The Xara Trompe L'Oeil Room  Page 9
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Position the shapes we just created over the other elements. These will be used as highlights on the glass tubing and will help further the glass tube illusion.

Change the fill color to RGB 240, 240, 255.

The highlights are a little too sharp to be believable. Select the highlights and apply 2 pixels of feathering.

The Feathering (or Change Size of Feather Region, its official name) slider is to the right of the Gallery icons on the top right part of the Infobar.

Take another break. We're about to enter the final leg.

Looking at the example above, I decided the brightest of the two neon blends has been overly simplified by the Contrast transparency which we applied to the bitmap.

Click over the neon while holding down the Alt key. Look at the Status Bar on the bottom gray portion of the Xara window. Click until the Status Bar reveals, 1 Blend on Layer 1: Press Ctrl F to bring the blend in front of the Contrast transparency. That looks much better.

NOTE: This is called digging. Holding down the Alt key while clicking on a group of two or more ungrouped objects (sorry there was no better way to say that) selects the objects in the reverse order in which they were created. The Status Bar identifies each selected object. Fills and outline colors are also reflected in the Current Fill and Outline Color icon to the far left of the screen palette.