Dealing with Shadows in Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 7

[Jamestown]

Hi I've been an avid user of the Xara Graphics designer for about 2 years and I've been trying to deal with an annoying issue for quite some time when dealing with Shadows. I've come to realize that every shadow is given an outline and if I have a shape with a shadow that goes to the edge of my drawing the outline will actually continue passed the edge of my drawing. When I export the whole image the edge where the shadow outline bleeds over gets rendered as a blank margin. I've attached examples.

The shadow outline can be seen as the box bleeding over the edge...annoying....this is how it looks when I change the quality to "outline"


This is the actually image at "very high quality"....as you can see..the shadow outline edge has exported as empty margins around the graphic



Does anyone have a solution for this? The shadow outline grows or shrinks as I change the shadow blur...this can be seen in the "outline" view... I want to export to the edge of the colored area but I also want the shadow effect...help~!

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics

The rectangle you see around the graphic in outline view is the actual bitmap shadow.

Soft shadows even though they allow editing like vector objects are in fact bitmaps that are recreated when you make modifications. Xara calls these "Live Effects." If you wish to rein in the shadow to the proportions of your graphic, select the object and Arrange > Convert to Editable Shapes. Then Arrange > Ungroup.

Now you have two object, the shadow bitmap being one of these.


Select the shadow bitmap then switch to the Shape Tool, select two points (the top two control points for example) then use the arrow keys to move the top of the bitmap down. Repeat this for the other sides.

[steve.ledger]

....as you can see..the shadow outline edge has exported as empty margins around the graphic
I want to export to the edge of the colored area but I also want the shadow effect...help~!

Use ClipView.

Assuming the coloured area is one object behind the wording, select both objects and press 'Q'

[Luciano]

Jamestown,
if you want a rectangular bitmap like the attached one, follow sledger suggestion and use clipview.
An alternative method is: put a rectangle of the required size(without fill nor line) on top of the image you want and click "export".
The second method does not work for png with transparencies, since you will get an empty rectangle.

My suggestion when using any of these methods is that your image extends some pixels outside the final size of the required picture so that clipping does not catch any white pixel around.

See attached pictures.

[Jamestown]

Wow! Thank you so much for the help!! This is a big deal for me when it comes to my future work! Thanks again