cut out shapes?

[michaelward]

Xara is a vector editor with some raster functions - you would be better off using a raster editor (photoshop, paint shop pro, gimp, etc.) to extract the area you want, export it and then use it in Xara.

[PMH]

Ok I cut the shape as shown. However, when I export to gif or jpg it takes the white background as well. All I want is the shape itself.

[Egg Bramhill]

Jpg can't have transparencies. You'll need to use gif (limited to 256 colours) or png (1000's colours but internet explorer has problems with these)

So export as a gif and just click the wine glass icon in the export dialogue box.

[amoore]

Ok I cut the shape as shown. However, when I export to gif or jpg it takes the white background as well. All I want is the shape itself.

You might want to take a little time to get a handle on the differences between vector/draw functions and bitmap/raster/paint functions, and on the characteristics of the standard bitmap formats, particularly gif, jpg, png and tif.

In this post, you mentioned the white background in a gif and a jpg. To have just the shape, you have to have a transparent background. Jpgs don't do transparency. With a gif, it can be transparent or not. In Xara's export dialog, look for the wineglass icon. When you're exporting a gif and you want it to have a transparent background, make sure that icon is depressed.

As for cutting your shape out of the bitmap, Tony's advice is the quickest and best approach. Using Xara's tools, it will take a few seconds' work. Use the Pen tool to click around the shape on a few major points, then nudge the lines into curves with your mouse pointer. If necessary, clean it up with the Shape Editor tool. Then intersect or slice as Tony says.

As for selecting your soccer ball peach with a magic wand (the common name for a "select by color" tool in a paint program), since its colors are black and white, which are at opposite ends of the color spectrum, I expect you'll have an interesting time trying to pick up the shape that way. OTOH, it might be a useful learning experience.

Between Xara's movies and Gary's XaraXone workbooks and tutorials, you can get a quick grip on Xara's tools and capabilities, with a pretty good graphics education thrown in for good measure.

For functions that are strictly bitmap, such as the magic wand, you'll need to poke around in some bitmap apps. Paint Shop Pro is a good place to go for that. You may be able to dig up an earlier release for just a few bucks. OTOH, the current version (Paint Shop Pro X) has an instruction panel open by default. When you select a tool, instructions for using it are right there. That could be helpful when you're just getting started.

[elmystraw]

Dear all Xtremers:

I consider myself a newbie although I have had XARA XTREME [X X] for over a year. I have been using CorelDraw and Photoshop for years, but I loved X X when I used it. I imagine myself using it for all my projects except for one thing. One and only ONE feature. That is selecting by color. Almost every project I work on I use Selection by color, i.e. selecting all areas having a particular color.

I tried using Color Names but after 12 hours of trying and using Help I gave up. I also used convert to Bitmap, but that is not very precise. whenever I go to Photoshop tome the feature I stay There.

I am very familiar of differences between vector wd raster images, but would like to have this feature in XX. Any way of doing this in XX, somehow?

Please HELP?

Thanks.

[MarkMyWords]

I had a similar cut-out problem and my solution was to use the bitmap tracer. I could then select the border colour, in your case the green, which would be a filled green object. I pasted that over my bitmap adjusted the size and the used Arrange/combine/slice to cut out my original.

This should also give useful 'mask' shapes for almost any flat(ish) colour area with the bitmap.

This works quite well with a hi-res bitmap and complex outlines, but can result in inaccuracies
on the edges of a low- res bitmap.

Oh the settings I used for the bitmap tracer were; Photo, 50 passes, remove noise 0%, minimum area 0, both colour tolerences at 75%, 95% accuracy and 5% smoothing.

By the way, it would be nice to have a thread or perhaps a section in the Xara zone that users could give lots of settings and example results for the tracer, this would certainly help rid us of a great deal of trial and error with this utility.

[remi]

By the way, it would be nice to have a thread or perhaps a section in the Xara zone that users could give lots of settings and example results for the tracer, this would certainly help rid us of a great deal of trial and error with this utility.

There is a great tutorial called Xara Bitmap Tracer vs Adobe Live Trace with a lot of details and tips about the right settings.

Regards,
Remi

[MarkMyWords]

Excellent, thanks Remi.

[pauland]

It would be a very problematic feature for Xara and vectors. A vector shape can have more than one colour (it can have a blend between colours, or a bitmap) and you can't select half a vector object. Perhaps that will help you to understand the problem.

Paul

[stlewis]

Quicker to just do it! (3 minutes...)