Shadowing

[Acorn]

While the Xara in-build shadow tool is versatile, it has its limitations.

This approach uses SVG filter primitives that combine into shadows that are a diffused version of the shape involved.
SVG + CSS - You are being Shadowed.xar

Acorn

[gwpriester]

Cool. My method, non-SVG would be to create a bitmap copy, and blue the bitmap, and apply a Multiply transparency.

[Acorn]

Cool. My method, non-SVG would be to create a bitmap copy, and blue the bitmap, and apply a Multiply transparency.

Agreed Gary, but that is a different result. The nearest way might be to clone and feather but this loses a lot of the shadowing. I only showed the rainbow Art Brush to show how closely the colours are keyed. Changing the stdDeviation between 4 to 32 turns the shadow into a glow, nuances, I have found hard to get with Xara native functions.

i note a small typo in the Placeholder Body, it should have been x="0", I lost the closing double quotes.
Probably lost in the shadows.

Acorn

[gwpriester]

The compensation to my method is the bitmap with blurring and Multiply transparency can be modified to make the colors lighter. The amount of blurring

Remember, when I had to find the exact center of a rectangle that was 7.5" wide, I folder a piece of paper with a 7.5" rectangle. Math for the non-math oriented (and the script adverse oriented)

[Egg Bramhill]

Interesting effect Acorn but as Xara now exports it's own drop shadows as svg not as bitmap, what are the advantages of using your code?

[Acorn]

Interesting effect Acorn but as Xara now exports it's own drop shadows as svg not as bitmap, what are the advantages of using your code?

Egg, the point is the colours of my shadowing mirror the shadowed shape. Blurring can be made more diffuse as Xara sets a limit; effective with images, giving them more of a translucency at the edges.

I can select the Xara shadow and add a coloured simple linear Fill but the shadow is missing.
You might get an image for the shadow for any other Fill type but then the shadow is a JPEG and has box boundaries.
In other words all you can shadow is a Flat Fill to keep SVGs.

Xara - Shadows.xar

There are just too many poorly rendered edge cases with Xara Shadows.
In Post#1, I said "While the Xara in-build shadow tool is versatile, it has its limitations."
In saying that I am not shunning the Xara approach, just it does not always work for what I need.

What this filter combo is doing is blurring a copy of the original and displacing under that.
Remove <feBlend in="SourceGraphic" in2="blurOut" mode="normal" /> to see the blurred content alone.
Not a thing achievable in Xara.

It keeps the shadows as SVG in all the situations that I demonstrated.

As a web designer, I look for effects to make my customers' presentation stand out. These shadow effects are clearly quite nuanced for a little effort that is very hard to achieve with pure Xara.

Acorn