xara picture editor bug?

[Odat]

I believe that's a new feature. if you say New->Photo Document, you end up with the same thing.

Basically what it does is assume that you're editing a bitmap image for later export, so it makes sure that the page size always exactly matches the size of the image that you're editing. So if you for example add a drop shadow to the image, the "page size" modifies itself accordingly. The pasteboard is a darker than usual color to remind you.

I think you do have to import to get the old behavior. If you drop the image on the page, it works the old way, but if you drop it on the title bar of the Xara window, you get the new behavior (assuming I'm remembering that correctly).

[steve.ledger]

Another thing I noticed, that if I choose a picture to open with I loose the white page thingie in the back, is that supposed to happen

Yes.
Odat is correct. Photo Documents have no 'page' size until there are objects (photos) on the page. The page size is dynamic. It's a slightly different work environement.

The Help file explains:

Photo Documents
Sometimes it's useful to work on one photo alone, rather than as "objects on a page". This is called a photo document or "photo mode" in Xtreme Pro, and it behaves more like a traditional photo editor. You can create a photo document in a number of ways:

Drag a photo file from your file explorer onto the title bar or other bar of Xara Xtreme
Select "File -> Open" and select a photo file
Create a blank photo document by selecting "File -> New -> Blank photo"
Photo documents are characterized by the following behavior differences compared to traditional Xtreme Pro documents:

There is no visible white page. In fact the page dimensions are set automatically to match the photo plus any other objects you've added. So initially when you load a JPEG, the page dimensions are set to match that of your photo exactly. If, for example, you add some text underneath your photo, or you add a shadow, the page immediately expands to fit in your additions. Or if you scale down your photo in the Select tool to reduce its size, the page dimensions reduce to match. So you don't need to continually manually adjust the page dimensions to match your design and, unlike with most photo editors, you don't need to plan in advance the dimensions of your finished photo.
Photo documents have a 1 pixel grid by default and snap to grid is turned on. This makes it easier to get pixel-accurate crop or clip regions.
The Pasteboard (the area around the photo) is a darker color. This makes it easy to distinguish at a glance between photo documents and drawing documents.
The document zoom is set so that the photo fills the view and the Photo tool is automatically selected as the current tool.
Dropping additional photo files on top of an existing photo just adds a new photo to the document instead of replacing the photo in its frame.
The pixel smoothing options are altered. By default it selects the "Very high quality" display mode, which is best for images scaled down or zoomed out. It also has pixel smoothing turned off when zooming in, so you can see the pixels are very large zoom factors.
In all other respects Photo Documents behave like normal Xara Xtreme Pro 4 documents. You can use all the normal drawing and text tools as usual. If you want to create a photo document of a given size, you can alter the "canvas" or page size by selecting "Utilities -> Options" and the "Page" tab and entering the required dimensions.

[ankhor]

Yes.
Odat is correct. Photo Documents have no 'page' size until there are objects (photos) on the page. The page size is dynamic. It's a slightly different work environement.

The Help file explains:

Hmm a case of RTFM, I should do that one of these days.