save color pages in black and white?

[David O'Neil]

But jeb has posted in the Xara Xtreme forum because he uses Xara Xtreme and it's a Xara Xtreme related question.
Not CorelDraw - off topic.

BS. It has never been off topic before to request better ways to do things in Xtreme--why now all of a sudden? It seems to me that your post is aimed to make the topic go off topic, and become about moderator decisions, rather than about focusing on Xara. But that's all I'm going to say on that, since I've already expressed my opinions and basically been told to shut up by friendly mods.

Bob: He probably means Yet Another Wish List, but I could be wrong. OTA! (Obscurity through acronyms.)

The bottom line on this is that other tools can help accomplish this in a better manner than Xtreme can, although Xtreme is capable of doing it with a couple workarounds. I, myself, would shy clear of placing transparencies inside a PDF, unless you knew for certain your printer won't have any problems with it. If I was forced to use only Xtreme I'd probably create a greyscale layer, make greyscale bitmap copies of all the graphics, turn off the colored layers, and make the PDF using only the greyscale items. I'd probably use another tool from my toolbox to do it easier, though.

[EJ]

Having been partially shot down over my comments on CorelDraw I decided to use Xara for my next article that needed B&W photos. This turned out to be a five page one that incorporated three colour photos that I changed to B&W using the saturation transparency method. The resulting pdf certainly looks OK. However, the printers noted that the pictures came out darker than expected.

I have not yet seen the results but I thought I would pose the question. Have other people noticed this darkening effect? Do people who use this technique do any further post improvement work on their graphics before they send the files off to get printed?

I know that I could massage each photo prior to putting it into the Xara article but that is not what I want to do. I love the layout versatility of Xara for writing purposes (please don't say Xara is not a writing program :-)) and I want to maintain a fast workflow.

Erik

[angelize]

Erik, If you are working with photos or bitmaps Xara has a photo tool that is a much better way to grayscale this type of file.

Click on the camera icon and click enhance now you will see a whole set of options for working with photos. Adjust the sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness etc.

[Egg Bramhill]

Erik, another way is to select your photo and left click the white colour on the colour bar. This turns the photo into a B&W contone image. It appears to work fine for pdf export. I wouldn't recommend using any transparency methods for pdf export.

[steve.ledger]

Erik, another way is to select your photo and left click the white colour on the colour bar. This turns the photo into a B&W contone image.

As mentioned in post #3

[handrawn]

I agree with Egg - don't use transparency methods for pdf - or any process where color shift might cause problems

[Daniel]

As I mentioned in my reply, this works for photos and bitmaps.
It won't work for vector clipart (or anything you draw with Xtremes vector drawing tools) because it isn't a bitmap and therefore you cannot change the light or dark contone, only the fill or line.

You don't have to make bitmap copies of vector designs in order to make them black and white - but you do have to use the god-awful Live Effects tool. I wouldn't recommend it at all, but it is possible.

Select your entire drawing (CTRL A), then switch to the Live Effects tool (CTRL F5), then click the New > button at the top left, click Enhance from the top of the menu, and then type -100 in the text box by the bottom left slider and hit Return.

The Live Effects tool is dangerous: using it will slow down Xtreme, it will corrupt your documents, and after a couple of tries you'll probably give up (and if you like it as little as I do, remove it from the toolbar completely).

[steve.ledger]

Using the 'Enhance' LE turns the vector shapes into a Bitmap.
As Daniel clearly pointed out, this is a tad slower and more cumbersome than it should be.
Therefore my original comment and recommendation of creating a bitmap copy and setting the light the contone to white, is shown to be faster and a more pleasant experience for the user.

[Daniel]

Using the 'Enhance' LE turns the vector shapes into a Bitmap.

No it doesn't.

Therefore my original comment and recommendation of creating a bitmap copy and setting the light the contone to white, is shown to be faster and a more pleasant experience for the user.

It depends what is being created and how often/easily it needs to be changed.

I'd rather have to eat my mouse than work with Live Effects - they are half-baked, unreliable, incomplete unwelcome blemish on Xtreme's other tools in my opinion, but they don't turn vector shapes into bitmaps. Vector shapes remain editable.

[handrawn]

some of them are bitmap effects overlaid on vector shapes - eg liquid color

but in the case of enhance it remains vector, as Daniel says