print

[handrawn]

the print borders are showing you the area of the paper in the printer that you can actually print on, which will be less than the size of the paper, unless your printer will print right up the the papers edge

I am not sure what you mean by borders being uneven, but if you mean you want an unprinted 'white' area all round the print that is equal in width, then your print will have to be in the same shape as the paper

if it is not you can clip it to the right shape - I would suggest you use 'clipview' as you can tweak this afterwards if it is not quite right

[handrawn]

... however, print borders are not always even in width, so you will need to take that into account as well - in other words make sure it is centered on the page, not the print border area, whilst being completely within the print border area of course

easier if you set your page size in xara to the same size as your paper, which does not seem to be the case in your screen shot, which is why the print borders are bigger


if all else fails may be easier to trim the print afterwards?

sorry for the post editing....

[angelize]

Hello Hajeem, Welcome to Talkgraphics!

If you are wanting to set borders inside the paper and customize the white border you might find the first part of this tutorial helpful http://www.xaraxone.com/tips-and-tri...ted-valentine/ It is for setting up a greeting card but it will show you how to enable and use the screen rulers.

Also if you are having trouble getting the colours to look right you could try going to the window menu and select show printer colours and from the submenu choose simulate print colours. It still won't be an exact match but it will be closer than the screen colours.

[Gamerprinter]

Granted I'm a digital printer (I run my own print studio), so I know where the deletion areas are for any graphic created. For example, since I'm in the US, I use letter size 8.5 inches x 11 inches for default page size. I never use the photo mode, since anything I create will either be scaled to inches, or printed to US letter and US tabloid. I set my default page size to whatever my intended print size. On my color laser printer, there is a eighth inch deletion area where printing cannot be done, so print area for letter size is actually 8.25 inches by 10.75 inches. When I prepare a graphic for letter size printing, I insure that there is nothing in the outer eighth inch area that was intended to be printed. I don't have to look at the print borders feature, as I know where they always are.

Regarding your point about water colors. Since I am a fantasy cartographer (I create maps for roleplaying game publishers) I often create work to emulate a water color style. I choose a water color schema of color in my work. No colors are too dark. I often use fractal cloud color mixes, and fractal cloud transparencies using soft mixes. In my opinion it achieves a water color look. Note in the sample below I show my example of water color schema and fractal cloud color mixes (used in the land portion), and fractal cloud transparency used on the top water layer of the river. The linework is hand-drawn with pen and ink, then digitally scanned, given a stain-glass transparency so the black lines are 100% solid, and the white areas of the paper is 100% transparent.

[Hajeem]

Thank you all for your input which I find very valuable. I will try them all.

The reason why I bought the software is primarily that I want to start my own website.

In this stage however I am trying to familiarize myself with the program. I started with the printing feature because when I exhibit my original watercolors I have noticed that a lot of visitors want to buy at least a picture postcard of the work they like. Hence my efforts.

How I go about? I make potographs of my work, import it in Xara, will wanting to learn to tweak it to the best result possible and then make a print on a card which is 10x15 cm otherwise known as 4 x 6 inches. I did notice that the program sets the pagesize to 10.16 x 15.24 cm which is an exact conversion of the inches to centimeters. So there is a little discrepancy there.

I have a feeling that Angelize´s tip might do the trick best so I try to start from there.

I experience though still some problems with the printborders. When selecting the SHOW PRINT BORDER I noticed a difference between what the manual says I´ll see and what my screen actually tells me:
according to the manual I should see two lines: one in yellow to indicate the pagesize and one in red to indicate the print border. My screen only shows the yellow line. Is it because the manual is not updated and the red lines have disappeared?

Another thing is that my manual´s SEARCH button is not available. I type in my requested word or sentence and the SHOW button is greyed out.

You see, I always want to try to find the answers myself first in stead of troubling my fellow members :-)

I hope I will soon be able to show you the result I am after :-)

[handrawn]

Hi

the print borders frame stays at the bottom, so if you cannot see the red it may be because it is covered, either by your painting object or a page background iof you have set one
[I think there should be an option to toggle it top/bottom but as far as I know there isn't]

is it the PDF manual? I know that some copies of the PDF manual are not searchable [when I use adobe reader the function is 'find'] for some reason - this has come up before and I think a searchable copy can be downloaded; I'll see if I can find the details, maybe someone else will know meanwhile...

[handrawn]

ok here we are [found it quick that I thought] :

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...869#post439869

if neither the manual on the CD, nor the manual downloaded are searchable, then it's a question for Xara Ltd I think