resolution, which means they can be used—almost every element—at a full inch in height for printing out a Christmas card with these as borders or incidental ornaments.

And they’ll print just fine to your home inkjet, and even to a commercial press.

Xara Christmas Brushes

Enjoy!

Free Typefaces and Seamless Textures

Gary originally created a lot of fonts and textures that seamlessly repeat for his own work. but he's done now, and you can have them. The textures are particularly nice to work with Chapter 5 in Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide, and the Desktop Publishing chapter? You always need more fonts!

Oh, What A Tangled Web!

Chapter 11 is devoted to showing the steps to make a content-rich Website using Xtreme 5. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to post a site exactly like the one that Bang Shang A Lang graciously allowed us to build for them.

Click here to check out the band, and some of the power of Xara Xtreme 5.