New feature in CS5 could have been in Xara 5

So I posted this feature (Paint Inside) a couple of years back in this forum. No one seemed to think it that great especially Xara but apparently Adobe thought it was because now it's in CS5. The only difference in my version is that you would paint with a bitmap brush i.e. a simple airbrush type brush to create nice auto clipped shaded areas. I'm sorry to see that Adobe get's the claim for being innovative in this feature when it should have been Xara when X5 came out. Sure you can go through the painstaking process of a workaround but this is a workflow issue that would greatly speed up shading of vector objects and quite honestly this has always been the bottleneck of vector art. There have been many different attempts at enhancing vector shading like adobe mesh tool but really so far all of these are slow and cumbersome to use. I don't specifically like the vector brush implementation that Adobe has because you really can't get a nice smooth shade easily with a vector brush as you can with a bitmap brush.

http://www.adobe.com/products/creati...ID=0&npObjID=2

s.g.

This is easy to do in Xtreme. In my example below I created a quick brush by drawing an ellipse and giving it a light colour then cloned it an gave the clone a darker colour. Next I gave the clone a bitmap transparency to give the brush a little texture. Then I grouped both ellipses and gave the group a circular transparency, setting the starting transparency at around 40%. Next I made a bitmap copy and made some duplicates of the bitmap in varying sizes and even squashed one. I selected all the bitmaps and made my brush the one important thing to remember is that Xtreme will as a default tile your brush so go to the fill properties tab of the edit brush dialogue and clear the check mark from tile fills. Once you have finished adjusting your brush settings ie: spacing etc. just paint on your shading and hit Q on your keyboard to clip it when you are done.

then you hit the problem you always hit with xtreme brushes - changing the color before you use it

plus the problems you can get when resizing the line

no problems in illustrator CS4 either way and therefore I would imagine not in CS5

.....

Yes, I knew someone would post the "but it's easy to do in Xara" and yet look how many steps it took to do that. That is exactly why I said this is a workflow enhancement. There are always workarounds for most things but ease of use and intuitive workflow is what designers that have deadlines look for. Hence I am not looking for responses to workarounds as I'm sure there are many. The point was that this feature is much simpler and faster to achieve. Actually there are not many, look how uneven your attempt at shading turned out in this example. I know that yes you could have done a better job if you had put more time into it but even so. With an airbrush tool that was bitmap based and a tablet. One swipe and you would have been done. That's a half second to do where as your explanation took a minute or more.

Often many little things make a big difference at the end of the day.
Actually appereance panel and brushes sold me to Illustrator: the time saved with those tools make Illustrator as fast as Xara albeit being slower at screen rendering.

A program has something a Xara program doesn't have. Got it. Brushes need renovation, agreed. Frances was showing how to do something in Xtreme and is consistently helpful on here. No need to be so dismissive sgiff. If your thread is not asking for suggestions how to do this in Xara Xtreme and is just about what AI has shouldn't it be an Off Topic thread, especially as you knew somebody would post something helpful here?

Hi John

Trouble is - for those of us that draw with brushes [as you would with a real brush or pen or pencil ] xtreme brushes are unworkable - but they were never designed for this, fair enough as far as it goes

I have Illustrator/Photoshop CS4

Quite a while back a member here told me off for moaning about brushes and said I should go forth and use the right program

Well I have, and now only 40 % of my coloring is done in xtreme as a result, because it is not worth chopping and changing for the small stuff.

The more I get into CS4 the more I find it is well fast enough - not talking here about 'this operation is faster than that' - I am talking about looking at the whole project from start to finish...

In xtreme I love the soft groups, because I still 'paste up' comic pages in xtreme and soft groups makes that a lot easier - but pasting up comic pages is not the major part of my work...


@FRANCES [angelize] If I was one who appeared dismissive I am sorry - but it was not of you, who as John says are most helpful

Its just that the program and I have diverged these last 2 years; I still enthuse the things I love about it, but....

