Since we went to all the trouble
to lighten the bottom of the blue capsule using Xara's Elliptical transparency, we should go the extra 9 yards and add a soft shadow beneath the text. Duplicate the beveled text. (Ctrl D) and convert the duplicated
text to editable shapes (Shift Ctrl S) Select the Mould Tool and apply a Default Envelope. (The first rectangle button on the Infobar). Click in each corner and drag the
Bezier control handles downwards as shown. Drag the bottom handles a little more than the top ones. |
One of the few features missing from
Xara is a Gaussian Blur filter. But lucky for us, Ladislav Seridi has created a cute little utility called SL Blur which can be downloaded for free from the XaraXone Shareware Page along with a ton of other cool shareware and freeware stuff. Select the text and from the Arrange menu, select
Create Bitmap Copy. From the Color Depth drop down list, select True Color (24-bit). And press Create. Copy the bitmap to the clipboard. Open SL Blur and press the Clipboard
icon on the far left to paste the bitmap. Move the slider to 10 and check the Add Border check box. Press the water drop button to apply the blur. Press the Copy button (to the left of the hand button),
to place a copy of the blurred bitmap in the clipboard. Close SL Blur and say thank you, Ladislav. BY THE WAY: Add Border automatically expands the width of the bitmap
to accommodate the blurring. If not checked, the blurring is truncated. |
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