Product Reviews

Of the 15 performance-enhancing utilities contained in the Extensis QX-Tools 2.0 suite of QuarkXPress XTensions, perhaps the most acclaimed was QX-Effects, an add-on that allowed you to create special effects with text and images in an XPress document without having to resort to a dedicated image editing program.

But while QX-Effects was a handy enough addition to the raft of labour-saving devices employed by XPress users, it was under-used and failed to compete with dedicated image editing XTensions such as ALAP's ShadowCaster, which lets you 'burn in' shadows to background TIFFs. QX-Effects, on the other hand, could only apply effects to images and text on a plain white background. Anything more complex required a trip to Adobe Photoshop.

However, despite its limitations, the range of options offered by QX-Effects showed promise. This potential has now been recognised to the extent that QX-Effects has been pulled out of the Tools suite and given a new lease of life as a program in its own right.

QX-Effects 3.0 still comprises the same four basic modules that formed the backbone of its previous incarnation. You can apply drop shadows, glows, bevels and embossed elements to your XPress documents within the application.

The major difference with version 3.0 is that the options have now been beefed up (the ability to create 3D perspective shadows has been added), and they're presented in a more user-friendly way.

Extensis makes QX-Effects easier to useby granting the XTension its own menu within XPress, and by incorporating a new Effects Guide. This device lets you see example thumbnails of the kind of effects on offer before you proceed, and marches you step by step through the manipulation process.

The upgrade addresses many of the previous version's limitations. You can now burn images directly into background text and TIFFs by selecting a text or image box in XPress and applying the effect, either on the box's contents

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or the box itself, from the QX-Effects menu. You can preview and manipulate the intensity of the effect - for example, its opacity, direction of light, and so on - from the resultant pop-up screen.

The effect can be applied on top of a background TIFF, or foreground and background items can be combined into one new image. The resulting TIFF - which can be created at any resolution and in a variety of modes (CMYK, RGB, grey-scale, or bitmap) - is stored by default in the same folder as the XPress file, and any original background TIFFs remain untouched.

With the variety of effects on offer and the product's clear emphasis on ease of use, you would be forgiven for expecting that speed would be the first thing to be sacrificed. But while the time taken to render obviously depends on the output resolution and size of the image, QX-Effects manages to manipulate the text and images surprisingly speedily - and certainly no slower than the same operations would take in Photoshop. Unfortunately, QX-Effects has enough limitations to guarantee you'll have to resort to Photoshop for more complex image editing effects. You can't, for example, burn effects into background images that aren't in TIFF format or are skewed or rotated, and the QX-Effects engine doesn't like it if you try to combine foreground EPS files and background TIFFs.

There are also potential pitfalls when it comes to colour calibration, particularly if blends are involved. The way XPress stores its colours can be different from the way they are output, and while QX-Effects makes intelligent guesses, the possibility of some minor colour shifting remains.

But these are limitations that any experienced XPress user would be prepared for and, at least QX-Effects warns you of possible problems before the program ruins the look of your final output. While the shadow casting module might not offer the same esoteric range of 'burning in' options as its rival, ShadowCaster, the latter can't compete with the additional modules that QX-Effects incorporates.

QX-Tools 3.0 offers nothing that can't be achieved with time and patience in any high-end image editing program. But by allowing effects to be previewed and burned into the background image within XPress, the program means big time savings. Users are free to experiment and can gain an immediate idea of what the final effect will look like on the page without swapping applications. With this upgrade, Extensis has managed to turn an often overlooked part of an XTension bundle into a powerful program in its own right.