Once i have a shape drawn, how do I cut a slice out of it?
Thanks.
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Once i have a shape drawn, how do I cut a slice out of it?
Thanks.
You need a shape to cut out of the other shape which we can call the cookie cutter. Select the cookie cutter shape and the bottom shape and from the Arrange menu, select Combine Shapes... Subtract Shapes.
Or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl 2.
The cookie cutter shape disappears after doing its cutting so if you need a duplicate of the cutter shape, make one before you perform the operaiton.
Visit Workbook 35 for an explanation of all Xara's path commands.
Gary
To further the question. How do I "extract" the area delineated by the green border in the attached.
If you draw round the bit you want to keep and select both the drawn and original objects, Ctrl-3 will keep the bit shared by both objects and Ctrl-4 will keep both inside bit and the rest as two objects
Tony
That is very tedious. Other tools you can extract by simply telling the tool to look for color differences.
Anything like that in XARA?
Xara is a vector editor with some raster functions - you would be better off using a raster editor (photoshop, paint shop pro, gimp, etc.) to extract the area you want, export it and then use it in Xara.
Ok I cut the shape as shown. However, when I export to gif or jpg it takes the white background as well. All I want is the shape itself.
Jpg can't have transparencies. You'll need to use gif (limited to 256 colours) or png (1000's colours but internet explorer has problems with these)
So export as a gif and just click the wine glass icon in the export dialogue box.
You might want to take a little time to get a handle on the differences between vector/draw functions and bitmap/raster/paint functions, and on the characteristics of the standard bitmap formats, particularly gif, jpg, png and tif.Quote:
Originally Posted by PMH
In this post, you mentioned the white background in a gif and a jpg. To have just the shape, you have to have a transparent background. Jpgs don't do transparency. With a gif, it can be transparent or not. In Xara's export dialog, look for the wineglass icon. When you're exporting a gif and you want it to have a transparent background, make sure that icon is depressed.
As for cutting your shape out of the bitmap, Tony's advice is the quickest and best approach. Using Xara's tools, it will take a few seconds' work. Use the Pen tool to click around the shape on a few major points, then nudge the lines into curves with your mouse pointer. If necessary, clean it up with the Shape Editor tool. Then intersect or slice as Tony says.
As for selecting your soccer ball peach with a magic wand (the common name for a "select by color" tool in a paint program), since its colors are black and white, which are at opposite ends of the color spectrum, I expect you'll have an interesting time trying to pick up the shape that way. OTOH, it might be a useful learning experience.
Between Xara's movies and Gary's XaraXone workbooks and tutorials, you can get a quick grip on Xara's tools and capabilities, with a pretty good graphics education thrown in for good measure.
For functions that are strictly bitmap, such as the magic wand, you'll need to poke around in some bitmap apps. Paint Shop Pro is a good place to go for that. You may be able to dig up an earlier release for just a few bucks. OTOH, the current version (Paint Shop Pro X) has an instruction panel open by default. When you select a tool, instructions for using it are right there. That could be helpful when you're just getting started.
Dear all Xtremers:
I consider myself a newbie although I have had XARA XTREME [X X] for over a year. I have been using CorelDraw and Photoshop for years, but I loved X X when I used it. I imagine myself using it for all my projects except for one thing. One and only ONE feature. That is selecting by color. Almost every project I work on I use Selection by color, i.e. selecting all areas having a particular color.
I tried using Color Names but after 12 hours of trying and using Help I gave up. I also used convert to Bitmap, but that is not very precise. whenever I go to Photoshop tome the feature I stay There.
I am very familiar of differences between vector wd raster images, but would like to have this feature in XX. Any way of doing this in XX, somehow?
Please HELP?
Thanks.
I had a similar cut-out problem and my solution was to use the bitmap tracer. I could then select the border colour, in your case the green, which would be a filled green object. I pasted that over my bitmap adjusted the size and the used Arrange/combine/slice to cut out my original.
This should also give useful 'mask' shapes for almost any flat(ish) colour area with the bitmap.
This works quite well with a hi-res bitmap and complex outlines, but can result in inaccuracies
on the edges of a low- res bitmap.
Oh the settings I used for the bitmap tracer were; Photo, 50 passes, remove noise 0%, minimum area 0, both colour tolerences at 75%, 95% accuracy and 5% smoothing.
By the way, it would be nice to have a thread or perhaps a section in the Xara zone that users could give lots of settings and example results for the tracer, this would certainly help rid us of a great deal of trial and error with this utility.
There is a great tutorial called Xara Bitmap Tracer vs Adobe Live Trace with a lot of details and tips about the right settings.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkMyWords
Regards,
Remi
Excellent, thanks Remi.
It would be a very problematic feature for Xara and vectors. A vector shape can have more than one colour (it can have a blend between colours, or a bitmap) and you can't select half a vector object. Perhaps that will help you to understand the problem.
Paul
Quicker to just do it! (3 minutes...)
I agree that in this particular case, the outline is so simple that tracing it manually would be just as fast as the method I explained, but for complex outlines, that method can be a great time-saver (and with actions/macros it would be very much faster).
On a more general note, I have noticed many Xara users being a little 'defensive' about Xara and resisting ideas coming from bitmap orientated artists.
I understand entirely that those familiar with Xara, and vector programs in general, are quite happy with it and don't want this gem 'fixed when it isn't broke'.
As a working illustrator (many years as a Photoshop user) I'm always looking for better, more efficient ways of working, we have to compete for a living and time is money.
From seeing Xaras capabilities, speed and the quality of it's output and also watching the progrees of MS's Expression, I am becoming convinced that the future of all digital art (at least 2D art) will be in vector software. There is nothing that can be done in a bitmap program that a vector program cannot emulate and the output of vectors is of a vastly better quality.
If my assessment is right, then those vector programs that make it easier for bitmap artists to transfer their skills will make the greatest gains in expanding their user base. Let's face it there are many times more bitmap artists than vector artists (yes, I know there are those that use both types of program).
That does not mean significant changes to Xara itself (certainly not making it 'bloatware' like Adobe products have become), but perhaps one or two new tools/options and some aspects of its presentation/tutorials aimed at encouraging bitmap artists to make the move to Xara.
This may be wandering off topic ;) - yes, we can be defensive but that is perhaps because we have seen software bloating, and sometimes adept use of a tool is quicker and produces better results than a gizmo.
On tracing, having watched the struggles of developers to produce effective tools and then as a user still had to do a lot of work to achive good results (eg with Corel Knockout 2), I think that if a company has say 100 programmer-days to use, then there may be other tricks which are a better use of that time. Other threads have done some of these to death and we just wait for the next release in hopeful expectation!