brushes missing brush stroke and mask object questions

For some reason my additional brushes are no longer available on the brush dropdown. It appears that the link to the brush gallery is no longer fuctioning. i've tried reinstalling the content without success. How do I relink the library.
And can I adjust the brush stroke shape profile? So that I can draw a line and then use a customised profile to vary the width of the stroke.
Also is there a way to create an automatic mask from a selected shape, eg select the leg, create a mask from the leg shape and then paint over the leg, and have the stroke limited to the underlying object's area?
Thanks for your help.

are you saying that your custom brushes appear in the line gallery but not in the freehand and brush tool dropdown on the infobar?
when you say you tried to restore content, were some xar files missing from C:\Program Files\Xara\Xara Designer Pro X\12\Templates\ENG\Brushes ?

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And can I adjust the brush stroke shape profile? So that I can draw a line and then use a customised profile to vary the width of the stroke

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you can appy the predefined stroke shapes/profiles from the line gallery; you can apply an art brush that you have created yourself that has a specific profile; but you cannot edit these profiles on the fly, ie: you cannot tweak the profile at specific points along the line

I don't use xara masking so, sorry, I can't help you with the last point, hopefully someone else can...

another though occurs - when you use a brush, it moves from it's normal place in the line gallery to the gallery document brushes folder and it stays there until you close the program, even if you close the file you were using it in first

Thanks, I resolved the problem with a reinstall. n
New question though, is there a keyboard shortcut for increasing and decreasing the brush/line size?

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Originally Posted by JohnArtbox

Thanks, I resolved the problem with a reinstall. n
New question though, is there a keyboard shortcut for increasing and decreasing the brush/line size?

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Glad the original problem is sorted.

Click in the Line width box on the current width to highlight that then use your mouse scroll button.

Acorn

Never knew you could do that Acorn!

answering the question: no sorry you cannot increase/decrease the line width using a shortcut [or cursor keys] in the way you can in lots of other software [eg inkscape]

as Acorn kindly pointed out you can click and scroll, but you are limited to the values in the drop down which are frequently not helpful - you can preset these, but you need to leave the program and use XaReg utility [or edit registry] every time you change them, and you are still limited to the number of steps in the dropdown

to call this clunky is an understatement