Hi Steve. It wasn't you who I thought was being dismissive ;) I can see the problems with brushes right enough [especially for artists like yourself] - rarely experimented with them as a result - and I think you should moan more often ... they'll take notice of you one day with a bit of luck :D No, it's the point and positioning of this thread I can't fathom. Feature could have been in Xtreme ... but it isn't ... errrmm ...

yep agree - well I, for one, have given up both the bitching and the requesting too

I can do the comics in inkscape and xtreme, and [most of] the other stuff in CS4 [maybe 5 we shall see :D]

xtreme is going to make a damn fine web oriented program I think, and believe personally that this was always the intention - its a great market to be in

I understand full well what John [covoxer] said elsewhere: xtreme cannot compete with Adobe Illustrator, it has to do its own thing

Exactly! Xtreme is Xtreme, AI is AI.

Yes well I suppose I could have been a little less dismissive of Angel Eyes however I did state in my initial "post" that "sure you can go through the painstaking process of a work-a-round" which clearly means I am not looking for a "work-a-round" yet he/she quickly posted a work-a-round which is their right I suppose.

Anyway, I apologize if I offended. I suppose I'm more upset about the direction of Xara and it's becoming bloatware and ignoring the vector tools for so long that I come off as someone with a chip on my shoulder but I have been a customer for longer then most of the people on this forum, so I guess I feel that I have a right to bitch now and then but others may disagree. Next time I'll move it to off topic as suggested and people can flame me from there.

s.g.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sgiff

I suppose I'm more upset about the direction of Xara and it's becoming bloatware

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Unlike some other software which is truly bloatware (Software that is overpacked with features a result of feature creep and therefore slow or unwieldy), Xara doesn't load everything into memory or become slower to use.
For example, if you don't ever choose the HTML or Bitmap tools, then you don't ever load any into memory.
You can even remove all the HTML or bitmap related toolbar buttons if you wish.

True dat, but we'll see when 6 comes out. My guess is that they are just going to take all of the features from Web Design 6 that just came out and put them into XX6Pro. But I wouldn't say it's not bloatware now necessarily, it does take a good bit more time to load then it did 5 years ago.

sgiff:

sorry if you took it as flaming - not meant that way... when I said 'bitching' it was me I was refering to, and me alone.... ;)

we are free to do what we want [subject to the usual] - if you want to bitch go ahead I say, for what that's worth :D

it just seemed a strange way to approach things thats all.....

PS: see steve has just come in on the subject of bloatware.. never had a problem with CS4 in this repect on my current machine..... tortoise and hare.....

Honest, sgiff, my XXP5 takes 7 seconds - just timed it :D I agree with waiting to see what XXP6 has in store ... you never know! :-bd

Perhaps I misunderstood the opening post, but it seemed to me that the question was about clipping a brush stroke to a shape. That is what Xtreme's clip view does. I whole heartedly agree that Xtreme's brushes need some major TLC. But until Xara gives us better brushes this is not a bad method. most of the steps I outlined are to make a custom brush, which only takes a min or 2 actually clipping the brush to the shape takes 1 keystroke.

I too am hoping that Xara has something more for us in the next upgrade than just Web Designers new features.

While I do agree that Xtreme needs a little overhaul of the vector tools, seems it may have had the jump on the 3D extrude tools. Adobe has just included the Easy 3D extrusions which Xtreme already has.

Not really something I need but it is there all the same.

Fluid Vector painting does look sweet, may just be worth my hard earned cash this time around. I'm skipping the next round of Xtreme as it's bound to be just another web upgrade with a fancy new GUI with pull out menus. YAWN CS5 has my main web tools there in already Dreamweaver.

I was never a great lover of AI 3D tool bar the excellent way you wrap a bitmap or vector around your revolved shape, as in a label. The new tools have a fancy interface with great preview but when would and illustrator use that maybe in a Flash illustration, I don't know!

I had an uncharacteristic rant in a similar thread as this mainly about brushes with a little dig about CMYK but you have got to remember the size difference in both companies. It will cost me nearly £250 to upgrade just Illustrator from the CS3 version I now own and also I don't think the NHS department that I now work for will upgrade from CS and even the printer that I use they only use version 9. Companies will have to think more on how many bits of work that I would have to do just to spread the cost of an upgrade, so is Xara that bad? Will still need to tidy up the brushes to give illustrations a more hand drawn look.