Problem with the new 'Photo grids' - unrounding the borders again.

[Know1]

I'm playing around with the new features and I ran into a problem with the new photo grids. When I round a corner to the extreme with the orange dot, it disappears beneath the blue dot. (This only happens if the image is square or if the image is taller than it is wide due to the location of the orange dot.)


I haven’t figured out yet how to ‘un-round it’.


Any ideas?

[Egg Bramhill]

Just a quick fix, hit undo

[handrawn]

I think this happens when the side in question becomes an arc [ie: no flat] - I know that making a bitmap copy will reset the handle positions which may allow you to keep on working, but I don't know if you can necessarily undo what has been done this way

[Christine Farrelly]

Drag the blue dot down slightly and it will reveal the orange dot.

[handrawn]

doesnt that actually resixe the object in some way?

[Christine Farrelly]

yes, but as the originator wants to remove the roundness he can then adjust to whatever is required.

[Acorn]

Luckily, if you zoom into the blue dot, you will find normal magnifications do not actually fully overlap the two dots.
At maximum magnification, you should still have separation.

If you don't then create a line parallel to the edge that you need to expand to get to the orange dot.
It also works on the edge with the orange dot but you need to shrink the dimension.
Set its with Snap to objects against that edge and then increase the size to expose the orange dot and re position the dot.

Sadly, Snap to objects and Smart Shapes don't mix but you at least have a marker to aim for.

I think Xara needs to rename these to Not-so-Smart Shapes.

Acorn

[handrawn]

not-so-smart

having handles that overlap the drawing for example - might be ok for your bog-standard photo of auntie lil' but can be a pain on a diagram

[Know1]

@Christine. Some images you would have to drag mighty far before the orange dot appears again, changing up the composition you've created. But when you really need to get rid of the rounded border this will indeed work.
@Acorn. Nice idea with the zooming in. I've tried it on various rounded borders and sometimes I see the orange dot again, not all the time unfortunately.
I'm not sure how that "create a line parallel to the edge" trick works though.

I would call this unwanted behavior that should be changed, that orange dot should not be able to disappear like that.
It would also be nice if you could hold down the minus key on the numeric keypad (-) in order to stop the fill (image) from automatically adjusting its size when you want to resize a frame (for out-of-border effects and other 'creative' stuff).

I do like the idea of these Photo grids, it's a good starting off point. After the initial phase when you are done throwing images in a grid all these 'smart' automatic adjustments tend to be in the way of the actual creative stuff you would want to do, there should be ways of turning it off when you don't want it anymore without having to resort to workarounds.