Bevel inaccur... erm, weirdness... ;)

[eobet]

Can anyone explain the following weirdness to me...

The two top images are at 100% and 200% zoom in Xara, but the one at 100% is clearly just a dark mess (and remains so when exported).

The way it should look is like in the bottom right corner, which is resized in Photoshop (but I can't use that one due to the aliasing resizing produces).

[eobet]

Can anyone explain the following weirdness to me...

The two top images are at 100% and 200% zoom in Xara, but the one at 100% is clearly just a dark mess (and remains so when exported).

The way it should look is like in the bottom right corner, which is resized in Photoshop (but I can't use that one due to the aliasing resizing produces).

[eobet]

Erm, where has the button to attach images gone?

EDIT: Ok, so here's a link to the picture for now, but it probably won't stay up long:

http://www.eobet.com/temp/xara1.jpg

[John Rayner]

It is a low resolution bitmap... Manually trace it and have done with it.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Eobet
I can't understand the problem you're having. If the image on the left is a 100% xara image, I've never seen anything in Xara render so badly. Could you explain a bit more how you're achieving these results?
Egg

[eobet]

Originally posted by John Rayner:
It is a low resolution bitmap... Manually trace it and have done with it.

Erm... yeah, I might have been unclear. It's an object made in Xara, but I enlarged it so that it would be easier to see.

The important thing is that Xara renders the objects differently depending on zoom level (or rather, the bevel seems to become a mess if I have too much detail in a too small object).

Originally posted by Egg Bramhill:
Hi Eobet
I can't understand the problem you're having. If the image on the left is a 100% xara image, I've never seen anything in Xara render so badly. Could you explain a bit more how you're achieving these results?
Egg

The object is 16x16 pixels large and the bevel is 0.6px in size and has 75% contrast. All other attributes are unchanged.

If I put the size to 0.5px it doesn't appear at all at 100% zoom and 0.7px messes it up even more.

[AndFarr]

Looks like a bitmap that has been copied too many times. Here is a quick tracing done in Xara.
Be sure to you have your image at the size you want as a vector image before you save it into a bitmap format. If you resize thereafter in a program such a Photoshop it will become distorted. -AF
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a33...Tracedgear.jpg

[MEB]

Hi eobet http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

From my experience with Xara it´s really complicated to work with very small images like 16x16 icon images, unless they are really simple and don´t have rounded areas.

This is because the anti-aliasing tries to smooth the objects. For vertical and horizontal lines there´s no problems, but for rounded areas or other lines angles it just "blurs" the vectors and as a result the image will look less sharper.

The second reason has to do with how vectors will translate in to pixels when displaing images on screen or when exporting them. Sometimes our vector object(s) doesn´t fit precisely in a rigid grid of pixels, resulting in some strange "artifacts" like lines appearing bolder than others even if their line width is the same. Always make sure you´re using "full units" (like 4 pixels line width and NOT 3.5px) and use a grid or check the XY position of the object to position your objects precisely.

Those inconsistencies are visible at diferent zoom levels because Xara has to "rescale" how your vectors will fit in a rigid grid of pixels (that is your screen).
So it´s normal that they change a little in appearence when seeing them at a diferent zoom levels.

This is obviously much less aparent with big images/illustrations.

I would sugest you to try to create your icon/small image a little larger (for example 32x32 or even 64x64 pixels if you want to create a 16x16 pixels final image - always use multiples of 2 or 4 when choosing the initial image size for Xara because they will rescale/downsample better than for example a 3x) and then rescale/downsample the images in Photoshop. You can try exporting the images with Xara anti-aliasing on and off and check what works best for your specific image too. Then you can always apply an unsharp filter or a high pass filter technique to achieve an even more sharpen image if needed but you can´t use it inside Xara or the anti-aliase will screw everything up again.

There´s no way to keep raster images without anti-aliase and the vectors objects anti-aliased in the same document in Xara for now.


Hope this helps,
Miguel B.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hello again eobet.
I agree with Miguels points above but I'm even more confused now. Attached is a 16 x 16 pixel bevel.
This bears no resemblence in size to your 16 x 16 pixel image that's supposed to be @ 100%.
Any further ideas?
Egg

http://www.xlwebdesign.co.uk/tg/16x16_bevel.gif

[MEB]

Egg, eobet has enlarged his icons posted in the image above so we can see clearer the diferences that the anti-aliase produces between them at 100%, zoomed at 200% and a rescaled one.
This means the icons on their image are in reality bigger than 16x16 pixels.

If you take a screenshot of your xara screen with your icon and enlarge it (phisicaly) in photoshop the same "quantitie" that eobet did you will end with a similar look/size.

Miguel