Xara has released Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 365 ($69.99 release offer, $89.99 afterwards), a major update of its photo editing and desktop publishing tool.

A redesigned photo frame enables easier resizing, rotating, straightening, panning and clipping an image, just by using control handles within the frame itself. No separate dialog boxes, no browsing the menus or toolbars, your attention stays 100% focused on the page.

New Static and Smart Photo Grids help you organise and present your images in a smarter, cleaner way.

Around 30 Photo Filter Pre-sets can apply various lighting, contrast and saturation effects to give your image a brand new look.

A superb photo editing and desktop publishing package

If you need more control, the Effects Painter applies effects like Brighten, Dodge and Burn to specific areas of the picture.

Xara’s SmartShapes have been extended with new charts, text panels, photo panels and an enhanced Spiral SmartShape.

Elsewhere, the Font Awesome collection has been updated, and you now also get more than 1,500 Google Material Design icons.

Perhaps best of all, the program has been released under Xara’s “365” branding, which marks the move from yearly to continuous development. Buy the program and you’ll now get new features and content as they’re developed, for a full year. After that, you can pay for another year, or just keep and use the program forever as it is.

Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 365 runs on Windows Vista or later.