Review: Magix Page & Layout Designer includes advanced tools for beginner users

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Printed media may seem to be heading the way of the dinosaur, but until the proverbial meteor hits a stack of business cards, box of letterhead, or freshly-printed brochures on their way to a conference, we'll continue adding paper and ink (and the odd PDF) to our marketing cache.

MAGIX Page & Layout Designer ($150)  anticipates the needs of a growing business by providing a single source for designing anything from a single logo to business cards to a multi-page brochure. However, if you are a Xara Photo & Graphic Designer ($89) fan, you will recognize the UI instantly, and may be left feeling ripped off. It's so hard to find a difference between the two apps, it seems that MAGIX has repackaged Xara with added templates and an inflated pricetag (although Page & Layout Designer is currently on sale for $90).

About a dozen template themes are included in the MAGIX Page & Layout Designer download (you can't access or view them all in the trial). Choose a theme that suits your business, then open business card, brochure, and letterhead templates that all match the theme and are fully customizable with your own logo, text, images, etc. There are about 100 templates in total. All are royalty-free, and many verge on stylish, but organization isn't great. It can be hard to find the matching brochure to your business card design.

MAGIX Page & Layout Designer's slide-out bitmap gallery could mean you never need to hunt and gather on the server for your company's logo again.

Customizing the templates is pretty easy with MAGIX Page & Layout Designer, even if you don't have any design training or experience. For example, a snap function helps you align objects, text is set to automatically flow around your images, and you can chose to work without or without layers.

If you do have prior experience, setting up a page from scratch also is simple and intuitive. Plus, you can easily use MAGIX Page & Layout Designer to create logos and other vector drawings without too much difficulty; and use the photo tools to adjust and manipulate your images. Refer to the Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 2013 review for more detail on how drawing and image editing tools work, since these are identical.

Currently, Magix Photo Manager MX Deluxe ($59) is included in the Page & Layout Designer download for free, and also includes some additional basic photo manipulation tools as well as the ability to organize your images. On the surface, this looks like a great deal. However, you may not need Photo Manager at all, as MAGIX Page & Layout Designer includes a slide-out bitmap gallery. With it, you can save and access all of your logos, logotypes, images etc. for any of your projects. However, I wish it were easier to organize things, and would love to be able to add text boxes (so you never again have to cut and paste your mission statement and other often-used blocks of text).

It seems like MAGIX is trying to reach a new audience with Page & Layout Designer, with no mention of its powerful vector drawing tools and super-easy photo editing in their marketing of the product. But the non-sale pricetag is steep unless you were actually considering also purchasing the bundled Photo Manager MX Deluxe. If you already own Xara Photo & Graphic Designer (or Xara Designer Pro, the $299 heavy-lifter in the family) you are going to be an unhappy T-Rex who'll want to eat MAGIX for lunch.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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Learn Photoshop now - beginning Photoshop tricks

Selection of the colors in a picture turn quickly to any color in the color of foreground press I to activate the eyedropper tool and then click any color in your image. To change the background color of this color, press the ALT key and click on any color of your image.

Change the brush tip sizes quickly with a brush selected, simply press the right bracket "]" to increase the size of your brush, or press the left bracket "[" to reduce the size of your brush. "]"

The tool move and the arrow keys Getting used to activate the tool move through the keyboard is a gain of time. You can do this by using the shortcut, "V". Once you have the tool move enabled, you can use the keys on the keyboard to push a layer or selection in increments of 1 pixel. You can speed up things by pressing the SHIFT key with the key to reposition in 10 increments of pixels.

Hide your Palettes press Tab once to hide all your palettes. Press Tab again to bring them back. Press Shift Tab to hide all your palettes except the toolbar.

Zoom In & Zoom Out you can zoom in on your image by pressing CTRL and the sign more "" (Mac: command and the "" sign). Conversely you can zoom out by pressing CTRL and the sign less "-" (Mac: command and the "-" sign).

Navigating in magnified Images If you have lost your bearings when the zoom in on a large image, you can move quickly to specific views by using the following shortcuts: to define the point of view on the upper left corner of your image the key press. Press the end key to set the point of view on the bottom right of your image. To get full screen from the point of view press the key next Page. Press CTRL Page Down (Mac: command Page Down) to move the screen display a full screen to the right. Press CTRL Page Up (Mac: command Page Up) to move the screen display a full screen to the left.

Select only the Pixels on a layer is an easy way to select an object that is on a transparent layer to press the command key (PC: control key) and click on the layer with the object in the pallet layers. This ensures that only the opaque pixels (pixels are visible) will be selected with ants marching, instead of the whole layer.

Images of tile for better visibility when you simultaneously a bunch of files open in Photoshop, they cascade automatically, and it may be difficult to select individual windows in all the files overlap. To eliminate this problem, choose window > arrange > tile and all your open files will be rearrange themselves to be visible at a time. When you are ready to close the Windows that you do not have to spend time closing individually, use instead the shortcut to close all control Option W (Mac: command Alt W).

Get rid of the Welcome screen - and bringing this back when you open Photoshop CS you probably see a welcome screen with links to tutorials, tips & tricks and a set of color management help files. At a given time, you can stop this screen to come. You should see a check box at the bottom of the screen that you can click to hide the screen at startup. Later if you change your mind and decide that you want to appear once more, you can temporarily bring the screen by clicking on the Help menu and select the Welcome screen.

Cycle through all of your Open Documents sometimes you will want to find one of your open documents which is hidden, but navigate using only the menu window does help because you can not remember the name of the file. Instead press tab several times (MAC and PC) control scrolls in all your open documents.

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11 Things Every Beginner Needs to Learn to Love Illustrator

People often find Illustrator daunting because it works a little differently from other applications. Some aren’t quite sure what it does and others have tried it and been confused by it. Adobe Certified Instructor Russell Viers believes that Illustrator doesn’t have to be scary; in fact, it can be fun. In this workshop Russell distills his vast knowledge of Illustrator into 11 simple things that open up a whole world of possibilities. Before you know it you’ll be playing around with art and logos and creating intricate designs by combining paths with the Pathfinder. The universe of Illustrator awaits you.

Illustrator, Russel Viers, Video2Brain

This entry was posted on April 5, 2011, 2:48 pm and is filed under Illustrator. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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