Xara Group has announced the release of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 10, the latest incarnation of its all-in-one editing, illustration and design tool.

Top of the new features list is the inclusion of Magic Bullet PhotoLooks 2.0, a powerful plugin (sold separately for $199 as recently as 2012) which offers 100+ present lighting and colour effects.

The SmartShapes tool provides a quick and easy way to draw commonly-used shapes: text panels, speech bubbles, arrows and more.

PhotoLooks gives one-click access to 100+ colour and lighting effects

Finer editing controls mean you’re now able to adjust highlights, shadows, or any selected colour in your image, without affecting anything else.

The Panorama tool has seem some major enhancements. It can now handle up to 8 photos; you don’t have to prearrange them in the right order; and the program is both better at aligning your shots, and coping with varying lens distortions.

Elsewhere, the Content Catalog makes it easier to browse available content; a new top-level Insert menu speeds up the process of adding objects to the page; PDF, RTF and DOCX import has been improved, and the program can now handle DOC files, too.

Finally, you get two bonus extras from the MAGIX range.

MAGIX Photo Manager helps you sort, search and back up your photo collection.

But perhaps more usefully, 12 months of free access to MAGIX Online Album Premium gives you 100GB online storage space, and your own domain, ready to share your finished designs with the world.

A trial build of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 10 is available now, but beware: third-party plugins, like PhotoLooks, are not included.