Tutorial on using guides and snapping

[Egg Bramhill]

Hello again Nancy.

I use Xara5Pro and work on 800x600 pixel workspaces and 2550x3300 pixel workspaces (US letter size), depending on what I'm doing.

On my system US Letter defaults to 816 x 1056. This is at the default Windows 96 ppi.

[handrawn]

Hi Nancy

Hi Egg - would imagine Nancy is working at 2550x3300 at 96dpi within xara which can then be reduced down to 816x1056 at 300dpi for print [or whatever] - the ratio is right anyhow...

[Egg Bramhill]

Spot on Steve. I'm getting to old for all this tech stuff

[Burpee]

Hi everybody, hi Larry!! Thanks for all the responses.

I'm blushing because I forgot that XX uses 96dpi. When I setup the default workspace in XX I made it using 300dpi x 8.5 in and 11 in as my guide. I no longer need anything that size but I do open that workspace if I have something very large that needs editing. XX could become very slow when using that size document.

I am just now starting the tutorials listed here. Wanted to check out Angelize's links and then decide which of the links listed I should do first. It's getting the guide parameters setup properly to what I need that has always eluded me. Wish me luck!

[Burpee]

Watched Gary's video on creating seamless tiles but it raised a couple of questions. He does not mention snapping to a grid so that his tile will be whole pixels. It's all and good to make the nudge the same size as your rectangle/square, I get that, but how does he know that he won't have any semi-transparent (or whitish if bitmapped) pixels since he places the original square anywhere on the workspace.

The other issue is that he makes a bitmap copy. Whenever I have tried to use the bitmap copy function I get a pixelated bmp. I didn't used to get pixelated bitmap copies but one day they just started coming up all pixelated. I asked here about it and no one had an answer so I always export as PNG now. That was XX5Pro. I'll have to try it in P&GD7 and see if it's better.

Now to follow through Gary Priester's Xzone tut. Looks like that covers more of the snapping.

[ad1066]

If you get a pixelated image when creating a bitmap copy, try upping the dpi. It's always better to start with a high dpi image and export it to something lower afterward.

-- Ben

[Burpee]

Thanks Ben. I was getting the pixelation when converting my finished vectors with the bitmap tool. I will investigate again.

I just finished watching Angelize's two tutorials on using Xara and Filter Forge to make a pumpkin. Very nice tut. What I found the most exciting though is to see that Xara now has an eraser and a shape builder tool. I want those. For years I heard people asking for an eraser. Didn't think it was possible. Very cool.

[angelize]

I know we are getting off topic here but the eraser and shapebuilder are very cool I use them a lot. They are in the latest versions of Designer Pro and photo and graphic designer but if you want the shapebuilder you will have to upgrade to designer Pro X. I recommend that as they work together and having both makes the work flow better.