Show selected colour only

[geoHiker]

Hi there, new user of Xara Graphic & Design. Loving it. Very intuitive, easier to use than Corel Draw.

I've been googling and YouTubing but can't find the answer. I've seen tutorials where you can select a specific colour in a photo and change that to a different colour. My twist on that is that once I select that colour, I would only like to see objects with that colour (ie, delete/remove all other colours).

Thanks in advance.

[Michael]

Err. you are aware that Xara is a vector drawing program?

What you try to accomplish would be feasible in a bitmap editor, which Xara is not. (though it comes close)

With encapsulated bitmaps you can select and show specific colours using the Live Effect tools (Fx). Using Mehdi's classic eraser might give the results you're looking for.

As a work around for vector objects (i.e all the squares, circles, text etc) you might try to use the names gallery to select objects with a given colour. But you won't be able to select certain specific colours in a bitmap.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi geoHiker and welcome to TG. Perhaps this will help:

[Acorn]

If you had Xara Designer Pro(+) or Xara P&GD, there is the option to colour-select regions of adjacent and similar hue and alter that.
Here is an example file: Xara - Colour-selected Regions.xar [8MB download]
I make the Red and Blue transparent; I changed Yellow to Purple; I mostly cut out everything other than the Magenta leaf.

Bitmap manipulation within Xara is alive and kicking. Post-processing in other bitmap editors is probably sensible though.

Acorn

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Enhance photo colors

Normally the ENHANCE controls will apply to the whole of a selected photo - but if you just want to make changes to a particular color within your photo then use the ENHANCE PHOTO COLORS option. You might want to change the color of the sky or tweak the brightness and contrast of a patch of grass for example. Additionally there is also the option to make a selected color transparent.


Just click on the SELECT COLORS TO ENHANCE button on the Enhance tool InfoBar to switch into Enhance Photo Colors mode. Now you can click on the part of the photo you want to adjust.


Cross positioned over the color to be selected. The color at the click point determines the color that gets selected in the photo - you will see a brief flash of a chequerboard pattern on your photo, indicating how much of your photo has been selected. Also a red color point appears at your click point.


Red color point at click point
You can click-drag on this to move it around, if you didn’t quite hit the color you wanted to select. As you drag, the chequerboard pattern appears again and it updates dynamically as you do so, so you can see what parts of the photo have been selected. Or to review what you have selected, just click and hold over a point without dragging it to reveal the chequerboard pattern again.


If you haven’t selected all the colors you wanted, you can simply click again to add another selection point. So for example if you are trying to select all of the blue sky in your photo, there may be various different shades of blue in the sky and so you may need to click on several different parts of the sky to capture them all so that the chequerboard pattern covers the whole sky. You can do this as many times as you want, to extend the selection.


Chequerboard pattern indicating color selections You may also find that you’ve selected parts of the photo you didn’t want to select. There are two ways to help solve this problem. You can adjust the extent of the color selection by adjusting fade and tolerance values, and/or you can use a region or mask to limit the area of the photo to which the color selection is applied. See sections below.


Note that enhance photo colors mode is turned off automatically when you leave the Photo Tool or switch to another document.


Applying Enhance
Now choose any of the Enhance functions to alter the selection.
• Brightness
• Contrast
• Photo saturation
• Photo temperature
• Hue
• Sharpness
• Brightness levels
Or else to make the color selection transparent use the option on the right-click context menu. Even after you’ve started to enhance your color selection, you can still go back and modify the selection as described above, by moving points, adding more points, etc.

[wizard509]

Hi there, new user of Xara Graphic & Design. Loving it. Very intuitive, easier to use than Corel Draw.

I've been googling and YouTubing but can't find the answer. I've seen tutorials where you can select a specific colour in a photo and change that to a different colour. My twist on that is that once I select that colour, I would only like to see objects with that colour (ie, delete/remove all other colours).




Thanks in advance.

I have trouble with that too mostly because I can't remember but it can be done I usually watch a YouTube video to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVv7WAFeRwI

[gwpriester]

My example below was done in Designer Pro+, but you can do this in Designer Pro X and Photo & Graphic Designer as well.

A color selection is more effective if the colors in the selection are close to one another.

In my example below I have created two bitmaps and used the Photo Tool > Select Colors to Enhance. The process is simple enough, select the Select Colors to Enhance tool and click on the color you wish to edit/enhance, I this case I opted to make the selected color transparent.

In example A the background drops out evenly, though a second step is necessary, Arrange > Flatten Photo Group. This gets rid of a fringe caused by anti-aliasing.

In example B some of the similar color in the center of the fill is also made transparent.

There are two drop down controls: Tolerance and Fad that can fine tune the selection.

[gwpriester]

In this example, using Select Colors to Enhance with the Tolerance and Fade adjustments and the Photo Hue adjustment, I was able to change the color of the sky to green. Again follow up with Arrange > Flatten Photo Group if you are happy with the results and wish to make the changes permanent.

[geoHiker]

Thanks for the tips. I can see myself trying some of that on future projects. I think for what I'm doing now, I might just mask the objects one by one and cut them out. That way I can save them and use them in other projects.

[RKissane]

On this thread http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...r-changer-in-8
they talk about the color select/erase tool and Angelise shows the tool in the video and in RIK's pdf file it shows this tool on the photo tool bar. I have looked back through all of my versions and this tool does not show up on this tool bar. I see the tool in the control bars palette. It appears to be a very useful tool and working with the color enhance tool it looks like a very good complement.

Anybody have any idea why this tool does not show up on my tool bar? I do not see that this tool can be set with Xareg2 so I am not sure what is going on.

Ray

[gwpriester]

Ray, this technique predates the current Select Color to Enhance option. I use the Photo Tool > Select Colors to Enhance almost daily and find it so much easier.