Drawing on a grey shape

When I draw on a grey shape with Freehand Tool, the line doesn't show up (as black) until the moment I have finished the line. Usually, on a white field, it's blue, turning to black. How can I see what I am drawing on a grey field please?

When I draw on a grey shape with Freehand Tool, the line doesn't show up (as black) until the moment I have finished the line. Usually, on a white field, it's blue, turning to black. How can I see what I am drawing on a grey field please?

It can be downright difficult to see what you are doing with the freehand tool when drawing over an object or background that is 50% black. I suspect this is something that Xara Ltd can address in the next version of Xara --- the pen tool, which also draws on the fly, doesn't have this problem.

The times I've run into this I've found that through concentration (ouch!) I can get along okay without getting too confused. A more practical approach could be to draw a temporary rectangle filled with some other colour and draw on top of it with your freehand tool. The rectangle can be given transparency to allow you to see what's under it. Delete it when you are done.

Regards, Ross

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I usually put the grey object/s on a layer by themself/ves (if you get my drift). Then I give them a flat transparency of 70 percent which I remove when I've finished working with the freehand tool on the layer above.

Jess

Both good ideas, thanks.

The way Xara handles drawing on top of colors is to make the on-the-fly line appear in high contrast to the color underneath it, i.e. drawing a freehand line on a blue background will give you a white line, black gives you yellow, etc. I'm not sure what the relationship is between the two colors but as you approach 50% grey the values get nearer to each other and eventually become the same. The same applies to object handles and fill/transparency handles.

Hope that helps

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