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From reading some of the postings, I was under the impression the effects applied to the photo using the Photo Tool could be UNDONE one-by-one, similar to what can be done with the plugins and the photo editor.
I only found the Compare button in the Info Bar which undoes ALL applied effects.
Please enlighten me if I am over looking something.
John
'Compare' is designed to allow you to look at the original un edited version of the photo you have selected, it is not an undo feature. Pressing 'Compare' a second time brings you back to your edited version with all edits in place.
Ctrl+Z steps back and removes your edits one-by-one as normal.
Once you save and close the file though, you loose your undo's so it all or none (compare and return to the original photo or toggle back to the last photo change), correct?
Correct - undo buffers are not saved, which is industry standard.
But keep in mind that the settings to contrast/levels/etc/etc don't actually modify the underlying image, so you can still turn those off later on even after a save/reload and get back to your original image. What you lose is the ability to selectively turn each change off in the reverse of the order that you made them.
Absolutely.. And is why it is important to also save your work as a .xar file rather than simply exporting to bitmap and then closing.
And don't forget the original is stored in the bitmap gallery
You can even undo clipping, by using the shape editor tool to adjust the clip boundaries. Effectively the clipping is doing the same as the intersect tool would - That's why Xara went with clip as opposed to crop, which is usually destructive.
Exactly Keith.
Note that you can also use the 'Unclip' button to re adjust the clip area.
The photo effects are standard object attributes, so yes that means each can be undone, or edited, completely independently, which is not quite the same thing as the Live Effect 'stack control' feature.
With Live Effects you get an ordered list and can edit or delete items in the list. It applies each of the Live Effects, one after the other, in the order in the Live Effects list.
With the Photo tool, the enhancements are all performed together at the same time. So it's just just the like line colour, fill style, transparency etc. They are all rendered at the same time for a given object.
So yes you can alter any value, and by setting it's value back to 0 you are, in effect, undoing that change, in a non-destructive way. (even after you save / load a file). This is different from a traditional photo tool where if you say alter the brightness, and then alter it back, you are actually destroying data and degrading the quality of that image.
Three key points about the Photo tool;
1) It's non-destructive unlike other photo editors. This means the original image is retained intact, no actual pixels are irreversibly altered by the operations.
2) It applies all effects to the embedded JPEG data. Unlikely other software we do not expand and store the un-compressed JPEG in your file. This has huge space saving benefits (like > 10 times smaller files)
3) It uses no memory. Make a dozen copies of your hi-res image, give each one a different Photo Tool effect, say levels, blur, brighten, colour, whatever, and your RAM requirement stays the same and you file size doesn't grow. This aspect is truly a revolution and a revelation if you're used to Photoshop or the way other editors behave.
Combine this with the ultra-fast photo rendering (far faster than any other software) and you have some photo handling features that are generation or more ahead of anything else on the market. (While pointing out that Xara is not a pixel editor).
Thank you, Charles. This makes things perfectly clear.
Perhaps it is the way in which the info in the Help file was written, but sure it wasn't as effective as what you wrote here. If their is time to polish the Help info, Photo Tool might be a good candidate to consider.
Regards, John