Xara X shadow icon

[RAMWolff44]

Well, I certainly appologize, I was not meaning to come off as putting your down for the lack of understanding English, not at all. I guess I wasn't thinking. As for Symbols, that works for me too. Just some of the more complex ideas that Eobet offered up would not translate to tiny icons so easily, IMHO!

Here's something simplistic. I did 3, the last being about the needed dimentions of the icons currently displayed in XaraX. Of course that brings up another request. For those of us with vision issues it would be nice to have the option to place text on the side or underneith and to have a couple of different sizes of icons to choose from. Many programs are allowing for these nice little user extras, like CorelDraw! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Richard http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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[Turan]

I'm with Gary - if its not broken...

There is nothing worse than buying an upgrade to tap into new features, just to have to relearn the old ones!

What sells Xara (IMHO) is the existing user group (this place) so think first of existing users.

Make Xara bigger if you want but with new features.

Turan

[ED]

I have to get my 2 cents in here too.

I like many others like the S with a shadow. Here is why its the most intuative...

1. S = Shadow
2. Text is one of the most common uses for shadows
3. Visually intuative, with the letter S having an S shadow behind. Does not get any clearer or intuative as this.

The logic to be the same as Xara 3D is also good and sound reasoning.

The BEST is good enough!

[beatz]

Before thinking about icon modifications for the shadow tool what about improving the shadow tool itself ?

Or to be more specific, the "convert to editable shapes" option in terms of shadows.
As said a while ago, it's still not possible to export the shadows as .ai or whatever, even when you have converted the shadow to shape.

Like, after converting to shape the shadow now *is* a shape or not ? If it is, it should be *exportable*. But it isn't - even when the shadow has zero transparence.

Things like that are way more important than fancy little icons.

[RAMWolff44]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by beatz:
Before thinking about icon modifications for the shadow tool what about improving the shadow tool itself ?

Or to be more specific, the "convert to editable shapes" option in terms of shadows.
As said a while ago, it's still not possible to export the shadows as .ai or whatever, even when you have converted the shadow to shape.

Like, after converting to shape the shadow now *is* a shape or not ? If it is, it should be *exportable*. But it isn't - even when the shadow has zero transparence.

Things like that are way more important than fancy little icons.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No, It becomes a bitmap. Don't know why Charles and Co. couldn't have the code so it transformes it into a shape with the right amount of feathering and transparency applied. Including floor shadows. It's not impossible but it may be too much to do right now. I think this new release is supposed to be more of a bug fix and face lift type of thing. Personally I would like to see the import and export filters majorly updated and improved upon, including more vector filters included. The brush engine fixed, some 3D lights and bump maps and more quick shapes added in. The program would be PERFECT for my needs at this point!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Richard http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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http://www.ramwolffsworld.com/RAMWolffsWorld

[beatz]

Well the shadow does become a bitmap but open it in AI10 and in 90% of cases you'll see the bitmap is just a grey/black square in AI.

What i just don't get - there *is* the option to convert the shadow to shapes already so why the frigg doesn't it behave like a shape then ?

ARRRGH ! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[RAMWolff44]

Probably because Illy tries to change it into a vector and fills it with gray. If you do a complicated shape and then give it a shadow and then ungroup it and export it a .ai file and open it in Illy does the shadow layer transformed into a complicated shaped filled with gray??

Well, I have Illy 8 and just tried it and it read the ungrouped bitmap as a rectangle. So I then just created a bitmap copy of the shape, rasterized it and then applied a Gaussian Blur at setting 24 and that looks as good at the shadow I gave it in XaraX. So there is your work around.

So unless Charles and Co. figure out a way to have the shadow, once ungrouped, as a copy of the shape(s) with a proper feather and transparency applied then I doubt that you are going to find joy in this area! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Richard http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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http://www.ramwolffsworld.com/RAMWolffsWorld

[beatz]

Thanks Richard - have you applied the Gaussian Blur in Illy or still in X before exporting?

Will try that route for sure http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

The thing i still don't get is why the shadow has to be converted to bitmap *although* there is an option to convert the shadow to shape?

One would think if i can convert to shape then that's what i have then as a result: a shape, and one that behaves just like the others as well.

[RAMWolff44]

One of the things that I really like about Canvas 9 is there is an option to either for "object" or "image". The downside to it in Canvas 9 is that there is NO feather tool, so you can have an "object" shadow created but then there is no feathering tool. You can, however, use the drop down menu and choose to apply gaussian blur to (kinda the same thing with Illy 8 as a work around) So all the "object" shadow does is basically creates a copy of the shape with your chosen color fill.

Here's a dialog example. Charles should take a gander at this example!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

As you can see I have created a 70% black "object" shadow and you will notice that the "Image options" are grayed out. So no bluring! But once the "Image" Shadow type is clicked then all those other options are available. It's a neat program but it's got some major bugs and no feathering tool and it's .ai export tool is kinda funky. It exported fine and the shadow, even with the gaussian blur applied to it in Canvas 9 exported fine but when I opened it up in Illy 8 it was very strange indeed. The shadow was fine, blurred was intact, but the shape itself was hidden within this screen. So I ungrouped it (or as Illy calls it "release compound path") and once that was done I was able to fish out the shape. So there's always something isn't there!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

If we had something similar in XaraX along with the feathering tool we would be in business. Flawless .ai exports with an all vector export!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Richard http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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http://www.ramwolffsworld.com/RAMWolffsWorld

[This message was edited by RAMWolff on January 23, 2004 at 11:44.]

[Charles Moir]

The reason it works this way is that shadows, and all soft edged objects such as feathers, have to be simulated since there is no Postscript vector standard for soft edged shapes. 'Soft' and 'Vector' do not go together in the Postscript world. So the 'make shapes' makes a real vector shape and then fills it with an alpha-channel bitmap so it looks just like the shadow. But this is now a separate editable shape.

So the issue is really that we can't export alpha channel bitmaps into Illustrator. The reason for that is that Illustrator did not support these features when we wrote the AI export (features such as soft shadows, transparency and many others, came way after they did in Xara products). Newer AI versions now support alpha bitmaps (and they do shadows a similar way by bitmaps). But hopefully in future we can improve the AI exporter to better export such objects into Illustrator. We all want this, but it's not easy chasing a moving target.

As far as shadow tools in Illustrator and Canvas, these are not, in my opinion, in the same league as Xara X. Illustrator creates shadows by creating a fixed resolution bitmap. So much for resolution independence which is meant to be a core tenet of drawing programs. Canvas, it would appear, just creates a simple vector object. That is not a soft shadow, so no comparison.

Xara X soft shadow tool creates real, on-the-fly, live, interactive, resolution independent editable soft shadow objects. They follows all the rules of all Xara X objects. You can color it the same way. You can even apply grad fills and grad transparency to shadows. The live WYSIWYG drag-on-the page UI is the most direct, interactive, simple UI of any tool out there. Oh and note how the floor shadow burs more, the further away from the object it is. It's not perfect, but is a lot better than all the other shadow tools we've ever come across.