I'm inclined to keep doing tutorials as videos, because 1.) Someone like you tells me you like them, and I have a lot of respect for you as a fellow artist 2.) They're not all that hard to produce, not when I have the software and use cameras and stuff professionally almost every day, and 3.) this one took 2 days on and off, from concept to finished video, while a written one can take much longer, and I'm not always as focused when I write!
As far as bitmap copying goes, I caution you and all members. The Deal is: bitmaps are resolution-dependent. Okay WTH (what the heck) does this mean? It means that bitmaps can become distorted and lose their focus if you resample them by enlargeing them. When you create a bitmap from vector artwork, you've declared a finite number of pixels that make up the bitmap and the information presented to you visually is fixed, you can't add or subtract pixels to the design itself without resampling (blurring) it.
This is a hard concept to explain and if there's interest, I might feature a video on the prinicple because I devoted several (like 20) pages to this in a Photoshop book I wrote ages ago, and it's still a relevant topic.
Mathematically, you can resize a vector object with no loss to detail because vector artwork has no fixed resolution.
A small bitmap photo might be 300 by 300 pixels by 96 pixels/inch. And if you resample it to 600 by 600 pixels by 96 pixels/inch, you've distorted original bitmap features and details in the picture, and unless you do a Ctrl+Z, you've permanently messed up the bitmap.
Proof for Xaraists: import a bitmap and look at the resoluition in the lower left of the UI when it's selected. Now scale it. As dimensions increase, resolution decreases.
This means Xara does not by default resample imported bitmaps. You haven't changed the number of pixels in it.
And generally, you shouldn't try to up-sample bitmaps, because aside from one or two expensive software programs that partially produce this impossible feat, there's no mathematically sound way to increase size or detail in bitmap graphics. Adobe is doing some experimental stuff on smart filters that refocus data and there's the Lytro camera that doesn't take focus data so there's nothing to blur the original image, but other than that, for us mortals with Xara today, upscaling bitmaps degrades your work, end of line.
Does this make sense for you in your work?
My Best,
Gary
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