Need Help Please With Brush Colours

[jaxtraw]

Hi all,

I've been using Corel Xara for ages, was delighted to discover Xara X and have just downloaded and bought it (waiting for the CD to arrive). Thing is, I can't work out the brush thing properly and I'm not sure if it's working correctly...

For instance, if I decide to use the airbrush, it's blue. I can change the color of the brush stroke *after* I've drawn it by clicking the color as normal in Xara; but what I want to do is be able to get a (say) red airbrush which will draw every stroke as red. I.e. I want to set the default color of the brush on the fly... If I change the default (local?) color, i.e. with no object selected, I still get a blue airbrush. However, if I have the edit brush window open, then click anywhere (even the title bar) on that window, the stroke changes color to the default color I selected, as if the color changes aren't "taking" until the edit brush window gets focus.

Is this normal behaviour, a known bug in the download version or is something screwy on my system? Considering the slickness of the Xara interface I can't believe that the designers expect one to create a new brush for every color one wishes to use! (Presumably to do that, I'd have to have a soft edged circle on the pasteboard, keep changing the color of that circle, and hitting "create brush"..? The only other way would to keep drawing in blue then applying color changes retrospectively?

Many, many thanks for any help with this.

BTW, I just love the rest of the updates from Corel Xara. The bevel tool is just *amazing*. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_redface.gif[/img])

Jax

[jaxtraw]

Hi all,

I've been using Corel Xara for ages, was delighted to discover Xara X and have just downloaded and bought it (waiting for the CD to arrive). Thing is, I can't work out the brush thing properly and I'm not sure if it's working correctly...

For instance, if I decide to use the airbrush, it's blue. I can change the color of the brush stroke *after* I've drawn it by clicking the color as normal in Xara; but what I want to do is be able to get a (say) red airbrush which will draw every stroke as red. I.e. I want to set the default color of the brush on the fly... If I change the default (local?) color, i.e. with no object selected, I still get a blue airbrush. However, if I have the edit brush window open, then click anywhere (even the title bar) on that window, the stroke changes color to the default color I selected, as if the color changes aren't "taking" until the edit brush window gets focus.

Is this normal behaviour, a known bug in the download version or is something screwy on my system? Considering the slickness of the Xara interface I can't believe that the designers expect one to create a new brush for every color one wishes to use! (Presumably to do that, I'd have to have a soft edged circle on the pasteboard, keep changing the color of that circle, and hitting "create brush"..? The only other way would to keep drawing in blue then applying color changes retrospectively?

Many, many thanks for any help with this.

BTW, I just love the rest of the updates from Corel Xara. The bevel tool is just *amazing*. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_redface.gif[/img])

Jax

[gwpriester]

Good to have you here.

Xara took Xara back from Corel over a year ago and it was a good thing they did. Corel had great plans to let die a quiet death.

To change the color of the air brush, and this will work on many of the other brushes:

Draw a line and apply the blue air brush stroke.

Click the Edit Brush button on the Infobar at the top of the screen.

Select the Fill Properties tabbed section. Check the radio button

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

[jaxtraw]

*************************
To change the color of the air brush, and this will work on many of the other brushes:

Draw a line and apply the blue air brush stroke.

Click the Edit Brush button on the Infobar at the top of the screen.

Select the Fill Properties tabbed section. Check the radio button All Brush Colors.

Now when you right click on a color, the airbrush will become that color.
*************************

Thanks for the info, unfortunately this is what I've been trying and it doesn't seem to do what I want; which is to change the color of the airbrush permanently.

I'm well used to (Corel) Xara's regular behaviour whereby clicking a color (or any other attribute) when an object is selected will change the color of that object, so if I draw a black line, then click red, the line will turn red. But normally, if no object is selected, the color clicked will become the "default" (not sure if that's the right term in XaraSpeak [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] so that any further lines I draw will be automatically red.

Indeed, using the default line from the lines gallery, that is what happens.

With the other tools it doesn't. (Using the airbrush as an example again)...

I draw a line. It's blue. I open the edit brush palette, select "all brush colors" and my blue airbrush line turns red. Great. However, when I draw another airbrush line, it's blue again. In the edit brush palette "Local colors replace" has switched back to "no brush colors".

So, how about changing the color *then* opening the edit brush palette? Well, if I do that with no line selected, the "Local colors replace" section is all greyed out; with the "no brush colors" option "selected"; once I draw a line, only the "all brush colors" radio button becomes active and clickable; but of course this is only for the line I've drawn and once I draw a new line it's back to blue again. No matter what I do after this, the latter 2 options remain greyed out but the thing keeps reverting to the *unselectable by me* "no brush colors".

If I open the edit brush palette with a line selected, then all 3 options are available, with "no brush colors" selected. I can select "all brush colors", great. But that again will only work for the line selected. So I hit Escape to deselect all objects, click that "all brush colors" radio, right click red, draw a line and *gaaaaaaaaah* it's back to "no brush colors". It doesn't make any difference if I've hit "save" in the edit brush palette or not.

IOW, whatever I do, with the line tools other than "default", which works fine, I'm stuck with "no brush colors" and various of the edit options greyed out, depending on when I opened the edit brush dialog!

