Create transparent background in Xara?

[Toonicorn]

Hi again,all!

I've been working on a traditional/digital painting, and in my earlier ignorance about computer art programs, I accidentally left a background on it that I would dearly love to remove. Here is the partially-finished painting (it's pretty big, so I hope it's okay to post):

pegasusfixnewwingriderXARA.xar

Much of the digital work was done in PSE. Is there any way to remove that white background using Xara? Can't seem to find any info on that in the Xara manual. Thanks so much!

[angelize]

Hi toonicorn, I had a look at your file, lovely drawing by the way, The simplest way to do this is to select the background photo with the white background and first double click it and crop as much of the background down as you can, then with the photo stil selected go to your live effects and xara comes with mehdi eraser which will remove the white background. you may need to zoom in and do some clean up by using the shape tool to draw shapes over each remaining un wanted white bit and Ctrl + 2 to subtract them.

[Soquili]

There is a problem using Mehdi Eraser as it will also remove the white portions of the horse's head and legs.

Best method will be to use the Shape Editor to draw the outline of the horse and boy that you want to keep, remember individual lines do not work you must create a complete shape. Once you have a shape that matches the part of the bitmap you want to keep select the bitmap and your shape and Arrange menu > Combine Shapes > Intersect Shapes.


BTW there are no vector objects within your .xar file, only bitmaps. PhotoShop Elements (PSE?) cannot save vector objects, only convert them to raster pixels.

[Toonicorn]

Thanks so much, Angelize and Soquili! I'll give your methods a try!

[angelize]

I tried Mehdi eraser on the posted drawing first before suggesting it and for this particular drawing it worked quite well. Otherwise I would have suggested the hand trace - intersect method

[handrawn]

there are two versions of mehdi - the 'genuine' eraser version will do what Bill says, the 'classic' version will do as Frances said - although of course it will also depend on the settings that you use......

[Soquili]

I should have mentioned that I use the 'genuine' version.

[angelize]

I have both and tried both on tooincorn's file last night and Genuine version will work just as well if you have the Maximum Opacity slider set to 0. It is worth mentioning though that while these plugins work well with this file that does not mean that they will work this well with all files, and Bill's suggestion of hand tracing and subtracting will always work.

[gwpriester]

The work around to Mehdi Eraser is to create a white object that covers the places in the image that the erase made invisible.

I prefer Medi Eraser Genuine which you can download free from the Mehdi website.

You will need to add the white areas behind the legs and some of the white areas and the area about the boy will probably require a vector shape to remove the background from that area.