Confused How to Crop Large Photos

[JEDweb23]

I purchased Photo & Graphic Designer v20, and I'm struggling with how to load a photo and crop it with a mask. I had a very old version that was lost when my PC crashed last week. Wow has it changed! I am in my 70s and the current lingo has me confused. I would appreciate a volunteer giving me a step by step to mask and crop to 1920x1080 and 1920x1440 versions from larger photos.

[Acorn]

I purchased Photo & Graphic Designer v20, and I'm struggling with how to load a photo and crop it with a mask. I had a very old version that was lost when my PC crashed last week. Wow has it changed! I am in my 70s and the current lingo has me confused. I would appreciate a volunteer giving me a step by step to mask and crop to 1920x1080 and 1920x1440 versions from larger photos.

Jed, you specify two sizes.

The simplest method would be to create two rectangle of those sizes.

Drag any image onto the canvas. You then delete it but it is stored in the Bitmap gallery for re-use.
Next, open the Bitmap gallery and select either of your rectangles.
Finally, in the Bitmap gallery, right-click on an image and pick Apply as Fill.

It is up to you to open the Fill tool and drag the image around in the rectangle.

There are other approaches.

Acorn

[Evnl]

yeah they messed up the crop/resize operations big time several versions ago. However you can get back the old(and much better) behavior. First, close xara and use WINDOWS KEY+R. Then type regedit followed a press on the enter key. Now press ctrl+f and search for ShowXCBoundsBlobs . Once found double click the registry entry and change the current value(1) to 0.

Now start xara again, right click the aspect ratio icon and deselect smart transform. Now try resizing/cropping bitmaps and shapes and you should be good to go.

[Acorn]

yeah they messed up the crop/resize operations big time several versions ago. However you can get back the old(and much better) behavior. First, close xara and use WINDOWS KEY+R. Then type regedit followed a press on the enter key. Now press ctrl+f and search for ShowXCBoundsBlobs . Once found double click the registry entry and change the current value(1) to 0.

Now start xara again, right click the aspect ratio icon and deselect smart transform. Now try resizing/cropping bitmaps and shapes and you should be good to go.

Evnl, I think you are trying to push your own dislike of the new GUI onto a Thread that does not need it being mentioned. The OP clearly asked for a cropping approach. You are conflating the old-style black controls with the Sticky-Stretchy issue mucked up in version 15.0. You are right that switching off Smart transform allows the insuitive adjustment of an image but did not mention holding the Alt meta-key also cancels out Smart transform. Neither of which allows an image to be accurately cropped to exact dimensions.

Asking someone to tweak their Registry without any caveat is not appropriate; if you have different Xara products, you have multiple ShowXCBoundsBlobs entries.

Acorn