Shadows

[ss-kalm]

When you add contours, bevels etc, you can see and control the contour/bevel widths, but when you add a shadow you get to see the blur and the transparency, but I don't see anywhere to control the width. If I want to duplicate a setup, with multiple objects, do I have to do it by eye? or is there another way? Thanks

[gwpriester]

Drag the shadow with the Shadow Tool to reposition. Increase or decrease the width of a glow shadow by dragging the shadow with the Shadow Tool.

Copy an object with a shadow, select another object and press Shift Ctrl A (or Edit > Paste > Paste Attributes

[mwenz]

Drag the shadow with the Shadow Tool to reposition. Increase or decrease the width of a glow shadow by dragging the shadow with the Shadow Tool.

Copy an object with a shadow, select another object and press Shift Ctrl A (or Edit > Paste > Paste Attributes

All well and good. Except the copied to object then also changes to have all the same attributes as the copied object.

Xara products need the x/y offset values to be exposed. As well as a choice of what gets copied/pasted. One can select just the shadow and apply the same degree of blur and transparency to a new object, but the offset is not then replicated.

[timhines]

Curious, I have X and Y offset boxes to the right of the blur and transparency sliders on the tool bar. They are greyed out for shadows other than drop shadow, but for drop shadow they are active. This is XDP X9.

Edit: Just noticed the arrow between the transparency slider value box and the offset boxes, which when clicked on allows you to adjust the profile of the shadow - never noticed it before!

Edit again ...: Just reread your message and realised you were specifically mentioning the glow shadow. You're right, the glow shadow's width should be exposed numerically, as well as the floor shadow's angle and length.

[dutchim]

+1 on only pasting selected attributes

[Fred C]

...when you add a shadow you get to see the blur and the transparency, but I don't see anywhere to control the width..

Hi Keith,

I'm not sure what Xara version you have; XD Pro has a shadow position nudge tool. I agree with Mike regarding choices via 'Paste attributes'

[gwpriester]

Ctrl click to select just the shadow, copy, Ctrl click on the shadow you want to modify and Paste Attributes. It's a work-around.

[mwenz]

Ctrl click to select just the shadow, copy, Ctrl click on the shadow you want to modify and Paste Attributes. It's a work-around.

That does paste the attributes of the shadow, but if I recall, and I am a bit hazy as is evident earlier and I'm on a mobile device still, the paste only pastes the shadow blur and transparency but hot the position.

[ss-kalm]

Thank guys .... the specific shadow I'm using is a glow shadow. I'm trying to create a board and batten seamless texture to use with a CAD system. Like this ... and the shadow doesn't have any width. So if I want to reproduce it using a different colour it's awkward, I just have to eyeball it. Since the texture is from Filter Forge, it's not a named color either. I thought that if I used the same shadow specs then I could draw it a number of times and use different textures/colours ... but I don't have all the shadows specs. I was going to just change the colours using contones, but it doesn't seem to want to give me that option.

[mwenz]

If you are building this in XDP, you can use named colors for the shadows. Create a named color, apply that color to the shadow by selecting just the shadow. Then you can freely change the named color used on the shadow.

Mike