xara picture editor bug?

I use the xara picture editor sometimes, but in XXP4 it seems to have changed
a bit.

I used to put pictures in the xxp window and then double click and
the xara picture editor would appear, that still works, but then I would
crop a part of the picture and press the green V and the cropped part
would appear in de XXP window, but now something strange happens
the size of the picture i wanted to crop is still there but the cropped
part is enlarged in the dimensions of the former picture, is that a bug or
has something changed??

I can confirm that it works like that for me too. It takes the cropped area and fills the original bitmap space with it. Seems like a bug to me!

I know it's habit, but why don't you crop (clip) with the photo tool built into XX4. It's much quicker and as Xara says its non-destructive.

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Originally Posted by ss-kalm

I can confirm that it works like that for me too. It takes the cropped area and fills the original bitmap space with it. Seems like a bug to me!

I know it's habit, but why don't you crop (clip) with the photo tool built into XX4. It's much quicker and as Xara says its non-destructive.

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Hmm thanks, didn't know about that, and I just did it the way I always done it
I give it a try, thanks man.

edit: I have tried the new one but somehow i like the old way better, yes it might be habit
but we are creatures of habit.

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Originally Posted by ankhor

.........but we are creatures of habit.

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We certainly are.

There are lots of good reasons for using the built-in photo features instead of XPE. It's much, much faster, and requires no memory. And I think pretty much everything you could do in XPE can now be done better in the Photo tool, certainly cropping. (Red-eye is the one thing that still done using XPE)

(Tip for cropping: Just go into Photo tool and drag across photo - this automatically starts a clip region. Then double click to complete the crop.)

Charles, I don't think you addressed the original problem. Although as you say there are reasons to use the Photo tool instead of XPE, the XPE should at least function correctly. I've never seen a crop tool that crops the image, but keeps the size the same before.....

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Originally Posted by Charles Moir

There are lots of good reasons for using the built-in photo features instead of XPE. It's much, much faster, and requires no memory. And I think pretty much everything you could do in XPE can now be done better in the Photo tool, certainly cropping. (Red-eye is the one thing that still done using XPE)

(Tip for cropping: Just go into Photo tool and drag across photo - this automatically starts a clip region. Then double click to complete the crop.)

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I figured that out the first time. ;)

I could also make a black square, put it over the region I want to crop
and do an 'arrange'-'combine shapes'-'intersect shapes' (which I do
if the region I want isn`t a square but a shape I make with the shape editor tool.) But I used to do it a lot with XPE and I am used to it, but I can still do it that way by saving it first and then dropping it in the window of XXP4.
I just wanted to know if this could be fixed, but if it isn`t a priority, I can work around it. There are more important things to address first I have seen too.

Seems like that would be because the photo is really just a shape with a bitmap fill. Making the fill bitmap smaller doesn't necessarily make the shape smaller. If XPE makes the image smaller, the shape should get smaller too. Except that if you're filling a shape with a bitmap and want to edit the bitmap to make it smaller, you may not want the shape to change size.

A dilly of a pickle, to be sure.

Unfortunately I don't have any experience with how that used to work. I used to always use PSP to get any photos/bitmaps ready and then import them. Now that the photo editor is built in, this is a huge time saver for me. (That plus the text repel feature was totally worth the upgrade price, for me).

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Originally Posted by Odat

Seems like that would be because the photo is really just a shape with a bitmap fill. Making the fill bitmap smaller doesn't necessarily make the shape smaller. If XPE makes the image smaller, the shape should get smaller too. Except that if you're filling a shape with a bitmap and want to edit the bitmap to make it smaller, you may not want the shape to change size.

A dilly of a pickle, to be sure.

Unfortunately I don't have any experience with how that used to work. I used to always use PSP to get any photos/bitmaps ready and then import them. Now that the photo editor is built in, this is a huge time saver for me. (That plus the text repel feature was totally worth the upgrade price, for me).

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Yep just discovered that I need to double click the part that was
cropped, now that is fast, I think I could get used to that. ;)
Didn`t read the piece that Charles wrote good enough, now I found
out what he ment, so I have to agree that it is fast.

Another thing I noticed, that if I choose a picture to open with
I loose the white page thingie in the back, is that supposed to happen
because it didn`t happen in XXP3.2, or do I have to do it through the import
to keep the white page thingie in the back now?

I believe that's a new feature. if you say New->Photo Document, you end up with the same thing.

Basically what it does is assume that you're editing a bitmap image for later export, so it makes sure that the page size always exactly matches the size of the image that you're editing. So if you for example add a drop shadow to the image, the "page size" modifies itself accordingly. The pasteboard is a darker than usual color to remind you.

I think you do have to import to get the old behavior. If you drop the image on the page, it works the old way, but if you drop it on the title bar of the Xara window, you get the new behavior (assuming I'm remembering that correctly).

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Originally Posted by ankhor

Another thing I noticed, that if I choose a picture to open with I loose the white page thingie in the back, is that supposed to happen

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Yes.
Odat is correct. Photo Documents have no 'page' size until there are objects (photos) on the page. The page size is dynamic. It's a slightly different work environement.

The Help file explains:

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Photo Documents
Sometimes it's useful to work on one photo alone, rather than as "objects on a page". This is called a photo document or "photo mode" in Xtreme Pro, and it behaves more like a traditional photo editor. You can create a photo document in a number of ways:

Drag a photo file from your file explorer onto the title bar or other bar of Xara Xtreme
Select "File -> Open" and select a photo file
Create a blank photo document by selecting "File -> New -> Blank photo"
Photo documents are characterized by the following behavior differences compared to traditional Xtreme Pro documents:

There is no visible white page. In fact the page dimensions are set automatically to match the photo plus any other objects you've added. So initially when you load a JPEG, the page dimensions are set to match that of your photo exactly. If, for example, you add some text underneath your photo, or you add a shadow, the page immediately expands to fit in your additions. Or if you scale down your photo in the Select tool to reduce its size, the page dimensions reduce to match. So you don't need to continually manually adjust the page dimensions to match your design and, unlike with most photo editors, you don't need to plan in advance the dimensions of your finished photo.
Photo documents have a 1 pixel grid by default and snap to grid is turned on. This makes it easier to get pixel-accurate crop or clip regions.
The Pasteboard (the area around the photo) is a darker color. This makes it easy to distinguish at a glance between photo documents and drawing documents.
The document zoom is set so that the photo fills the view and the Photo tool is automatically selected as the current tool.
Dropping additional photo files on top of an existing photo just adds a new photo to the document instead of replacing the photo in its frame.
The pixel smoothing options are altered. By default it selects the "Very high quality" display mode, which is best for images scaled down or zoomed out. It also has pixel smoothing turned off when zooming in, so you can see the pixels are very large zoom factors.
In all other respects Photo Documents behave like normal Xara Xtreme Pro 4 documents. You can use all the normal drawing and text tools as usual. If you want to create a photo document of a given size, you can alter the "canvas" or page size by selecting "Utilities -> Options" and the "Page" tab and entering the required dimensions.

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Originally Posted by sledger

Yes.
Odat is correct. Photo Documents have no 'page' size until there are objects (photos) on the page. The page size is dynamic. It's a slightly different work environement.

The Help file explains:

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Hmm a case of RTFM, I should do that one of these days. :o