The Xara Trompe L'Oeil Room Page 1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

Things You Need to Know to Do This Tutorial

The Ellipse Tool is on the main toolbar on the left side of the screen. To draw an ellipse, click the Ellipse Tool icon to select it. Click on the page and drag holding down the left mouse button as you drag. Release the mouse button when the ellipse is the desired size.

 To draw a perfect circle, hold down the Ctrl key while you drag. Hold down the Shift key while dragging to draw from the center out. Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys while dragging to draw a circle from the inside out.

After you have drawn your ellipse, select the Selector Tool (the arrow pointer on the main toolbar). 8 small black boxes will appear around the object as shown on the right. You can drag these handles to resize the selected object. The corner handles resize the image proportionally while the center handles resize non-proportionally. Try it out. I'll wait.

If you click twice on the image, the resizing handles are replaced by rotation and skew handles. Drag the corner handles to rotate the object, drag the center handles to skew the object. Click on a blank area of the screen to de-select an object.

The Infobar at the top of the screen is context - sensitive. This means that it changes to provide different options depending upon the selected tool or object.

When the ellipse is selected, the Inforbar shows the position of the object on the page (measuring downward from the top left of the page) and the object's Width and Height. The Scale Width windows are used to scale an image a specified amount. For example, if you highlight 100% and change the amount to 200 and press Enter, the object will become twice as big. A percentage less than 100 reduces the size of the selected object.

By default, the Lock Aspect Ratio button is in the depressed position. If you enter a number in any of the text entry boxes and press Enter the object will scale proportionally. If the button is in the raised position, then each percentage will work independent of the other settings. Thus if the Lock Aspect Ratio button is in the raised position (unlocked) and you change the Width setting, or the Width percentage, the Height setting will remain unchanged. And vice versa.

NOTE: The Rectangle Tool works in exactly the same manner.