Bouton's Features Wish List for version 9

[mwenz]

I would add:

AI's appearance panel capabilities. Being able to add multiple fills and strokes, including being able to position the strokes inside, middle and outside, etc.

Mike

[Gare]

@Frances,

I can see the first three as players in a production environment, Frances, but I can tell you right now that creating a feature that auto-converts a colour image to greyscale in a way that is pleasing and accurate to the human eye isn't going to happen real soon!

Even the Great and Almighty Adobe Systems gives the user options on how the saturation and brightness of every hue in a photo should be weighted to take into account the reality that colors doesn't naturally port to brightness (greyscale) values, partially because black and white is a man-made, artificial colour "state". Photoshop's Black & White Adjustment lets the user decide how "heavy" or light the hue contribution winds up in a greyscale equivalent. Here's a colour image, and then a straight greyscale by removing any saturation, and at bottom is an adjusted greyscale using the Photoshop feature.



It sounds like an operation, that to satisfy artists and their clients, is one best done manually.

-g

[Gare]

Last month, PC World featured a review of Designer X online, and even though Kate had tweeted about it, many of us—including I—missed it.

What makes this both interesting and relevant is if you register, you can write your own review—scroll down and click this tab:




PC World's review of Designer X

Me, I think this Wish List, and writing a glowing, but qualified review are related: we're asking the Xara Group for something here, and can offer them something in return over at PC World.

My Best,

Gary

[Big Frank]

Last month, PC World featured a review of Designer X online, and even though Kate had tweeted about it, many of us—including I—missed it.

<rant>
That just sums up their complete lack of involvement in this forum.

They have an announcement to make that could do them an enormous favour and instead of communicating it to their most loyal fan base, TalkGraphics, they prefer to "tweet" it. Would it not have been better to have done both???
</rant>

[Gare]

Well, PC World's website won't accept new members for a few days it says, and this is Tuesday, so I suggest that if you are a member, go write a review, and if not, try back on Thursday or Friday to sign up, because I will write a review. The reviewer is not a seasoned Xara designer/artist/Illustrator, and I disagree that the Color Editor is hard to use.

Hope to see several reviews there in the future.

Home-made "buzz" is still "buzz",

Gary

[Petar_MK]

Drawing objects by aspect ratio.
Drawing 3D objects.

[Gare]

Hi Petar—

Can you explain what drawing an object by its aspect ratio means?

You have me confused.

As far as drawing 3D objects goes, I can't put that on my personal Wish List—but you're welcome to list it here—there are plenty of free and open source programs already available, what can create 3D shapes. One of the more popular ones on TalkGraphics is Blender. I think even if the engineers agreed to adding a "make 3D stuff" feature, beyond the extruding feature, it would make the program very large, and take it off-course for what it's intended to offer artists.

My Best,

Gary

[MarcT]

Wow, what an interesting bunch of suggestions!

I'm a bit late to the discussion, been quite busy lately


Those would greatly enhance Designer's procductivity

• I'd like dynamic Smart Shape tool, where the result of creating a polygonal shape can be modified at any time in the future, with the capability to add control points, subtract them, and change control point as well as path segment properties. These took about 5 seconds in CorelDRAW. Xaraists should be able to do it in 2 seconds. Draw has had this feature since version 5.

Attachment 92088

I don't know of those tools (I've kicked the tires of CorelDraw but it crashed on the first try!) I should look into it.

• I'd like the ability to make my own Brush Profiles. Some of the tapered presets produce too sharp at point at either end, and it would simply give the artist more control and expression to be able to make their own brush tip.

A crying need in my opinion

• I'd like a true B-Spline tool, please? The Shape tool, in an average professional designer's hands, isn't as fast as a B-Spline tool and about 1/2 hour's practice. I used to hate B-Splines until I discovered how to use the off-path control "hull" to quickly make perfectly smooth curves, French curve-style.

I often use other applications just to use Bspline, I would be very happy to see them in to xara. I find them superior to Bezier curves in many situations.

•And Phil mentioned that it's do-able to make a brush-type tool that can be used to roughen and/or push the edge or a shape on the page, sort of like Silly Putty. And this has been a feature in the competitors for several versions.

Definately yes, It would be quite useful to tweak shapes, as handy as the shape/eraser tool in my opinion.

• A model for the Mould tool that allows control points to be added, and control point properties to be (more easily) changed. How would a Xaraist create a logo, for example, that's cigar shaped or requires, say, a pentagon of control points?

Again, a crying need! Even some small upgrades would be appreciated, maybe the grid-type would be cool!

I would also like to see basic 4 corners deformation without using the mold tool, maybe shift-clicking a regular blob could stretch a corner.

(Secretly, I also wish for transform that would works on fills)

Add to this the Dark UI, and it just feels cramped and more disorienting than need be. My suggestion to segregate the bitmap features is just a suggestion. If I could get more advanced path-drawing features, I'd live with the clutter! It's not a #1 priority on my Wish List.

The UI tint should be adjustable with a slider, it should be also scalable in my opinion. The dark one depresses me a bit, but that's just me.



Thanks Gary for taking the time to write all of these.

I Really think Designer is the best vector tool out there, even with it's shortcoming. No other tool is as stable, fast well thought and easy to use.

I could not output half as much work in the same time with other applications, for me the difference is like when you try a good road bike for the first time.

Marc

[Petar_MK]

Hi Petar—

Can you explain what drawing an object by its aspect ratio means?

You have me confused.

You can see it in Photoshop. When using "rectangle selection tool" there is an option to make a selection by "aspect ratio". It means that you enter the proportion something like: width = 1, height = 1.34 and when selecting an object the rectangular tool keeps its aspect ratio.
But, in Xara it can be used for drawing objects keeping their proportion.

[Gare]

Hi Petar—

I'm deadly serious with my Wish List. It shouldn't even be called a "Wish List", because that suggests that I'd "like" a pie-in-the-sky feature.

I'm not. I've considered the features I'm begging, not exactly wishing for.

As far as Aspect Ratio goes, it'd be nice, but in a very real way, the feature already exists, and I'd resist asking a programmer to spend even five mintes when the time is better spent on a less-developed are in the program.

In a bitmap editor, I can see the need, for example, to maintain a specific aspect ratio, so you can crop images in batch mode (Action Scripts in Photoshop) with consistency.

But Xara is a vector drawing program, and once you have a rectangle drawn with a specific aspect ratio, all you need to do is drag on a corner selection handle to scale it up or down while keeping its original proportions.

As far as creating such a rectangle, Xara already has this feature. You begin a rectangle shape (with the Rectangle tool), then type in, for example 200 in the Width field on the Infobar (hit the Tab key), and then type 100 in the Height field, hit Tab or Enter, and you have a 2:1 aspect ratio rectangle.

So it's done differently than in Photoshop, but I definitely wouldn't put a feature as you suggest at or anywhere near the top of my Wish List.

The drawing tools need more muscle right now, IMFFHO.

My Best,

Gary