Bevel and stroke ?

I'm new to Xara Xtreme and have been struggling with this a bit. I'm recreating a logo. The logo consists of white lettering with a black stroke. The WHITE is a rounded bevel in the original. I need to reproduce this same effect. BTW, it's our logo, but the guy who created it left a long time ago and didn't leave original illustrator or PSD files and all we have now are low-res JPG's that are unsuitable for print.

I can convert the text to a shape, and I can stroke the resulting shape. However, as soon as I apply a bevel to the white letter shape, I lose the black stroke completely.

Is it not possible to have both a bevel AND a stroke ?? If it IS possible, then how do I do it ?? I've searched the help and movies, and nothing addresses this particular question.

Thanks !

Hi LadynRed56,

Welcome to the forum.

Is there a link to a webpage that shows your logo? It would be much easier to say how something can be recreated from a visual reference.

There is a copy of the logo on this page (OSM Core logo) - but I doubt you can really see the effect from that size - http://www.onesourcemed.com/billing_collections2.htm.

I suppose I could put a slightly larger black shape underneath the white and group them but I'd rather not unless that's the only way to do this.

Thanks !

If you do an outer bevel then the stroke remains visble. If you do an inner bevel then that covers up the stroke. You can bring the stroke back to the top if you separate the bevel but it is no longer editable.

However, if you clone the text before you add the bevel and set the clone to no fill then both lots remain editable.

Tony

Ok, so if I understand Tony's suggestion, I'll have a cloned copy of a letter, no fill with black stroke, and on top of that a filled copy, no stroke, with the bevel. Is that correct ?

Just for my edification, how do you separate the bevel ?

Thanks for the help :)

I do almost all of my work in Photoshop for the web, and we can't justify the cost of Illustrator for the few times we need it. Xara is perfect, I just have to get up the learning curve !

That will be an easy logo to redo in Xara once you get up to speed with the program. Many of us do this sort of thing every day, many times over. Once up to speed you will be able to knock that logo out in 5-10 minutes (US). In Europe it may take longer.... But, don't quote me on that. ;)

To have your object with a bevel & an outline.
1. dupe the object, nudge aside, remove contour but keep outline.
2. on the original object, remove outline keep bevel.
3. nudge your outline back over to original & your done. Bevel w/outline.

Keep in mind. When I say nudge.
Alt+arrow = 1 screen pix
Shift+Alt+arrow = 5 screen pix
Ctrl+arrow = 5x nudge setting (from the Options/general/nudge size)
Shift+arrow = 10x nudge setting

Nudging is awesome in Xara! None of the other vector programs I've used come anywhere close to the control & accuracy that Xara offers.

To edit your bevel.,That's another issue as there is no easy way to do this. Perhaps Xara will add something of this nature in the next release. Breaking apart of bevels.

Thanks wW !! :)

I'm actually not doing too badly with Xara. I used Corel for years and do use Photoshop daily and I'm comfortable with paths in PS. I catch on pretty quickly. I just have to get used to the tools in Xara, they work a bit differently than what I'm used to. Like zooming.. I'm used to using the Alt+zoom to zoom out in PS, Xara uses the Shift key. PS uses Control to nudge.. so thanks for the tip on nudging. I actually have to reproduce 3 logos, and this is the last one. For whatever reason, the other two were NOT beveled on the letters, so they were easy.

So far, I'm loving Xara, and I'll be hanging out here if I get stuck :D

Thanks again !

Hi LadynRed56,

I got distracted by work :(

I see that Tony and Waldo have been helpful. Just a quick example of one way to do the text.

The font I used is Century Gothic, I believe that is one of the standard Windows fonts.

Thanks Bill !
I think I've got the hang of it now thanks to all of you. I guess I've been spoiled by Photoshop's layer styles ;)

Another way, not exactly the same as an outline but darn close and done with only one object. OK if you have a just a few objects to "bevel-outline"; otherwise, things could slow down a bit.

After step 3, you can then adjust the amount of exposed glow shadow by dragging the shadow tool.

That's a great idea ! I'll have to try that :)

Thanks !!

Clever one, John!
Tony

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LadynRed56

Ok, so if I understand Tony's suggestion, I'll have a cloned copy of a letter, no fill with black stroke, and on top of that a filled copy, no stroke, with the bevel. Is that correct ?

Just for my edification, how do you separate the bevel ?

Xara is perfect, I just have to get up the learning curve !

---

To separate a bevel, convert the object to editable shapes and ungroup.
Not much use, though.

You seem to be getting on all right.

Tony