XTREME IT! - (Or) Can it be done without using Photoshop?

[HayTay]

Lesson 5 from Photoshop 7 Classroom in a book was about 'Layer Basics'. Xtreme 4 has no trouble with layers and is one of its strengths. Adding the text and gradient (linear fill) was also quite easy. The 'Jardin 2009' text was created, a clone was made (Ctrl+K) then converted to shapes (Ctrl+Shift+S) and a one step contour was applied to the clone. The 'Arrange > Break Shapes' operation was performed on the text shape/contour then a Shadow Tool (Ctrl+F2) > Glow was applied to the contour to duplicate the effect in Xtreme. The wood graphic was used as a fill for the "Jardin 2009" text.

The shapes, layers and text effects were easily duplicated in Xara Xtreme. However, the Blending Modes (Photoshop) vs. Transparency Types (Xtreme) were hard to duplicate using XXP4 as you can see if you look at the door and the linear fill behind the bust. Obviously they work differently and I need to spend some more time playing with the settings. Any hints from users of both Photoshop and Xtreme would be appreciated.

Cheers,
HayTay
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[Albacore]

Would it not be better to use a vector book to do tutorials from Illustrator or Corel Draw rather than a raster programme book to learn how to layout a booklet page. All right as Bill states he can stay in XPro for 99% of his work which is great but we are working here with a vector based programme which does some bitmap effects through the use of Lives Effects & the Photo Tool. Adobe made the use of Smart Objects a huge selling point of its last release to give you the ability to copy and paste from one programme to another and this was a major selling point for buying the creative suite. There are many times when you have to use both vector and bitmap programmes to get the effect that you want so you do have have both types of programmes on your hard disc if you want to do design jobs well and save time.

[HayTay]

Photoshop and similar programs can do some tasks easier than a vector application.

Use of the smudge and blur tools to smooth or the dodge and burn tools for adjusting levels within a small area of photo are some examples I can think of off the top of my head.

I do use Xtreme Pro 4 for more than 99% of my graphics but there are times I still need Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or PhotoPaint.

Most definitely! Photoshop, like Xtreme, is a powerful tool. The more lessons I try to duplicate in XX the more I come to appreciate what Photoshop is capable of doing. On the other hand, other things in the Photoshop book leave me scratching my head and appreciating the way in which Xtreme can handle certain tasks.

You're right, trying to recreate the effect of the smudge tool in Xara Xtreme has got me stumped. It looks like Photoshop wins that round unless someone knows of a plug-in that will work in Xtreme that duplicates the effect.

Would it not be better to use a vector book to do tutorials from Illustrator or Corel Draw rather than a raster programme book to learn how to layout a booklet page. There are many times when you have to use both vector and bitmap programmes to get the effect that you want so you do have have both types of programmes on your hard disc if you want to do design jobs well and save time.

Sure, Albacore, I concede it would be better to use Illy and CorelDraw books & tutorials in XX. Though, if I did that, I wouldn't have an explanation for all of the bruises on my forehead.

Lesson 6 on 'Masks and Channels' and Lesson 8 on 'Painting and Editing' are proving to be more than a challenge in XX but look to be a 'snap' in Photoshop. That said, I took a break and skipped to Lesson 9 'Basic Pen Tool Techniques'. A few minutes with Xtreme's shape editor, an intersect shapes operation followed by a simple clipview quickly produced the same result as shown below.

Along with the books and everyone's input, I'm slowly convincing myself that I need to 'bite the bullet' and purchase the Photoshop software. Having already purchased the books, and by trying to duplicate the tutorials in XX, should reduce Photoshop learning curve by quite a bit. Good call and thanks for the nudge in the right direction. I always enjoy seeing your works. Have you posted anything new recently?

Cheers,
HayTay
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[BONES]

HayTay, if you have Corel X3, you do not need to buy Photoshop. PhotoPaint is at least the equivalent of Photoshop for 99% of tasks and in my opinion it has a better workflow. I replaced Photoshop with Photopaint 7 or 8 years ago and never looked back.
Mind you, I've not opened Photopaint in a few years, either. These days I find that for those minor things I cannot easily do in Xara, Autodesk Combustion is a much better alternative. Destructive editing is so 20th century!

