Creating Two Color Photograhic Bitmap Images

Before we begin, here's a useful tip. The fill and outline colors are indicated on the screen palette with a small diamond shape. When the diamond is on the left, the color is the fill color, when the diamond is on the right, the color is the outline color. This only works with colors that are on the screen palette and not mixed colors. Remember Left, as in Left mouse button, for fill and Right, as in right mouse button, for outline.

Xara is unique among vector drawing applications in that any bitmap image, from 1-bit to 24-bit can be converted to a two-color image by simply adding a fill and an outline color.

The image on the left illustrates this. The far left is comprised of black and light gray. The color image has not been modified. The next image uses pale yellow and very dark green. Switching the dark and light colors creates a negative image. The last image uses pale blue and dark green. Nifty effect, no?

 Xara's Elliptical Transparency applied to an unmodified duplicate image creates this subtle transition from black and white to full color. The center of the transparency (the color image) is 0% while the outside is 100% transparent.

The typeface is called Glaser Stencil (as in Milton Glaser) and is included on the Xara replacement CD. The image is on the CD too.

Changing the balck and white colors to violet and orange, as seen on the left, creates an otherworldly effect.