Image and text skewing / distorting megathread

[handrawn]

having just had a chance to try xdpx ver15.1 thought I'd better come back here to where it all began [sorta] and say that the disabling smart transform function does appeart to sort out the problem - so thanks for that

[MarcT]

Hi, I'm also trying out V15, where does smart transform can be disabled?
This is quite ridiculous on a pro software, they should do a starter option for such "feature".

[handrawn]

Hi Marc

in the select tool right click on the padlock [lock aspect ratio]

[Egg Bramhill]

It's another kludge. As HD states:

[gwpriester]

I have disabled this feature and gotten on with my life. I feel sorry for the developers who are seeing something that is a lot more beneficial than what we users are seeing. I am sure a lot of thought and work went into this feature but I am used to how things work and I am not comfortable with how this works. The logic escapes my tired old brain.

[Egg Bramhill]

Ditto here Gary. Never heard a decent explanation of why this was introduced.

[handrawn]

I reckon it's not too difficult to work out - here's a clue from the XDPX15.1 MAY 2018 release notes [I have made the relevant phrase bold]:

When stretching text or images using the Selector Tool top, bottom and side handles, Designer will try to avoid distorting them, because usually distorted text and images look poor. However you can now override this and stretch or squash the image/text by holding down the Alt key as you drag (alternatively you can revert to the old stretching behaviour by disabling Smart Transform by right clicking on the lock aspect ratio icon

You only have to think about what sort of user would be thrown by accidental asymmetric resizing to see where Xara's focus now is.. basically facillitating design for those who are not designers with a capital D... do for design, what the smart phone did for photography if you will... but that does not excuse not putting in the option to disable this from the off... maybe their enthusiasm just ran away with them

just a shame that it ended up looking like arrogance...

[haakoo]

maybe their enthusiasm just ran away with them

If they keep up this enthusiasm,we might get some new features after all

[Jonopen]

Personally speaking, if compelled to do anything, what developers should have done, is just added a right click option to return images and particularly text, back to their original aspect ratio. Or if they really want to be the 'graphic style police', left things as they were, but present a preflight warning that things are skew-whiff before printing or publishing.

[MarcT]

Hi,

Thanks for the pointers, I wouldn't have found it!

It doesn't appear to work over here, non-uniform scale images doesn't work with or without ALT.
Maybe my version is not up to date, the program say it is though.

Marc