Damaged "printscreen"paste in v8...a bug?

[GerryI]

The pasting of alpha channel 32bpp bmps has been changed to preserve the alpha data in the bitmap to improve workflow with various other programs.

We have seen this issue on a number of machines during testing but it hasn't yet been possible to draw many conclusions as to the root cause. It is presumably something to do with whether the video card drivers blank the alpha channel when in 32 bpp mode but we haven't isolated any particular video card/video driver/OS/other machine specs combination because the number of occurences has been too small.

There is a registry entry that can be changed to disable this behaviour. Just set Options/Clipboard/PasteAlpha to 0 and it should return to the v7 behaviour. Usual disclaimers about editing the registry apply...

Gerry

[lithium258]

Yes! that registry tweak fixed it. Thank you!

I wonder if that switch should be in the Xara's Options box...

[instinctive.de]

The pasting of alpha channel 32bpp bmps has been changed to preserve the alpha data in the bitmap to improve workflow with various other programs.

Woah, that's actually a very welcome change. Why isn't that anywhere in the change logs? Or maybe I've overlooked it...

I've always screamed at Xara for not preserving alpha information when importing PNGs via the clipboard. Thanks for the fix!

[handrawn]

I'm not sure that actually means we can copy paste into designer and preserve alpha - I havn't got it to work from PS [CS6]

[steve.ledger]

You'll find it works when pasting a copied image from a web browser which has alpha transparency rather than another application Steve.
This never worked before and effectively broke the 'Import Graphics from web' feature. Now, with the ability for WD and DP to import the entire page, layout and all from the web - Xara have made sure the transparency is retained.

[handrawn]

thanks steve

[instinctive.de]

Yep, that was my main use for it too (right-click on PNG image in Google Chrome, "Copy Image").

However, I think a Screenshot with an Alpha channel is wrong "per se" and Xara should probably ignore it (if it is possible to detect that the contents of the Clipboard are a Screenshot actually)

[Turan Mirza]

Can someone give me the full details on wher the Options/Clipboard/PasteAlpha to 0 reg entry is - as I'm looking in MAGIX/Xara_Designer_Pro_X and cant see it! Thanks.

If this is an option in 8.1.1 can someone highlight this as I have that one now.

Turan

[handrawn]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Xara

then to the program eg:

XtremePro/8.1

then to Options/Clipboard/PasteAlpha as in Gerry's post

[never edit registry unless you are sure, and backup first]

[Turan Mirza]

Ah! I was not only looking on LOCAL MACHINE, not CURRENT USER, but was looking (as said) in MAGIX not Xara.

Many Thanks.

I'm assuming disabling this will interfear with something else - even if it is just interacting with some other program - it would be nice to know.

Turan