A new Xara video tutorial

[Gare]

About a billion years ago (!), I made a promise to myself and a few other people that I'd continue documenting Xara, even though The Official Guide book will not see a second edition.

Extruding Stuff in Xara Designer

I show how to create a sort of Roman column with the Extrude tool, instructions on the potted plant are as follows: auto-trace a photo of a plant.

I'm feeling particularly good about this offering because after a lot of trial and error, I was able to render the video to HD, all the text on the UI is razor-sharp, and the audio sound like I'm next to the viewer and not in a drain pipe.

Enjoy!

My Best,

Gary

[zaphodeist]

Thank you Gary! Clear, concise video and neat end result. The Official Guide the Movie

[wizard509]

Thanks Gare, that was great.

[Boy]

Useful lesson and great presentation. Thank you!

[gardenofdaisies]

Great video -- clear, concise, professional!
Quick question: How did you get the photo of the plant to not have the white photographic background around it?

[zaphodeist]

I knew I'd find somewhere to put it

[Rik]

Beautifully done Gary.
Great video, though the accent was a bit difficult for me!

[Gare]

Hi Gardenofdaisies—

Okay, this is how I did it, and an alternative way. If you have a photo and want to separate the background garbage—a scene, pure white, whatever—from your foreground subject, lock the photo. Then trace its silhouette manually; yeah, there’s other ways to automate this tedious step, but nothing works as well as a human brain behind tracing. Then you unlock the photo, put the silhouette shape behind the photo (Ctrl+Shift+B), select the photo and the shape (marquee-dragging is the simplest way to pick both things), and then press Q to make the bottom shape you traced into a ClipView shape.

Alternatively, you can go to VectorMagic.com and buy a toke, and have the utility auto-trace your photo to vector file format, and then delete the background objects. The file I’m attaching here shows both methods. If you want to unclip the ClipView group, you select them, and then press Alt+Q.

AND…actually, the way I did it, because I was in a rush, was I have a 3D model of the plant; I rendered it in Cinema 4D to TIF file format with an alpha channel. PNGs, TIFFs, and PSDs (and probably Targa) images can contain a masking channel.

I wish my anwser could have been as quick as your question,

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

Hey Rik—

I chose my accent after the strongest bankrupt nation in the world, pal.

So watch it...and can you spare $3 trillion?

-g-

[Hwy101]

Very Nice Gary! Thank You for Posting! Tom aka Hwy101