question about drawing and cutting

**TammyKat** · 11 July 2007, 04:46 PM

Ok.. this is a drawing I did... and I want to export as .ai so that I can open in illustrator cs2 and then drag to photoshop cs2 as a shape layer.

The problem i have is that the way you see it in this picture... the flower part.. yes ..thats a flower..lol I don't want the dress under it to show...but if I fill it in in white then i doesn't save it in illustrator as a line it saves it as a solid black shape.

My question is .. how the heck do I cut those sections out that I don't want on something like this?? This is one area of xara that I still don't know how to use that well. Can anyone give me some tips?? I've tried joining shapes and then breaking apart..but it didn't work. Of course I may have done it wrong too. lol

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4.../tk-dress0.jpg

**handrawn** · 11 July 2007, 05:03 PM

can you post up the xar file - sure someone could point you in the right direction

**TammyKat** · 11 July 2007, 05:08 PM

sure thing... here it is. Do they open it and try to see what I mean??

**handrawn** · 11 July 2007, 06:01 PM

yes - I can see that the boolean [joining and intersecting etc] isnt going to work well here.

what exactly do you need? - just lines for both flower parts and dress?

**TammyKat** · 11 July 2007, 06:06 PM

well.. i'm not an expert at these programs so I probably won't explain very well...

What I'm TRYING to accomplish is... drawing in xara.. then export as .ai .. open it in illustrator cs2 and then drag it to photoshop as a shape layer so that I can have a custom shape with the flower and dress.

The problem I'm having is that when i do it with the outlines like they are now.. I get those lines of the dress showing through the flower which I don't want. So I tried filling in the flower with white and then when I tried it again the flower came out solid black when I made my shape. I guess if I can't figure out how to do it then solid black would probably work best.

Whenever I draw in xara I run into these types of problem with the lines intersecting and not knowing how best to get them out of there. lol Sometimes add shapes just doesn't work for what I'm trying to accomplish.

Thank you so much !

**a4hire** · 11 July 2007, 06:17 PM

I am not sure what you are doing exactly because I do not us ai or CS2.
You can try the shape editor tool in Xara and then you can add a point to the line that you want to cut , then break at points. I tried on your .xar file but it changes because of the line stoke shape you have used.
Another thing to try is to only draw lines, dont make shapes. It might take a little longer but might work for the result that you want.

**Xhris** · 11 July 2007, 06:46 PM

I just took the large flower object, cloned it, added shapes (Ctrl+1), (then broke the shapes and added all the shapes together again to make one solid flower shape). Then I made it white and moved it to the back of the flower. The white shape covers the bits of the dress you don't want to see, but leaves the original flower shape unaltered.

I also just exported it to a PSD so you can load it directly into photoshop, bypassing Illustrator altogether.

**TammyKat** · 11 July 2007, 07:09 PM

well thank you. I will look at it again and see what you did and see if it will work.

The problem with just making it a PSD file is that when you select it and define custom shape it gives you jaggy lines. I have to export as .AI and open in illustrator first and then copy and paste into photoshop as shape layer and then its a "path" and I can define custom shape and then there are no jaggys ! I was so happy to finally learn this since I can't figure out the tools in illustrator to draw the way I can in xara ! I just love xara for drawing. I appreciate all your help !!

**DGehman** · 11 July 2007, 09:10 PM

I did what a4hire described - break the lines so there's nothing behind the (unfilled) flower. As a4hire said, the quality of the lines change when segments are cut from them, but possibly the resulting dress outline is still acceptable?

By the way, interesting drawing on the dress... I expected the left silhouette to carry down to the base of the skirting, but you've done fascinating things to delineate the waist belt.

Dave

**TammyKat** · 11 July 2007, 10:22 PM

thank you for the compliments... its something simple. I love to make digital scrapbook elements and kits so I love to try and draw some unique shapes and little cutesy stuff. I know that if I'm drawing it myself it won't be out there already.

I will try with some other drawings with the break lines option and see if I can learn it better. I'm still learning my way around xara. I find myself missing the magic wand and being able to just select objects and then select a different layer and delete a part of the selection.

I appreciate everyones help ! I knew if I was gonna find an answer to this question it would have to be here !