Xara Requests, next try

I just came back to the forum and found the news on the Xara/Magix changes. I hadn't updated Xara for a while so I downloaded the latest version from Xara,com. All good so far.

So here are the two requests (again) I have been asking for for the last few years. Let's see if Xara will pick them up, but not holding my breath.

1. True 16bit colours in image exports. On screen is a nice-to-have but not a must-have for my work flow.

2. Removal of the hard number of max pixels in image exports. It is now around 18000 pixels max. Not sure if this is even possible with the current render engine but hey, one can ask, no? And yes, I know that you can upscale the image but there is always a loss especially with line drawings.

Hi Fred, welcome back

I think, although it is only a guess, that the image export limitation is because the export filter code is 32bit; the internal bimap copy has the same limitation and so probably uses the same coding

I can drag/drop a bitmap that is 30,000 pixels in size into xara and, provided it is tagged at say 600dpi, xara will render it in the workspace [at 4800 pixels for 600dpi], but it will not bitmap copy, it will not export

what you ask for is on my list of things that would encourage me to go pro+ but as things stand, what practical use would it have for the building of websites or the creation of office documents which is where xara is now at; until they go full 64bit the program loses out to affinity for me

still one can only hope

As a former coder I can imagine that that is the case but come on: it is 2023 now. 16 bit colours is a necessity nowadays.

Currently I am working on a huge (i.e. highly detailed) image so I am not sure Affinity is up to the task. A rough estimate for what I am working on has 2.000.000 objects. When this is finished I will have a go at Affinity on a smaller image. Hopefully I can do an export of an example to psd or something. My current experience is that it doesn't work very well.

I sympathise Fred

I presume by 16 bit colour you mean 16bits per RGB channel, ie 48bits [64 bits with alpha] total per pixel ?

For high quality art that is a must, agreed

affinity is ok, in my experience, up to the limit of PSD: 30,000 pixels [technically 100 megapix, 120MB file size I understand]; unfortunately it does not cater for adobe large file size PSB, so beyond that limit I am not sure....

Yeah, per channel so 48 bit. I have very big gradient areas and you see a lot of banding there.

Fred, miracles might happen.
I think the hard limit is 2^14 - 1 (16383px).
What are your needed W&H sizes?

In the meantime, in #3 above, you mention ~2M objects. That is quite a few, regardless of the size of the final image.
My machine chokes on 132,000 rectangles and they are alternative black and blue.

The only way I can see you working with so much is to have a very large page and put each smaller image on its own layer.
I tried 65536px square and it is almost visible on my monitor at 5% page scaling.
With 4k, you are probably all right.
i have found that even this chokes Xara.

You probably, therefore, need to work on each of the 53 images in separate design files and export each as an image.
You would then need a grid for stitching them back together.
I would make each tile 512px square and basically, have the full 8192px square image stuff into that. You would then have a dpi of 24,576.
Obviously that is barking but you could design when you zoom in to replace the original image at double the resolution and repeat that at each doubling of the zoom.

A fair project.

Acorn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fred vanderZee

Yeah, per channel so 48 bit. I have very big gradient areas and you see a lot of banding there.

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the banding issue has been in xara 'forever' - gradients are limited to 256 steps [0-255] - it really is not good enogh for work like this

Quote:

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Originally Posted by acorn

I think the hard limit is 2^14 - 1 (16383px)

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I can see the logic in that - and a quick test showed the export dialog won't accept values typed in above that level and export correctly

I have it from memory to keep texture tile creation to max 16,000 px square in xara....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fred vanderZee

Yeah, per channel so 48 bit. I have very big gradient areas and you see a lot of banding there.

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@fred but mostly all.
In the Plus versions, 'simple' shapes and fills are achieved in CSS, or in SVG, when activated.

A box with a linear fill renders the fill as CSS linear gradient.
A box with an elliptical fill has an SVG data image URL.
it doesn't really matter what these are or do but they are not dimensioned; they rely on the browser to render at any scale.
No banding. Well, less as you are now trusting your browser engine to do the hard work.

It seems a shame to destroy all this fidelity by making the end result into an image.
It you must then go for WebP, also in the Plus editions.
I had a gradient 1280px wide and saving as WebP:

Attachment 134004

I found the banding to be lessened than PNG @500%.
It is also possible to apply a CSS blur to the final image.
The SVG-rendered image was by far the best.

Acorn

how well do they print ?

I may be wrong but I seem to recall that Fred creates posters....

Certainly if I were to be doing anything that good [unlikely in this liketime] I would be wanting posters....

Well, printing has to be down to the printer and its gamut and ink bleed.

If, however, you are asking about a source PDF, I tried a a linear page gradient and exported @9600dpi with no complaints.
I only managed to see banding at 6400% scaling of the PDF.
I have no idea what dpi a PDF can handle.

Acorn

although the theoretical size of a PDF file can be very large indeed, according to spec I have you are limited to about 5m [tad under 200 inches] if you use illustrator/acrobat-distiller which is a fair number of pixels... dpi is just a packing ratio, n’est-ce pas?

@Acorn, sorry for the late reply, but I was hit by a severe case of food poisoning. Couldn't eat for 5 days. Am better now but still not totally recovered.

Anyway, yes, I do draw my images as a separate image. They do have different backgrounds from the final image though, so - since part of the image is transparent - I collect all the separate layers into one grouped image and copy/paste that into the final image as vectors. Since there are 53 highly detailed images, you can imagine the sheer amount of vectors, transparences and shades.
For printing, I can separate the final mandala in parts and have them printed, then assembled together again. Size would be several meters wide, like 5 - 6 meters.
A high definition version is useful for projecting (zooming in/out) as well.
I am also looking into projecting this on mountain ranges in the Himalayas. Would be nice to have this in hi-res ;)

Have a look at my FB page in my sig for examples of my work.