Xara Photo Editing Tip - Quick and easy crop and straighten with the fill tool

[angelize]

Here is a quick photo editing tip, aimed at beginners. You can easily fix crooked photos, zoom and crop with the fill tool.

The first step is to make sure you have the rulers enabled (window>bars>rulers) then click and drag a horizontal guideline from the ruler.

Select your photo and select the fill tool, you will see that your photo is actually a vector shape with a bitmap fill. Click and drag the outer fill handles to enlarge (zoom) the bitmap within the shape and rotate as needed to straighten the image. Move the cursor over the line of the fil handles until it changes to a hand then click and drag the photo around to adjust it's position within the shape.

[DD]

Well I never thought of a photo in that way!

Zoom, pan, rotate and all with the fill tool.

Thank you for the tip.
David

[Michael]

It get's even better, using the mould tool one can even correct perspective!
If you import a bitmap you can use the mould tool with straight edges to straighten lines and warp the photo in a shape you'll find suit. To get a square again you can use a rectangle under the stretched photo and use the "create bitmap copy" (beware, don't use alpha channel) or intersect with an overlaying rectangle (though that will sometimes result in unexpected fills)