Cropping

[elmystraw]

Do you do any selecting/cropping based on color? I hope that you do and you can tell me how! Thanks!

[steve.ledger]

Hi elmystraw,

Selecting bitmap areas by colour and magic wand tools are for pixel based editors like PhotoShop and Corel Photopaint or PSP.

You can easily define your favourite bitmap editor in Xtreme 5 which will enable you to use it's wand tool to make adjustments and returns the image to Xtreme to continue.

Open the Options and go to the Photo Editing tab, you can set Corel PhotoPaint or PhotoShop as the bitmap editor from there.

[Soquili]

The "Magic Wand" is a raster tool that looks for 'similar' colours within a matrix of pixels. What may appear as similar to your eye may not be similar to the program.

Xtreme is a vector application so there is no matrix of pixels, except in the video buffer for you monitor. A monitor is a raster device so can only display raster images.

Internally Xtreme sees only binary numbers and not pixels.

To select by colour, it must be a named colour then you can select any object that has that colour assigned to it.

Programs Like Corel Draw and Illustrator that are sold as vector applications enable raster tools by actually holding a completely raster version of your work within memory, therefore taking more resources from your computer to do it's job.


Of course Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photopaint, etc are completely raster oriented and their 'vector' tools must be rasterized when you save your file.

[Doctor Why]

No, Xara's Photo tool will do what you want.

No, it won't. If it thinks that you're working on a photo, it'll work, but if you need to crop an item of which only part of it is a photo, Xara's cropper won't work.

DW

[David O'Neil]

...Programs Like Corel Draw and Illustrator ... actually [hold] a completely raster version of your work within memory...

I was under the impression that Xtreme also held a completely raster version of what was on the screen in memory, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal to put a little raster-recognizer into Xtreme, that could magic-wand an area that was visible on screen (and possibly some off-screen), and create a plain vector shape that was a close approximation of the area selected. ??? Just have it come in as a shape with the last used color and outline, and then the user could manipulate it as they wished? (Cut it out from another shape, give it no-fill and no-outline, and use it as a clipview to make the magic-wanded area invisible in the original drawing? Totally non-destructive eraser, just remove the clipview and it is back! Of course, there is the problem that you lose your layers with clipviews, unless that has changed with 5.

[ss-kalm]

No, it won't. If it thinks that you're working on a photo, it'll work, but if you need to crop an item of which only part of it is a photo, Xara's cropper won't work.

DW

And if you're working on an item that is only part photo, how do you get it into Irfanview or MS Paint or any other programme to crop it there......?

Xara has many "crop tools" (see post #4) .... the photo tool is only part.

Again, learn to use the tools before saying they can't do it ..... You will get other people thinking that Xara Xtreme doesn't do these things, just because YOU don't know how to use it. Read the manual ........

[tonylondon]

Although I already upgraded to Xtreme 5 my bitterness has grown more that XARA had added over 100 major changes and none of them is this simple itty bitty magic Wand! Is anyone listening?

Not sure why you should feel bitter - it isn't as though Xara Ltd has promised something and not delivered it. I hope they won't mind my commenting that they are developing their program across a very wide front with limited resources. We all have our wish lists and they all differ. Only Xara Ltd can prioritise. I (hope) am learning to be patient.
Just because something appears simple to use doesn't mean it would be simple to implement.

[masque]

With regard to Magic wand tool rather than cropping, Xara Xtreme comes with Magix Photo Editor which is a bitmap program. Some tolorate it, some hate it but it does have a magic wand tool. Such tools are of limited use in most real life situations but will extract from a plain background up to a point.
If the lack of such a tool is putting you off then rest assured there is one in the bundled application, just set it to be the editor for bitmaps in utilities>options>photo editing.

If you have another editor, Gimp, Photoshop, Elements etc then just set them to open when you double click your bitmap and lasso it there. Saving will return the image to Xara.
Derek
There seems to have been a lot of answers posted since I started wrting my reply as well as moving off to cropping again so forgive me if this answer seems out of sync with the flow of the thread.

[Sadler]

Don't forget the Mehdi Eraser Classic as a form of Magic Wand.