Printable View
Just some ideas for the improvement of this aplication
1) A inverse feather opition, it's hard to create this effect yet o.o
http://www.sigmawd.com.br/andre/temp...se-feather.jpg
2) An opition to change the shadow size, usefull too.
http://www.sigmawd.com.br/andre/temp...ing-shadow.jpg
3) And at last an option to change the center of a gradient, *the other program* already have this function.
http://www.sigmawd.com.br/andre/temp...r-changing.jpg
Until next time.
I'm not sure what you mean by inverse feather. Why would you want to do that? You can give the effect of feathering in any direction with the wise placement of shapes.
Resizing shadows can already be done.
(1) Apply shadow to object.
(2) Convert to Editable Shape
(3) Ungroup
The shadow and the original object are now separate shapes. You can resize, apply a different fill or whatever to the shadow now.
On changing the center of a gradient, Xara Xtreme already does that, not sure about the LX version. Just grab any of the handles and move them where you want. You can even right click on end selection nodes and change the fill blend colors.
This clues are only for the LX version, I don't have even used the windows one, the way you told me to resize the shadow don't work yet on the version and I think you don't understand the way I whant the center of gradient to be changed, it's not change the position of the role thing, only the center making such a gravitacional effect, on this exemple i've changed both the position and the center but take a look only on the center of the white circle and you will understand and this "inverse feather" still a mistery to me if you explain me how to do this effect I surelly apreciate it. :rolleyes:
You can do off-centre grads with the blend tool for circles and any other shape you can imagine (e.g. sunburst guitar effect).
If the grduated fill were to be able to do this you'd have to be able to size the limits of the effect (whether circular or otherwise) and move the centre. Rotating wouldn't be too useful unless the "blend" rotates gradually too.
The difference between this and the circular grad, is that the circular grad extends infinitely(?) in all directions at the same rate. In the graduation that you've given as an example the graduation is limited to the extent of the circle in which it sits.
Perhaps Xara LX is not feature complete in it's toolset yet, but the following works in the old Xara X (ie. the version before X1 and Xtreme):
For feathering, first create the shape you want as a "hole", feather and subtract it from a much larger shape. Then add that subtracted shape into a clipview of the outer bounds you want the shape to have.
For a more dynamic shadow than what the presets offer, simply create a new shape, set it to black with some transparency (linear if you want even) and apply some feathering. Voila, a shadow you have complete control over!
The centre of the gradient, ok... that's a stretch and now I'm going to give you the sort of tips I hate receiving in these forums (all long time members know their way around Xara like the back of their own hand, so whenever you ask for new tools, this is always the answer you get)... You can accomplish this with the blend shape tool. Place a source and a target shape, and blend between them. Then alter the color and feathering for each until you have reached the effect you want. (Yeah, I wouldn't be happy with that either, but you can expect a lot of those type of "helpful-but-not-really-what-i-wanted" answers on these forums.) ;)
I also want more tools (ie. mesh fill) :p but somewhere you have to draw the line, I think.
I'd also like to add something about the feathering.
There are actually two types of feathering in Xara Xtreme - Graduated transparency and feathering control.
The closest you can get to what you're example shows is to have an eliptical graduated transparency. Not great for anything other than elipses though.
Uses? Plenty I can see. Vingetting, edge masking and other framing techniques.
What I would like to see in the feathering control (and this would provide what you're looking for too!) would be a way to select which edges get feathered (inner, outer, this half, that half etc). One could add control points to limit the effect precisely. This would provide the facility to partially feather a polygon which would be fantastic for photo composition, motion effects and probably loads of other things (not to mention shadows and highlights).
It's easy to simulate inverted feathering !
1° draw an unfilled closed shape with no line ;
2° clone this shape (Ctrl+K) and apply a wide line to the clone ;
3° draw a wide rectangle around the whole, select it toghether with the cloned shape and do Arrange/Join Shapes ;
4° apply feathering to your newly joined shapes ;
5° apply clip view.
Now you can Ctrl+click on your feathered object to select it inside the clipping object and you can even move it around to create asymetric fathering.
Much more, try to select the whole Clip View object and add a different amount of feathering to it and you will see a lot of very nice possibilities.
For more about feathering combined with Clip View and grouping, see here : http://talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=14586
kindly,
ivan
Or you could just apply contour, select internal contour and up the step count until you get a smooth gradiation.