Coloring a line

[riburton]

I feel really stupid asking this but I can't color a line. I draw the line, adjust the pts, select the stroke shape, then go to the coloring tool select the eyedropper, put it on a color and nothing happens. The line still remains black. I know I have the line selected. I have looked at the intro movie at least five times and I seem to be doing everything they do. I can't get it to color. I know this is really beginners stuff but I am stuck.

[Ross Macintosh]

With the line selected, right-click on any colour from the colour swatches at the bottom of your Xara window.

[Christine Farrelly]

if using the colour picker make sure that Line is selected in the scroll down at the top of the colour picker window.

Christine

[riburton]

That did it. Thanks Cristine. I was missing the drop down menu. I knew it was something simple but I was just missing it.

[Egg Bramhill]

I feel really stupid asking this but I can't color a line

No you're not stupid, I think every Xara user on this forum has had to learn this technique on their introduction to this program. It's as basic as the difference between mouse clicking and double-clicking. Until you know / have been told it's one of the most frustrating issues. Once you know, it's so simple.

[gwpriester]

Here's a shortcut. Right click on the small color wheel icon to the left of the screen palette to open to the Color Editor > Outline Color. (Left click on the icon for fill color editing.

Gary

[GeoBen]

Gary... i never knew that!

i go nutz sometimes before realizing I am changing the color of the wrong thing.

that makes it a lot easier.

gee... the things we don't know.

geo.

[Charles Moir]

You might be interested to know that for future versions we've changed the way line coloring works.

In future releases (more info next month) if you have a line selected and you click a color, then this will now apply that color as a line and fill color. So this makes it easier and more intuitive for new users to color lines.

Oh and here's a sneak peak of another change - this is what you get if you right click on the color line:

[Christine Farrelly]

Charles are you saying that it will apply the colour to both - not sure I like that as a default. If I use a line it is usually a different colour or a brush stroke.

If it does apply both how do you then change the line colour or fill only.

Christine

[Charles Moir]

Yes it will apply both fill (the usual) and line color to any LINE (not shape) that is selected.

Usually doing this does absolutely nothing, which confuses new users.

If you have a shape selected then left click does fill only and shift-click does line color.