[HayTay]

BONES,

Thanks for the reply. I've had CorelDraw and Corel Photo-Paint installed for many years but hardly ever use them. I fired up Corel Photo-Paint after I saw your post and you're right it has many of the same raster editing tools as used in the Photoshop tutorials I've been trying to recreate using Xtreme. I'll have to crack open the Corel user guide and find a couple of tutorials to familiarize myself with these two applications. I could never get used to the tools and the interface and therefore never used either much. Xara Xtreme's more direct approach to editing and drawing suits the way I think much better.

Thanks again for the suggestion,
HayTay

[HayTay]

I'm still putting off Lessons 7 and 8 so I went straight from Lesson 9 to Lesson 10, 'Vector Masks, Paths, and Shapes'. Xara Xtreme handled this chapter without even breaking a sweat!

The keys to completing this lesson were the QuickShape Tool (Shift+F2) for the stars, the Bevel (Ctrl+F3) and Glow Shadow (Ctrl+F2) tools for the golf ball & tee, and the Mould Tool (Shift+F6) to create the bulged 'the full moon pro-am' text effect.

One of these two is the finished Photoshop example that was provided with the book and the other is the one I created using Xara Xtreme. If you study them for a moment or two you should be able to tell which graphic is which. I included a small screen capture of the wire frame to prove that one of them is truly the Xtreme version.

No need for Photoshop on this one,
HayTay

[HayTay]

Flush with my success I moved right on to Lesson 11, 'Advanced Layer Techniques'. This one went smoothly enough by using the Blend Tool (W) to make the mask to cut out the circles from the grill and the Copperplate font for the text. Layering with Xara Xtreme is a snap and most of the effects were easily duplicated using either flat or linear fills. The final effect, the 'warping' of the grill had me stumped until I found the 'Liquid Color' Live Effect Tool (Ctrl+F5) (Live Effect > New > Deformation Filter > Liquid Color).

So many settings and possibilities are possible with the Liquid Color effect that I had trouble stopping from playing. In the end, I think I came up with a more than acceptable result. I'm sure the author would have trouble creating the exact same effect twice using the equivalent tool in Photoshop. All-in-all I'm more than pleased with my version of the lesson.

Moving right along,
HayTay
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[HayTay]

I started doing some of the tutorials in the Classic Photoshop Effects by Scott Kelby and they've all been recreated relatively easily with Xara Xtreme. So far, the one that was giving me fits used a fairly common pixelation effect. After much searching on TG, reading the Xtreme help file, and some temple massaging I discovered a way to create the effect in Xtreme without compromising the quality of the rest of the objects in the document. You can see the result, using one of Xara Xtreme's photographs from the Clipart Gallery, in the following attachment.

Further explanation, and Remi's thread that got me started on the right path can be seen here: HowTo: Mosaic effect with Xara Xtreme

Xtreme is just too cool,
HayTay

[HayTay]

There's only a few lessons left for me to do in the Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Classroom in a Book so I'm trying to finish them up. Here's the results from Lesson 12 - Creating Special Effects using XXP4. The 'Special Effects' used in the Dandelion and Leaf photos made this one a bit more challenging and in the end I couldn't duplicate the Photoshop version with the Live Effects available in Xara Xtreme. Close... but no cigar.

With some additional Live Effects and Transparency Types it's my opinion, after doing these tutorials, that Xara Xtreme could give Photoshop some serious competition.

The Live Effects used to complete this lesson were the Concentric Waves (Deformation filter > Concentric waves) for the dandelion and the Edges FX from Mehdi for the leaves. Mehdi, by the way has some great plug-ins and they make a fine addition to the ones included with Xara Xtreme. For reference, the Photoshop effects that were supposed to be used were the 'ZigZag' and 'Accented Edges' filters, respectively.

More to follow,
HayTay
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[dogbertbh]

Seems like a lot of posts to say "Xara is NOT Photoshop"

I think we all knew it wasn't