Image and text skewing / distorting megathread

[Rob-Xar]

Hi all,

Apologies for my absence lately, holidays and sickness's have been straining support lately and keeping me busy. I'll try to poke into the forums some more in the coming days.

I understand there has been a bit a explosion of disagreement over the latest change to prevent the squashing and distortion of text. Truthfully this change is new to me also, and I believe the decision was made with the intention of preventing users (especially new users) from accidentally distorting their images and text. With text especially for websites, this would get exported as 100% aspect ratio so the changes wouldn't be seen.

As a work around, you could use the mould tool (Shift + F6), or alternatively select the image with the fill tool, hold Ctrl + Shift and drag one of the handles. This will stretch the image, and to uncrop it you can select the photo enhance tool, then click the photo and drag the side handles as normal. This will only work for images, for text I'm afraid you would still have to use the mould tool.

It's also been requested of me to gather some examples of text and image distortion for those higher up so I can show them the usefulness of it to them. If you guys can send me some examples that would be fantastic and I can send it onto them.

I know emotions are running high at the moment but please keep it civil and on-topic. If I can get back to management with some constructive comments and examples, we can make this work for you :) If you have anything else you want me to look into, please either PM me or start a new thread, let's keep this to text and image distortion issues.

Many thanks
Rob

[gwpriester]

Sometimes it is useful to condense the width of text a little. And honestly when Xara tries to make things easier for new users it almost always irritates old users. At the very least have a keystroke to over ride this.

[handrawn]

HI Rob

just replied here:

https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...411#post586411

post #233

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Rob. Thanks for some response.

I believe the decision was made with the intention of preventing users (especially new users) from accidentally distorting their images

I never saw any indication of this in the release notes. In fact I believe all current users and any new ones see this strange behavior as a bug. If I create a vector shape it appears with 8 resizing handles as previously it did with images. Selecting the top/bottom/left/right centre handles allowed for resizing in that plane. Holding down shift whilst doing so increased/decreased the resizing equally in that plane.

Why does the decision to change this make it easier for new users? You're suggestions work but it's far from intuitive.

Was this introduced to fit in with the new auto-resizing feature? If so, in my opinion, you've broken the program to fit a feature that not many people will use. Bring in the new feature by all means but don't break the remainder of the program in the process

[Rob-Xar]

Why does the decision to change this make it easier for new users? You're suggestions work but it's far from intuitive.

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean, this change was to prevent the distortion of images and text - vector shapes remain unaffected. This change doesn't have anything to do with the auto-fit feature which would never squish anything in the first place.

[handrawn]

no rob it was introduced to prevent those who don't know what they are doing from messing up at the expense of those who do - 'distortion' is often a requirement!! [aka morphing]

if you are going along those lines can you please remove all automatic switching of tools when double clicking, dragging/dropping etc as I have lost count of the number of times they have made me swear or worse; squishing I don't have a problem with

[Rob-Xar]

no rob it was introduced to prevent those who don't know what they are doing from messing up at the expense of those who do - 'distortion' is often a requirement!! [aka morphing]

if you are going along those lines can you please remove all automatic switching of tools when double clicking, dragging/dropping etc as I have lost count of the number of times they have made me swear or worse; squishing I don't have a problem with

I'm not disagreeing with you, nor have I in any of the previous replies.

I need to take some examples back of why this is important and what why users deliberately distort images and text.

As also mentioned in the original message, please keep on topic as well!

[Bob Sommerville]

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean, this change was to prevent the distortion of images and text - vector shapes remain unaffected. This change doesn't have anything to do with the auto-fit feature which would never squish anything in the first place.

I am, a bit late to this forum and the annoyance of the anti-squishing matters

I regularly used the ability in previous versions to squish photo images. I fact I reinstalled an older version because of the frustrations with the new feature. ( ...and disappointingly Xara would not re-register my legitimate formerly registered version just a couple of versions old.....however)

I work a lot with maps and diagrams and satellite/aerial images plus geophysical, geological imagery. Often I need to slightly alter the image dimensions or aspect ratio to fit formal topographic grids which are not rectilinear...I might cut a very narrow triangular slit and slightly rotate the image to fit roads tracks and other features. It was so quick to do...not so now as the dimension might move incrementally and unnoticed - often having to revert and start the process again I also design 3d (visually not geometrically) topographic block models, often squeezing environment images to replicate actual surfaces and textures. Text could be stretched and manipulated to follow landforms, perspective and other elements needing adjustment. The mould tools are too course to utilise in some instances. I also do many corporate graphics which may require data graphs from other sources (scans and jpgs) which I might resize to fit screen templates. Flow charts - some in 3D -may require special textural applications all of which were intuitive and easy to adjust.

Regardless of the reasons I cannot believe the justification behind the change. I have used Xara since the first version and it's flexibility and intuitiveness was always a pleasure to work with compared to competitors. The adoption of the great drawing tools to the task in almost any area was relatively simple and the results and reliabilty were great....again all intuitive The implementation in XDPro itself is clumsy....not smart, ugly and it creates errors of scale without being noticed at times. It is not intuitive or efficient with this tool. AS far as the "home user" comments I have difficulty explaining how to change an image.

There is much that could be refined in Xara however as a working professional it still is more productive than other programs I also use alongside. However the photo handling process is just dumb and ill considered. I have associates who have expressed the same. I do not want to particularly flame Xara, as i remains a very good, highly productive tool, however would you please give us an option to revert to the previous photo handling implementation.

Thanks

Bob Sommerville

[Egg Bramhill]

..... however would you please give us an option to revert to the previous photo handling implementation.

Bob, this has already been done, at least in v15 (I believe v12 likewise). Right click over the lock aspect ratio and ensure Smart Transform is unchecked.

[Promidi]

One use I put stretch and distort image to is when fitting a cloned copy of part of an image onto another part of the same image, one sometimes needs to stretch and distort the clone slightly to make it fit and match the destination as desired.

Can't to that with 15

The Ctrl + Shift / fill tool workaround is not practice for me in this case.

An ALT modifier to revert to original behaviour would be preferred. (or simply have a registry setting which reverts to original behaviour)

Note: in the many years I have used Xara I have never once accidentally unintentionally distorted an image. Even if I did, it's an easy fix.

I am definitely staying with 12 if the original behaviour isn't possible