Uh, and while I've been typing this and playing around, somehow I've gotten it into the state where it's keeping the "all brush colors" option selected, but ignoring it... i.e. the edit palette says "all brush colors", I right click red, draw a line and it's *blue again* (jax starts chewing the carpet).

So, in summary, whatever I do, I'm stuck with drawing blue lines then retrospectively altering their color. Is this right?

The edit brush options thing doesn't seem to be consistent at all in its operation; does this sound like something is up with my installation?

(The version number is 1.0c, running on Win98SE on an Athlon XP1800+ with 1GB of Ram).

Many thanks if you can devote any more time to my problem here, and sorry for the long posting [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Jax

[jens g.r. benthien]

Jax,

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>(The version number is 1.0c, running on Win98SE on an Athlon XP1800+ with 1GB of Ram). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You should consider to remove 512 MB of RAM on your machine - Windows 98, ME can NOT address them. They are superflous like a hole in a head ;-}

The only OS that supports, addresses and uses more than 512 MB RAM is NT 4.0, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional and LINUX or any other Unix OS.

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

----------//--
If you don't know how to dream you'll never be a designer.
----------//--

[Christine Farrelly]

In the brush gallery - right click on the airbrush tool - select copy brush graphic to the clipboard. Paste the brush graphic into a document - change the colour - create a new brush. Remember to change the setting of the new brush to be the same as the old one.

Brushes are normally only saved in the document you are working on - if you want the brush to be available all the time you need to save a document containing a sample of the brush into the brushes folder. Be warned however that too many brushes loaded at startup can cause problems.

Christine

[jaxtraw]

Many thanks, Christine; are you saying there is no way to simply change the color of any brush but the default brush "live"; i.e. just by clicking colors? Having to create a new brush every time I want to use a different color seems phenomenally inefficient and I can't see myself doing it- the way I work (and I'm sure many other people do) I expect to be able to just change the color of the brush with a single click, as with all the other tools in Xara! Is there no way around this?

Jens; thanks for your input regarding memory, but I did a lot of checking before I spent all that money on RAM... Microsoft clearly state the maximum under Win98 is 1Gb. It's easy to demonstrate when the RAM is getting used simply by opening a very large image in Photoshop and watching the "physical memory in use" chart in the system monitor applet shoot up past 512Mb!

I've seen quite a lot of debate about this in the Windows usenet groups; many people argue for all sorts of low physical limits (I remember way back when I built my last machine that people were saying 64Mb was the maximum) but the consensus seems to be that 1GB is the true physical max.

Jax

Jax

[jens g.r. benthien]

... because Win 98, ME and XP page the rest to the HD. Simple thing to cheat the users, he?

Get a mem checker from c't magazine and you'll be amazed like millions of others how Win 98, ME and XP limit the address space.

But if your belief or faith will make you happy keep listening to Microsoft.

Kind of weird what they tell you in a training for a MSCE course on NT, 2000 Pro - it's the only spot where they tell the professionals the truth... and if you would do the math you'd figure out the conclusion / result for yourself very fast.

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

----------//--
If you don't know how to dream you'll never be a designer.
----------//--

[jaxtraw]

Hi Jens,

I dind't come here to argue about Windoze, and I'm hardly a great fan of Microsoft.

However, I may as well say that I researched this a lot. To paraphrase one person posting to usenet; "Microsoft would have had to patch the windows memory manager deliberately, back in 1995 when most machines had 4 or 8Mb, to pretend to use more memory than it does. It fools every memory checking program (including one I've written myself). For what reason would they do this, in the days when 512Mb of memory was unthinkable anyway?"

Put it this way; however evil they are, there's no reason for them to program Windows to deliberately lie about how much physical RAM it's using... and if it really doesn't use more than 512Mb of RAM, then there is a built in lie about it, because the system monitor reports otherwise.

There's a relevance to this, because of course graphics apps are memory *hogs*.

As a test, I just got Micrografx Picture Publisher to thumbnail a directory with large graphics files in it; the thumnnailer isn't well written and allocates memory for every graphic it scans, so watching System Monitor, in no time at all the "unused physical memory" had dropped to around 180Mb. The "swapfile in use" was showing at around 25Mb, and hadn't increased during the thumbnailing process.

So either Windows was using over (1024-180)Mb, 844Mb of physical RAM, or system monitor is designed to lie about it. What would be the point of doing so? Microsoft don't pretend it'll work with more than 1GB, so why lie that it'll use more than 512Mb? Especially as the "lie" would have begun way back when 64Mb was a huge machine!

Like I said, no fan of Microsoft but I have no reason to doubt the general wisdom on this issue; and I remember a scare story when I built my last machine that nothing above 128Mb (or 64Mb according to some) would be used by Windows. It was.

Now, can anyone help me with this airbrush thing? [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Jax

[Christine Farrelly]

Jax,

As you have already found - if you want to change the colour - ensure that the brush is set to enable colour changing - use the brush then change the colour.

If you want to change the colour permanently or in the current document re-create the brush in that document - the brush will then be available in the re-created colour. if you need it in more than one colour there is no reason you cannot make several.

Christine