The Xara Trompe L'Oeil Room Page 3
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NOTE: The image on the left is greatly magnified and represents a magnified portion of the rounded rectangle we just created.

Select the XARA text and Copy it (Ctrl C).

Select the rounded rectangle and select Paste Attributes from the Edit pull down menu (or Shift Ctrl A). This copies the fill from the text and pastes it to the rectangle.

With the rectangle selected, select Convert to Editable Shapes. You will no longer be able to edit the rounded corners but you can now use the Shape Editor Tool to resize and/or modify the shape.

Create a second rectangle 490 pixels wide by 10 pixels tall. Use the same technique from the previous page to change the Curvature setting to 0.7 and copy and paste the fill (Paste Attributes).

Center the wider rectangle along the top of the contour and center the shorter rectangle along the bottom of the contour. (Use the Object Alignment palette (Arrange > Alignment ) to center the three objects.

Select the Blend Tool and click and drag from the top rectangle to the bottom rectangle to create a blend. Change the number of Blend Steps on the Infobar from 5 to 4 steps.

HOW TO: One of the most frequently asked questions by new users is how to create a blend. It's easy. Click on the starting shape and without releasing the mouse button, drag until the cursor is over the second blend shape. Release the mouse button and voila! The Blend is created. To change the number of Blend Steps, highlight the default number of steps (5) by dragging the cursor over the number, key in a new number, and press Enter on your keyboard to apply the change.

We want the blended bars to show though the text. However, if we apply transparency to the text all we will see is the conical fill underneath. So, we need to remove the shape of the text from the conical fill.

Copy the XARA text to the clipboard (Ctrl C). Select the XARA text and the contour shape (hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click on each object to multiple select). From the Arrange pull down menu, select Combine Shapes... and from the fly out menu, select Subtract Shapes. The XARA shape is now removed from the conical-filled contour shape.

Paste the text back on top using Shift Ctrl V.

NOTE: There are two ways to paste an object from the clipboard. Ctrl V (or Arrange > Paste ) pastes the contents of the clipboard in the exact center of the screen. Shift Ctrl V (hold down the Shift and Ctrl keys and press V before releasing the Shift and Ctrl keys) pastes the contents in the exact position from which they were copied.

The text and contour shapes don't look any different.

Yet.