question about drawing and cutting

[Albacore]

Hi Tammy,
There are 2 problems here, one that you used brushes. There are many things that Illy doesn't like and one is brushes made in other programmes. The second is the way that Illy treats fills and strokes they are different than the way Xara deals with them, In Xara fils and strokes are combined when Illy in PDF treats them as two different things and un-griuped. That means all that you have to do id delete one of each shapes in Illy and then pick one of Illy#s brushes to complete the drawings and rhats's your choice.

If I understand you right it is just the flower you want to take into PS to do what ever you want. There are 2 ways also to do this, export as PDF and then open in PS or use the PSd export and then you just colour them the way that you want. This requires you to open 3 different programmes jusst to 1 simple task why don't you just do as every one here is asking you to do, It's up to you what you do and what you want to do with your final export?

[TammyKat]

lol.. i know..using three programs to complete something is a PITA but its the only thing I can do right now since I don't really know how to use illustrator for drawing. I'm quicker at it in xara.

I ended up settling on using the shape of the flower on the dress as a solid black instead. I also had to change the flower shape in xara to NOT have a stroke. Otherwise it made it look funky when I opened it in illustrator. I'm sure that has something to do with what you just explained.


What I was trying to accomplish was making a custom shape in photoshop cs2 without the jaggy lines. If I just exported from xara as a psd file and then created a path and defined a custom shape it made the lines all jaggy. I had to export as .ai first. I may have to play around with that...I'm wondering if I can just open it in photoshop and still create the custom shape that way. I will try that next and maybe I will be able to bypass illustrator altogether.

I appreciate all the help !!

[Ron Duke]

Tammy,
If I'm not too dumb to understand what you're trying to do, have you tried converting your lines in the drawing to shapes and then exporting.

If I'm way off base here, please forgive my ignorance.

ron

[DGehman]

What I was trying to accomplish was making a custom shape in photoshop cs2 without the jaggy lines.

I finally read this little detail. The PSD format is at heart a bitmap file, unless I'm greatly mistaken. Certainly Photoshop is primarily a bitmap editor.

What are your options when exporting from Xara to PSD? (I have Xtreme 2.0, so I don't have PSD export.) In my case, exporting to BMP, I have a % option, and going to 500% results in a file with no discernible jaggies.

With PNG I have only a DPI choice. When I select 300 dpi, no jaggies.

Also, I discovered with PNG that the final bitmap resolution is dependent on the size (in pixels) of the original -- the bigger the original, the more certain of export without jaggies.

This may be totally goobered if Xara 3.2 has completely changed its export options for bitmaps... certainly someone here will chime in if I'm totally off the mark... but if jaggies are the issue, try setting the highest export resolution in DPI or % that you can dial in.

Maybe doing so will allow you to go from Xara to Photoshop directly.

Dave

[TammyKat]

Tammy,
If I'm not too dumb to understand what you're trying to do, have you tried converting your lines in the drawing to shapes and then exporting.

If I'm way off base here, please forgive my ignorance.

ron

I'm not sure that would work either. But I can of course try it.

[TammyKat]

I finally read this little detail. The PSD format is at heart a bitmap file, unless I'm greatly mistaken. Certainly Photoshop is primarily a bitmap editor.

What are your options when exporting from Xara to PSD? (I have Xtreme 2.0, so I don't have PSD export.) In my case, exporting to BMP, I have a % option, and going to 500% results in a file with no discernible jaggies.

With PNG I have only a DPI choice. When I select 300 dpi, no jaggies.

Also, I discovered with PNG that the final bitmap resolution is dependent on the size (in pixels) of the original -- the bigger the original, the more certain of export without jaggies.

This may be totally goobered if Xara 3.2 has completely changed its export options for bitmaps... certainly someone here will chime in if I'm totally off the mark... but if jaggies are the issue, try setting the highest export resolution in DPI or % that you can dial in.

Maybe doing so will allow you to go from Xara to Photoshop directly.

Dave

Well.. Once I opened whatever I exported as a PSD file it was smooth as can be...but once I selected all and then "made a work path" and then "defined custom shape" it made it jaggy. Even though it didn't look jaggy at 300 dpi when I opened it, once I created the path and saved it, it DID make it jaggy. The only way I could get it to NOT be jaggy was to export as .AI format. The only thing I still need to check now is if I can open .AI from xara in photoshop and just save it from there instead of opening it in illustrator first. That might work too.

[DGehman]

Basically, you're going from a world where DPI has no meaning, vector graphics, to one where DPI is king. No matter how far you zoom in, you will see only smooth lines in Xara. (Admittedly, you have to worry about DPI/resolution when using bitmap fills, but you're not including these.)

Jaggies means that the file's resolution is too low for your needs. There HAS to be a way to maximize DPI in the export... The largest Xara file in my version is ostensibly 9 ft / 2.75 meters -- but in reality, with margins, it's more like 7 ft. My 1 GB memory allowed a PNG export of an original a mere 3 feet wide -- that's an original that measures 3,456 pixels wide. I specified 300 dpi in the export.

Indeed, opening it in Photo-Paint, Corel's knockoff of Photoshop, it's 37+ inches wide at 300 dpi, or 11,197 pixels wide.

Larger than that in Xara and I ran out of memory. But even at 37 inches / 300 dpi, believe me, there are no discernible jaggies.

By the way, it took my dual-2GHz Xeon workstation more than a minute to open the export dialog and do the export. Proof that even with decent equipment, you can run into things that take time. It even took more than 15 seconds to read the file into Photo-Paint, where it's munching 900,000+ bytes of memory...

Dave

[raynerj1]

I interpreted what she said as PS is the one converting the file from a vector to a bitmap on input. Placing an .ai path in PS will have PS keep it a path and not bitmap it...

personally I would do as Ron suggested and convert all you flower lines to shapes then add all the individual shapes into one. then save it as an .ai then as a place it into psd...

When you first try to import the .ai file into PS, it asks you which height, width and DPI you want... Try using something higher than 96 if it is for print (usually 150-300) or if you want to make PS choke type in 6000. (I did that with a 1/2 inch black square... It took PS 10 minutes to rasterize it...)

If you create a .psd in xara then xara will rasterize it for you. Again use a DPI higher than 96 for print (Pro choked on a DPI of 6000 with an error message of "Internal Program Error 2886.k.xp.gn". )(Trying a DPI of 5000 I got a 15 Meg file ouput and a error message with xara yelling at me for an entire paragraph in german. ) (trying a DPI of 4000 I got a good export and even PS could open it... )

Bottom Line... At 4000DPI it will look good at print size and actual pixels but you will still see jaggies at 1600X (MAX zoom for PS)

[TammyKat]

when you say convert them to shapes... how do you do that in xara? I'm wondering if I know how to do that already? LOL

I just need it to be 300 dpi for printing. Thats all that scrappers use. I really don't need anything more than that.

[Ron Duke]

Hi Tammy,
Just "Select All" and "Arrange, Convert Line to Shape". Now your lines have become shapes.
ron