looking for a way to animate 16 png files, crop too, swiftly in Xara designer

Hi. Insert 16 images, how to Insert->Image->from file and have it snap to the same place each time?
Then how to perform the same crop for each image?
Should I do this before I insert into animation frames?
How do I ensure the position of each inserted image for each Animation frame?
How to Vertically and Horizontally mouse Drag and snap an object (after insert image from file)? Currently CTRL only holds my vertical still, not horizontal. And I cannot make out what Xara is snapping too.

what I'm hoping to read:
a snap to grid ruler setting
batch auto crop feature
options for Animation that auto crops all frames, after positioning each image in same place

what I've researched briefly:
Magnetic Lasso tool
Rectangular Region tool
Grid & Ruler view, set my original position to 20 and 20, then maybe CTRL mouse drag the top left of each image to this origin and have it snap

Thank you
Attachment 129452
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Attachment 129454

this gif animation should show there is a lot of white space I would like to crop. I CTRL mouse dragged each inserted image to the RIGHT, and eyeballed the vertical position. let me try inserting this gif in next comment. Attachment 129455

mintintergal,
Firstly how are you producing these images (screen-grabs)?
can you attach your .web or .xar file?

Managed to download your very small animation animation. Unfortunately too small to really work on but here's a couple of sugestions re cropping & white space reduction:

thanks. windows key print-screen, then paste to windows Paint, save as PNG. fyi, Windows G saves png screen shots one step faster.

why are you pasting to windows paint and not directly into a xara document [from which you can also save as PNG, with a keyboard shortcut, if you need the grabs as seperate image files]

I would agree with egg - prepare your images in an editor document, not an animation one; in xara at least it is a better workflow

Hi Egg, You made a fantastic New Animation (process) of size 360 x 185. My cropping resulted in 1465 x 784 file exported to new png files. Thanks again.

1. I am stuck snapping extra white space after pasting (or after Insert menu, Image from file..)
2. How can I then snap to bottom right (if page options are 1464 or something large)?

Let me suggest:
Is it because there is a default 480px margin in the Page Options size?
Is there a setting to tell Xara paste to Not shrink the pasted image?
It seems anything under 500 px and the process works with snapping to top Left.
It does seem like Zara snaps if I mouse drag, but is too granular, and the slightest pixel off, messes up my animation.

screen shots
Attachment 129456
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Attachment 129458

Quote:

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Is there a setting to tell Xara paste to Not shrink the pasted image?
It seems anything under 500 px and the process works with snapping to top Left.

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go to xara utilities menu > options > view tab

if 'resize large imported photos down to....' is selected change this to the 'import at the dpi specified in the image file' option

this will probably fix the resize issue on import/paste

Quote:

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It does seem like Zara snaps if I mouse drag, but is too granular, and the slightest pixel off, messes up my animation.

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you could try using the positon settings on the selector tool infobar to force selected image[s] to a fixed position relative to 0x,0y

attaching one Windows zipped file of two Xara projects. the second project has the cropping part complete, so you can probably ignore the first one. 4.14MB