no more white lines on exported graphics?

[michaelbuddy]

I was wondering if the new version of Xtreme has kind of fixed the problem of the extra pixel white lines on exported graphics when the width, height, or location of the object(s) exported have a subpixel measurement. This used to always keep me on guard on previous versions. So far I haven't noticed it. anyone?

[gwpriester]

The white outlines you mention are caused when Xara, or any other application, attempts to split the difference between the color of the image and the color of the page (usually white) when the size is a fraction of a pixel.

This can still happen if you export an image with a fractional pixel size.

Xtreme 4.0 now has a special template called a Photo Document that makes it easier to export a bitmap image correctly. The following is from the Help file.

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 toolbar of Xtreme Pro
• 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.

[BobInce]

No changes on this issue that I'm aware of. If you make something whose dimensions lie away from pixel boundaries Xtreme has to fill the edges with something, and I can't think of any choice more appropriate than the background colour/content.

If you're designing for screen, aligning to pixel boundaries is a must, so get used to using the grid set to 1pix subdivisions.