Quick Easy Cutouts

[aridzone]

You can make quick easy cutouts like this.
Just drag and drop your picture onto the small thumbnail with Windows Explorer.
It also works for flash animations!

[mikehihn]

Neat. May I assume you created the cutouts with the "joining shapes" feature?

[pauland]

What "small thumbnail"?

A few comments about supplying examples as web files.

1) It's great that people make examples/tips
2) With a web file you can't see what's going on without opening it
3) People with older Xara software might see something differrent
4) People browsing the forums who don't have Xara software can't get to see how good the software is
5) A picture can be smaller than the web file example

[mikehihn]

"small thumbnail" is the photo below the cutout. I almost missed it! A little big for a thumbnail. And to me it's a separate point. You can drop a photo directly on the cutout, or onto the "thumbnail" and get the same outcome, even though the thumbnail IS a lot smaller than the cutout.

That made no sense, right?

[aridzone]

Here is a picture.
Pauland I guess some peoples thumbs are bigger than others
Mike I used slice (cut) shapes.

[pauland]

LOL, OK, I get the idea.

[mikehihn]

Thanks. Duh. I never noticed slice!

You stay outside the box, you're good there.

[aridzone]

How to create Quick Easy Cutouts that can be swapped with other pictures:

1) Draw your shapes
2) Open and resize picture
3) Put picture to back
4) Slice - ctrl 4 till all shapes cut out
5) Select all
6) Group
7) Duplicate group
8) Move duplicate off canvas
9) Reduce duplicate to thumbnail size.

Now when you want to change the shapes photo all you have to do is drag and drop a photo onto the thumbnail from Windows Explorer.