Xara Speed

**suunto** · 01 December 2006, 03:53 PM

Originally Posted by remi

Hi Suunto,

as Nicolae said, some of the objects, he used in his graphics are photo objects. If you look at the cars, you're able to see, that these are photo objects (try to look through the windows of the cars). And as you can see in Nicolae's short tutorial (post #18), the horses are also photo objects.

The great idea is, to produce such colorful graphics together with a high detail level in order to please the eyes of the viewer.

Remi

hey remi,
i think i understand now but if a photo is used for the car and horses how do they become vector graphics? so they can be scaled up
please spell it out as up until a few weeks ago i didn't fully understand what a vector graphic was

i'm learning loads on this site though and pictures like the ones in this thread are an inspiration (SP)

**MEB** · 01 December 2006, 05:10 PM

Originally Posted by Nicolae Trifu

Miguel,

If I add one more Atlas for a Raid0, it should compare well with the Raptors, I think ?

I always thought of Raid as security first.

Thanks for the consultation.

You are already using an high-end SCSI hardrive that performs better than the Raptor (the Raptors are the fastest among the SATA hardrives but cannot be compared with the performance of a SCSI system.)
Since you own a SCSI hardrive, the best you can do is to add another one in Raid0.

And yes, RAID is mainly used for redundancy/security purposes (RAID1,2..etc) except the RAID0 setting wich manages 2 hardrives as if they were just one using both hardrive heads to read/write data reducing times by half. The disadvantage of this is if one of the hardrives fail you will lose data stored in BOTH hardrives since the data is "stripped" on both. It´s a less reliable solution than just having one hardrive but it performs almost two times faster.

You should use this configuration to get the most out of your system while you are working on big files but make sure you always backup your final work/file to another media or external hardrive, whatever you see fit.

**Nicolae Trifu** · 01 December 2006, 06:17 PM

Miguel,

This is not it.

I sdid work with a 2GB RAMDISK, with no increase in speed compared to hard disk. That's what made me ask if Xara was writing to a disk cache, and could I then move that cache to RAMDISK ? Charles Moir said no disk cache is used. Loading from RAMDISK is again, no different than from hard disk.

It can only be that Xara needs that time to process data.

But, in the end :

It's really not a problem. I am trying to shave seconds off ... seconds.

And Xara is the only environment in which this type of illustrations ( quality, size, ease, speed ) can be produced .
Period. ( Idid my time with AI, CorelDraw, Canvas, in their time, and HiJaak, Satori, before that. )

**pauland** · 01 December 2006, 06:23 PM

Originally Posted by suunto

hey remi,
i think i understand now but if a photo is used for the car and horses how do they become vector graphics? so they can be scaled up
please spell it out as up until a few weeks ago i didn't fully understand what a vector graphic was

i'm learning loads on this site though and pictures like the ones in this thread are an inspiration (SP)

Xtreme handles bitmaps (photos) as a shape or as a fill for a vector shape. If the photo has enough resolution there's no need to scale it up - more likely it will be scaled down.

Paul

**suunto** · 01 December 2006, 06:52 PM

Originally Posted by pauland

Xtreme handles bitmaps (photos) as a shape or as a fill for a vector shape. If the photo has enough resolution there's no need to scale it up - more likely it will be scaled down.

Paul

thanks paul, what are the options if the photo doen'st have enough resolution?

**pauland** · 01 December 2006, 07:01 PM

Originally Posted by suunto

thanks paul, what are the options if the photo doen'st have enough resolution?

LOL - get a photo with higher resolution!

You can stretch a bitmap, but the more you do it, the more pixellated it will become.

Why not experiment for yourself - import a bitmap to Xtreme and just play. That's the best way to learn.

Paul

**behzad** · 28 February 2007, 12:56 PM

Hi, love your work.
Just wanted to know if you do the masking of your images in xara as well or you do them in photoshop?

Thanks

Oh are you Romanian, I used to live in Arad for 2.5 years.
Love Romania.

**accessD** · 28 February 2007, 06:17 PM

Like your works too.

My 2 cents about original question.

See following thread
http://talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=25762

Phil gives there Registry key which turns off compression of .XAR file.
Maybe it will speed up the thing a little, but expreiments are required.
Resulting file will be larger, but balance of speed and size depends of .XAR file.

If you will test it, please let us know about results.

**RAMWolff44** · 28 February 2007, 08:05 PM

I'm quite impressed. My goodness! Such good works there.

Thanks for sharing and the tutorials are appreciated!

**Tallis** · 04 April 2007, 01:52 PM

Since the floor and dishes are taken care of, can I vollunteer for raking leaves, cleaning the pool, or taking out the garbage?

Wow. Marketing. These pieces should be front-and-center in Xara's marketing literature right now, and with Magix's budget ( hopefully ), the dominance of the usual suspects can begin its gradual decline...

And thanks for the pseudo-tutorial.

I too was wondering if there was a reply to Behzad's question-

"Just wanted to know if you do the masking of your images in xara as well or you do them in photoshop?"