Using Xara Designer Pro X10 to color drawings for a book. Help

[PhilM]

There are lots of ways to do this but here's my suggestion:
* Lock the layer that contains your sketch so that you won't edit the lines by mistake while adding colour.
* Create a new Layer and name it "Paint".
* Move it behind the layer that contains your sketch lines.
* Go to the Shape Painter tool, choose a colour and start to "colour in" the shapes.

You can use the Eraser tool to get rid of any mistakes you make (and undo of course).

Once you've got the basic shapes, you can edit them in all sorts of ways, adding more detailed fills, giving them soft edges, etc., etc...

Phil

[Big Frank]

There are lots of ways to do this but here's my suggestion...l

That's always how I've done this and I can attest to its efficacy

[handrawn]

just to add to what Phil and Frank have said.. if I were colouring say the face I would make the shape and give it a flat colour, then clone the shape several times to make highlight/shadow shapes using transparency [in effect mimicing an airbrush; designer has an 'airbrush' but I don't like it much]

also I would use 'soft group' to group the elements together whilst preserving the layers, then everything can be moved in sync in one go should it be necessary

[ggrace]

You guys are awesome, all posts so helpful. I thought I was losing my mind, but all makes sense now. I have used photoshop in the past but really like Xara, will give it a try and let you guys know how it goes!!

[Manoj]

Great ideas here, especially the plasma fill watercolor effect and now I'm trying Xara for line work/Inkscape for quick color filling.

1. Export line drawing from Xara as PDF
2. Open PDF in Inkscape. Create a layer below the ink lines
3. Fill in the colors with Inkscape's bucket tool at threshold of around 23 and grow/shrink of 0.6
4. Delete the ink line layer (too many nodes when opened again in Xara)
5. Export as PDF
6. Open PDF in Xara and drop the color shapes behind the original ink lines.
7. Adjust color fills as required and mentioned above.

Handy technique till Xara makes their own bucket tool, thanks!

Manoj