Hi Stygg—

At the risk of sounding like a jerk (which I do daily), I just downloaded Photo and Graphics Designer 10, and there appears to be no masks, or Select colours to Enhance feature. I'm guessing this comes with only the Pro version but there is a wonky workaround.

1. Use a drawing tool to draw around the area whose color you want to replace.

2. Give this shape no outline and no fill.

3. Ctrl+Shift+C to make a bitmap copy, and then use TrueColor without alpha. Accept and there's an approximation of your shape on the page.

4. Align it with the area on the photo you want to change, and then trim away (clip) unwanted areas, 'cause your bitmap copy is rectangular.

5. With the Photo tool, use the Hue/Saturation or any other feature specific to the Photo tool to bring the color and saturation in line with what you desire.

I'll provide and example later today if you need it and I get the chance, Stygg.

By the way, the chess Depth of Field tutorial can be done using just about any version of Xara and I thought this was a fun effect to create.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You will notice in the almost 3 years since Gary P. turned the keys to Xara Xone over to me, that I've created tutorials that many different past versions of Xara can use. Because I'm an inclusive rather than an exclusive kinda guy.

But: 1.) Some members have complained that I don't cover the latest/greatest features, and

2.) Covering a tutorial done in version 6 doesn't help sell version 10, now. And if enough people don't upgrade, Xara's revenue stream might trickle out, and this will certainly cause Wall Street to collapse again, we'll be plagued by 40 years of harvest-devouring locusts, and Downton Abbey will be cancelled and they'll bring back Benny Hill reruns.

And ice cream will only come in vanilla from now on.

So I have my reasons for creating a version-specific tute, but it's only one out of 3; there's a Masks tutorial coming up later this month (September is a double-feature), and previous versions of XDP supports masks.

My Best,

Gary