Bug in brush colours

[itsfransie]

In Xara Designer 6, whenever I create a custom brush, the option 'Local colours replace:' is always stuck on 'Named brush colours'.
If I select one of the other two options, the fill properties for the currently selected line do change, but saving the brush (or save as new) for some reason sets it back to 'Named brush colours'.

Another (related?) problem is that the entire 'Local colours replace:' block is greyed out when I edit the brush without having a line selected (new document, Freehand tool, select brush from dropdown list, edit brush).


Apart from that, I would really like to be able to edit my brushes directly from the Line gallery. And support for shadows, live effects, bevels and soft groups in the brushes would be awesome.

[wuerthne]

This is actually a deliberate change to allow the new "Give new objects the most recent attributes" (GNOMRA) option to work better. This change avoids quite a number of anomalies with brush colour handling. Any newly applied brush is applied in "local colours replace: named brush colours" mode. However, if you pick up a brush from an existing line (and with GNOMRA switched on that is as easy as just clicking on the line), then its colour replacement mode is used for new brush strokes, so you really only have to change the colour mode once to suit your needs and then pick the brush attribute up from existing lines before drawing new strokes.

I do not think there is any disadvantage compared to earlier versions. Previously, the colour replacement option of newly applied brushes was always "No colours" and you could not change that in the brush definition either, so it was stuck, too, just to a different value. So, this is just a change of default value. Yes, it is different, but as far as I can see it does not lose anything.

[wuerthne]

Apart from that, I would really like to be able to edit my brushes directly from the Line gallery. And support for shadows, live effects, bevels and soft groups in the brushes would be awesome.

Soft groups? You can have soft groups in brushes, but what would you want them for? As for shadows - you can always give a shadow to the final brush stroke. Is there really much point in having a shadow inside a brush definition?

[itsfransie]

Thanks for your reply Wuerthne. However, picking up the brush attributes doesn't seem to work properly. I uploaded a short video to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLK4kWMJzGI

The steps I took:
- Select Freehand tool
- Select Petals brush
- draw line
- change colour replacement mode to 'Named brush colours'
- press escape (deselect line)
- select default brush
- draw line
- click petals line
- draw new line -> NO COLOURS PICKED UP
- Change brush offset to alternating and select a distance with the slider
- click second line (with default brush)
- draw line
- click first line (coloured petals)
- draw line -> STILL NO COLOURS PICKED UP
- click line with alternating offset
- draw line (this one is offscreen)
- draw line -> NO ALTERNATING OFFSET PICKED UP

I am using Vista with admin rights.

I really hope this can be fixed.

[itsfransie]

Soft groups? You can have soft groups in brushes, but what would you want them for? As for shadows - you can always give a shadow to the final brush stroke. Is there really much point in having a shadow inside a brush definition?

You can indeed have soft groups in brushes, but any layer information of the original objects is discarded. Which - to me - is one of the main pluses of soft groups.

I often use brushes to place a lot of objects (several thousand on occasion) with some slight variations in colour, scaling, and rotation. This can take a heavy toll on performance. Turning off some layers alleviates this, while I can still see where my objects are. Of course I could use the wireframe view, but it's not always practical.

Of course one can apply a shadow afterwards, but it's extra work, and I'm lazy :-) Plus I need to remember the correct shadow settings everytime. If it's included in the brush, this would not be neccesary.

[wuerthne]

OK, if this is what you are after then brushes are the wrong thing for you. A brush is a property of a line. The line is on a specific layer, so whatever is painted for that line is always considered part of that layer, too. There is no way this could ever change.

[wuerthne]

As for comment #4: Yes, this could work better but it all works as I expect it to work at the moment. Brushes do not fully cooperate with GNOMRA yet. However, I do not think anything is any worse than in V5. Basically, in V6, the brush type (and only that) and the colour of the brush line are picked up. This works reliably.

Yes, the brush tool should really pick up everything but it never did, even with the pre-V6 style GNOMRA. Most notably, the colour replacement mode is NOT picked up. As I wrote above it always defaults to "Named colours" for new lines. In your example you changed the mode of the petals line to "None" (you wrote you changed it to "Named" but that is the default anyway and the video shows that you changed the brush line to its default colours, i.e., "None"). In V6, when you draw a new brush line it will always be in the current line colour. If the original line from which you picked up the attributes used "None" replacement, as in your case, you could not really see its applied line colour since it did not have any effect. It was picked up though and applied to the new line.

So, basically, just avoid "None" colour replacement and things work as expected. If instead of changing the colour replacement to "None" you apply a red line colour, then you get the same effect and you can pick up the brush including its colour.

[itsfransie]

That workaround doesn't always work, try using it on the Tacks brush. All the Tacks will get the same colour. I understand that the tool now defaults to Named colours, but then please make GNOMRA work properly for all brush attributes.