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As always, we will be using Pixels as our units of measure. Right click on the screen and select Page Options... from the pop up menu. In the Units tabbed section, select Pixels for the Units and 0-255 for the Color Units. In the Grid and Ruler tabbed section set the Major Spacing to 100pix (key it in exactly like this please) and the Number of Subdivisions to 10. Press OK to close the dialog and apply the changes. To see a tutorial on Xara Basics visit Workbook 20. NOTE: You will notice from time to time I apply arbitrary colors to objects. I do this to make the objects easier to see. If I do not specify a fill for an object, you do not have to apply a fill or outline color. When I show an ellipse or rectangle that has just been created, that has no fill, it is because I have set the fill to none before I exported the illustration. By default, all ellipses, rectangles and Quick Shapes have a black outline and a black fill. There is nothing wrong with your copy of Xara. Naming Conventions. I use bold face to indicate the names of tools, galleries, keyboard shortcuts, and dialogs. Items such as unnamed icons and drop down lists, which have names when you let your cursor rest over them for a moment, are displayed in italics. The Infobar is the context sensitive menu at the top of the screen and changes to reflect the options for the selected tool. Some of the tool icons have changed in Xara X1, and this may cause some confusion for new users. If you are using an older version of Xara, click here to see my Rosetta Stone for translating the old buttons into the new. New Users? I have created some quick start mini-tutorials to get you though the basics. Workbook 20, Workbook 30, and Workbook 31 cover the main things you need to know to get started. While you should be able to create all the steps in previous versions of Xara, some of the tool icons have changed, and this may cause some confusion for new users. If you are using an older version of Xara, click here to see my Rosetta Stone for translating the old buttons into the new. |
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This month's tutorial was inspired by a Photoshop tutorial on Lunacore.com the final image is shown below. I first saw the image in a Post by Mike Sorokach here in which Mike and Egg provided their own versions of the final image done in Xara. My first intention was to translate the Photoshop tutorial into Xara-ese but I decided I would rather come up with my own version of a glass ball on a page of text. The Lunacore.com tutorial is excellent, by the way.
I know this seems far removed from the Lunacore.com image but bear with me. Open the Clipart Gallery (Shift F10 or click the Clipart Gallery icon on the Infobar). In the Photographs 2 tabbed folder, select Garden 2 and press Open. Reduce the width of the image to 300 pixels.
With the bitmap selected, RIGHT click on the image and select Bitmap Trace... from the pop up menu. Increase the Accuracy setting to 80 and reduce the Smoothing setting to 20. Press Trace , then press Insert. The image will be inserted onto the page and the dialog will close. TIP: If you use a wheel mouse, click on the slider button and then you can move the slider left or right using the wheel. This works with just about all of Xara's sliders.
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The Inspiration for this month's tutorial.
