Quote Originally Posted by Big Frank View Post
John, since a shadow is probably the easiest live effect to reproduce manually, let's assume for the purposes of this thread that shadows are a vector effect
Who told you that the feather is a vector effect?
Seriously though, if you do not want to use Levels, I'm not the one to force you to. But as an old Photoshop user you surely know that this tool is one of the essential raster tools. It was present in Photoshop long before the shadow filters appeared.
The fact that it is implemented as a LE does not change it functionality. Would it be more "vector" if it had a separate tool interface in Xtreme like shadow, feather or bevel does? I don't think so. Shadow, Feather, Bevel just to mention a few used in this thread are all bitmap effects. They all produce raster result. Convert Beveled object to shapes and zoom - you'll see the raster of the beveled border. Same is true for all others. Whether they are listed as LE effects or not is only interface and implementation decision. It does not influence their functionality.

So, I do understand why one may be reluctant using some exotic "Acme MegaEffects ChromePro3000+", but I can't see any reasons ignoring such basic tools as Levels. Afterall, moving this road we may end up using a tool set narrower than Xara Studio 1.0 had.