erratic red eye removal

[hamishmacd]

Since the upgrade to v.5 the red eye removal tool seems to have become erratic. I regularly import several photos at a time into a specific graphic, give them all an 8pix white border and drop shaddow, spread them over a multi page document then lastly do some basic re-touching. This usually means a fair bit of red eye removal. All done within the same document. Just the sort of rapid workflow at which Exreme excels.

With the upgrade to v.5 however everything seems to have got a bit confused. The red-eye tool steadfastly refuses to permit a red-eye circle less than so many pixels, i.e the greyed out circle won't go smaller than the entire eye, eyebrow and all! Then whenever the effect is applied to a photograph with a border it seems to insist that red-eye circle must also share that same border. This results in a wierd red outline to the greyed out area.

I should also mention that I had a fair few exception violations along the way. I'll try a uninstal / fresh-instal and see what happens. I just thought I'd fire this off to see if anyone else has experienced anything similar..

[hamishmacd]

I've sort of identified the problem. The red-eye removal tool changes the photo to a clipped-photo-group so applying applying a border after using it is less staightforward. Applying red eye removal to a picture with a border has become impossible.

I guess that creating a bitmap copy of the retouched photo is the way to do this? So the workflow has just become a bit more convoluted. Import graphics - re-touch - create copies of all the clipped-photo-groups - delete the originals - apply borders to all the remaining photoraphic images.

This all seems a bit convoluted. The most straightforward approach would seem to be to revert to using v.4 rather than v.5 as this task, which I do regularly, was a lot simpler in v.4.

Am I missing something or is there something I should be doing differently in v.5?

[hamishmacd]

i guess grouping the clipped photo groups would do it...

[angelize]

Hello Hamish, I can't replicate the problem here. the photo tool red eye works fine for me. Perhaps if you can post a .xar file it may help someone figure this out.

[steve.ledger]

The red-eye tool steadfastly refuses to permit a red-eye circle less than so many pixels, i.e the greyed out circle won't go smaller than the entire eye, eyebrow and all!

Hold Ctrl and select the grey area and resize it as required using the size handles, or use the info bar size input.
Then use the feather slider to blend the edges into the photo.
You can even convert to editable shapes and use the curve handle to fine tune the grey shape.
For a border, I drop a new rectangle shape behind, size and centre it to the photo with the alignment tool. A drop shadow applied to the photo above a white border looks attractive.

[hamishmacd]

Thank you both for taking the time to reply. I'd no idea the red-eye tool was that flexible.

I'll just get used to editing the photos first, grouping them, then applying the border and drop shaddow last. This is I suppose the more logical sequence.

[Seagull]

You know you can always bypass the redeye tool in this version.

In older version the red eye tool only affected the colour red but in the newest version it affects all colours. All your doing in version 5 is drawing a black circle with saturation transparency, which is simply a way of making a colour photo into a black and white photo.

On your photo, try creating a big black square over part or all of it and apply the saturation transparency and you will see and understand better what is happening.........frank

[hamishmacd]

Thanks Frank, I see what you mean. I was just a bit confused by this. Now I've had a chance to play around, I understand it better. It just feels out of kilter with the way I'm used to Xtreme working. A bit clunkier really. Why would you ever want a red eye tool to take on the outline properties of the photo upon which you are working? I found myself creating a huge red-eye circle, then removing the outline, then tweaking the red-eye area to scale. That said, the ability to squish the shape to fit an obscuring eye lid may come in handy.

This was always just a quick-fix when putting photos onto a video display that we use. It's slightly more involved now but now I get it, I can live with it.

[hamishmacd]

Just out of a sense of completeness, in case this is of use to other readers, I solved the problems I was having. The solution was actually dead simple. I was dealing with some very low resolution graphics, which meant having to zoom right in. The 8 pix border that was applied to the photo was the problem. Because of the 8 pix border applied to the photo, Xara also applied this border to the red-eye thus it only gave me the option of a minimum of an 8 pix red-eye circle.

I was left with two solutions firstly to just to set the bit map editor as XPE and use the old red-eye tool from the previous version of Xara. This is what I'll probably do. It's not as flexible but it is quick. This method doesn't convert the photo to a clip view.

Alternatively I could apply the border first, deselect the photo and then apply the red-eye to it. Somehow Xara knows you are applying red eye to a particular photo without it being selected. This way the red-eye behaves normally.

I also ran into problems with the border disapearing the moment the photo was changed to a clip-view. The solution to this was equally simple. If you need to alter the border, but not to have the red-eye border affected, CTRL click just the photo and you can edit just its border without the red-eye border also being affected.

I noticed how many people read my post. I hope this is of use to someone.

[amoore]

I'm sure it will be. Thanks, Hamish.