Live Color

[mpscz]

Dear Xara, I found in Illustrator CS3 simple but very useful utility for webdesigners named Live Color. Will be available something similar in new version of Xara Xtreme?

http://www.creativepro.com/article/r...llustrator-cs3

[Albacore]

It depends on what you take out of Live Colour as also adobe has the same feature that if you don't have AI CS3 or above then you can use this online feature called Kuler:
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themes/rating?time=30

If you ask me I don't think Xara will include all of the features of Live Colour as Xara has always used Named Colours in the way of handling Swatches. We even lost a utility of turning both bitmaps and vectors into greyscale which I still miss and I have got to revert to Live Effects and introduce a plugin to do the same process. The best feature of Illy is the way it handles colour both through the colour mode and the use of Live Paint and Live Colour. All of these features make Illy a lot easier to get work to print saving you time and effort as Xara does still have problems viewing CMYK.

[steve.ledger]

We even lost a utility of turning both bitmaps and vectors into greyscale which I still miss

Which utility was that Peter?

Bitmaps can still easily be grey scaled by changing the light contone to white.
(Not to mention the saturation tool in the 'P'hoto editor mode)

[angelize]

It depends on what you take out of Live Colour as also adobe has the same feature that if you don't have AI CS3 or above then you can use this online feature called Kuler:
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themes/rating?time=30

Adobe's Kuler will only allow you to download as adobe color swatches, but this similar online app http://www.colourlovers.com will let users download in more formats, and even as an image. simply paste the image into Xtreme and use the colour editor to create named colours. You can also paste the image into Xpal a free utility available from the Xara Xone shareware page, and create a .pal file that can be saved into the colour gallery.

[Albacore]

Steve many years ago, under Utilities, just below bitmap tracer we had a great utility marked greyscale which you clicked and it worked for both bitmaps & vectors and turned your drawing into greyscale. As it stands at the moment your method would only work for bitmaps so therefore we have to use the Live Effects Tool and use a plugin for the same benefit. Using Live Colour in AI CS3 all we have to do is to select Greyscale from the drop down menu and it is done. You know my feelings on using AI I use it when I have to but in this area, the use of colour, Adobe beats Xara ends up and even though using named colours used to be a big bonus I think Xara has been left behind in this area.

[steve.ledger]

Steve many years ago, under Utilities, just below bitmap tracer we had a great utility marked greyscale

Must have been before Xara X1 was it?
I can't find that function in any version from Xara X1 up.

However, you can still 'greyscale' a vector by using the saturation transparency. The vectors are still editable as well.

[iamtheblues]

Odd that it doesn't work for me, Steve.
Middle graphic shows the transparency effect on the star and circle only.
To its right, the effect on all 3 ungrouped objects. Just the selection nodes are visible.
Saludos,
Bob.

[steve.ledger]

Yes Bob I didn't reveal the whole process as I don't want to turn this thread into a tutorial, (though I may already done so ).

Just quickly though..... place a black rectangle on top and apply the saturation transparency to that.
To edit the shapes again underneath, press Alt+Click to select the shape first.

[iamtheblues]

Thanks for that, Steve - mystery solved.
Saludos,
Bob.

[angelize]

I think Xara should bring back that Greyscale feature. It would be very handy as I use the saturation method a lot. I often have to put together ads quickly and don't have time to draw everything myself so I import clipart and greyscale it because we would have to increase the price of ads to much to be able to afford to print in colour.