Using a part of a photo picture as a shape?

[gaftalik]

Hello everyone,

Is there any way that Xara photo & Graphic designer 10 can identify the shape of an object in a photo and draw it automatically instead of drawing it manually using the shape tool?

Thank you.

[handrawn]

if it's lineart probably - if it's a continuous tone photograph then in most cases it's quicker to draw round

auto-tracing continuous tone usually produces lots and lots of subshapes and is only approximate - fine if viewed from a distance but not precise

there are some plugins that will 'find edges' but in my experience it's still quicker to draw

seeing the photo might help

[PhilM]

XPGD10 has the background erase tool, which might do what you want. It doesn't create a vector shape of part of a photo but it does make the other parts of the photo transparent so that the part you want to see is isolated.

Select your photo, go to the Eraser tool and click "Erase background". The program will guide you from there.

Phil

[gaftalik]

there are some plugins that will 'find edges' but in my experience it's still quicker to draw

Can you tell what plug in is used for such a case and how to auto trace?

Phil thank you i will try your idea!

[handrawn]

'bitmap tracer' is the name for the auto trace in xara, should find it on the utilities menu

not sure how the background eraser works in ver 10, but in general the problem with removal tools is in removing the colour you don't want but leaving the same colour where you do want it eg: the white in your case - remove outside leave inside the watch

presumably you want the watch as a vector not just cut the bitmap background out?

the online 'vector magic' site is probably as good as it gets doing it automatically

plugins that work - eg knockout - are not free - and I'm out of touch as whether they [still] work with xara -= and you still need to vectorise after if that's what you want

[handrawn]

you watch auto-traced in xara....

[gaftalik]

Thank you for your support and information!

[Gamerprinter]

Looking at the illustration you want converted to a Xara, I get how you don't want to spend the time to manually cut-out the shape you need, but that stop watch looks super easy to clip by hand. A perfect circle, with perfectly circular cut-out ring on top, and a few straight lines for the knobs is all there is to clipping this image. I could knock out the clipping of this in less than a minute by hand. I wouldn't worry about looking for an automatic method with something as easy as this. On the other hand, I have hand-clipped shapes of very difficult things like hair on a dog, or on a person. Try hand-clipping strands of hair, which is something I've actually done using Xara. For that, a means to effective auto-clip to shape has value, as doing that by hand is extremely time consuming.

[handrawn]

unless of course a vector is what is required... not just a textured shape

[Egg Bramhill]

As Dali said, it's all a matter of time ......