Background pasteboard color

In earlier Xara opening or importing a graphic to work on always came up with a grey background/pastboard surround. Xara Xtreme 5 however frequently displays a black surround. I prefer the grey but see no way to change it. Is it possible to do so and if so how?
Bob Decker

Hi Bob, I'm not following you. Can you explain step by step and are you using the Xara Xtreme 5 standard or the Xara Xtreme 5 Pro version?

I have both versions but do not notice anything different from older and newer versions when importing an image.

Hi Bill

did ver 5 have the 'blank photo' document type - that's what this sounds like to me, and it happens automatically if you open a jpg file

Hi Steve, yes ver 5 has the 'blank photo' document type.

I see, I had never used File > Open for anything other than a .xar or .web file type. Opening a jpg does make a 'blank photo' document with the resulting dark paste board.

Any image file type I either drag and drop from Windows Explorer or use the File > Import feature.

I also never use the 'blank photo' document type. ;)

it will also happen if you drag a bitmap onto the title bar of the program window, or onto the blank workspace [not onto an open document]

I think I will see what happens if I delete the 'blank photo' template.

Removing the blank photo.xar from the templates folder makes Xara Xtreme 5 work the same as Xara Xtreme 3.2.4. No Blank Photo document type to open so no dark pasteboard.

Bob you can rename or move the Blank photo.xar file from the templates/ENG folder.

C:\Program Files\Xara\Xara Xtreme 5\Templates\ENG

thanks for that Bill

and when you've done this, the dragging I mentioned results in a xar file with the bitmap name rather than opening the bitmap itself, as well

Bill - point to check - it appears that 'Blank Photo' will reappear in the list of available templates, but the behaviour remains changed....

Steve the Blank Photo shows as disabled on my system.

I renamed the file extension.

neat way of doing it - I just renamed the xar

thanks Bill :)

Thanks all-- I got down to delete blank photo document OK but as above, it stayed in the list and still get the 100% blacck surround when try to open or import a non xar type photo. Guess Ill have to resave as xar before openng/importing in order to work with grey surround. Maybe just tempest in a teapot as I haven't fully checked out working on a photo with the black surround to determine if it limts anything I wsh to do
Bob

Again, Thanks All. Renaming blank document template seems to have done the trick OK. For the record when I mentioned an earlier version, I was talking the version when Corel took over for awhile in mid-1990's.! TTFN Bob