The Xara Trompe L'Oeil Room Page 11
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A Mini-Tutorial

If the embossed surface in the above illustration looks familiar, it should, it's the same as the Xa-Fill pattern (left) used in this tutorial.

First, convert the image to bitmap (Arrange > Make Bitmap Copy).

Select the bitmap. From Plug-ins > Bitmap Effects, select Color Depth. Select Grayscale and press OK.

Select the Grayscale image and once again Create Bitmap Copy (Arrange menu or right click on the image and select Create Bitmap Copy from the fly out menu).

For this next step you will need Sean Sedwards' Emboss Plug-in found in the Shareware Page. Refer to Xara's Help menu for installing and using plug-in filters.

With the grayscale bitmap selected, select Emboss from the Plug-ins menu. Change the Direction slider to 200 to reverse the raised emboss effect to a debossed effect. Press OK to create the emboss.

As you might remember, you can change any bitmap image into a 2-color image by selecting the image and selecting two colors from the screen palette. The right button selects the darker colors and the left mouse button selects the lighter colors. I used two of the same colors used in the tutorial.

This works really well with most of the Xa-Fills sets. And as you can see on this page, with transparency added to the grayscale bitmap, it makes a swell tiling background pattern.