Bitmap Handling Improvements Included with Xara Xtreme 3.2 and Xtreme Pro 3.2 is Magix Xtreme Photo, which is not surprisingly, a bitmap editing application that has more features than the Xara Picture Editor (XPE). For example Magix Xtreme Photo can clone one part of a photo and brush it over another. And you can do pixel editing and selection and several things that you can't do in XPE. But for my taste, most of what I like to do I can do in XPE . If I need serious bitmap editing, I like to use Photoshop.

In 3.2 you can determine which application you want to use to edit your bitmaps in the Page Options menu. And you can select how you want the bitmap image in Xara to transfer to your choice of editors. Double click on a photo or double click on a bitmap filled object (NEW FEATURE), and your bitmap will be sent to and will open your choice of bitmap editors.

Improved Drag and Drop Now you can drag a bitmap image from the Bitmap Gallery or the Clipart Gallery and drop it onto an existing bitmap to replace the bitmap. In fact, you can drag a bitmap from the desktop and drop it onto a bitmap or even a bitmap-filled object. Shown above, the CATFACE.jpg image is dragged and dropped onto the full face cat photo. On the right the replaced photo ready to edit.

TIP: You can also drag and drop a bitmap image onto a non-bitmap filled object. Just hold down the Shift key before you drop the bitmap.

Here's something else I just discovered but maybe you could do this before. You can drag and drop a bitmap onto a Beveled object. You can drag and drop onto the object, onto just the bevel or both (one at a time).

Another thing that uses to make me grumpy is rotating bitmap fills. I frequently forget to hold down the Ctrl key when rotating and so the aspect ratio gets all messed up. Makes me crazy.

Xara must have taken pity on my grumpy old sole because now when you drag either of the outer fill path arrows you can resize and rotate a bitmap fill and it remains in proper proportion. To resize the bitmap fill but not proportionately, hold down the Shift key and you can resize the bitmap image one fill path arrow at a time. Amazing!

Select Within a Group With the Fill Tool Not an earth shattering improvement but a nice touch nonetheless. The illustration above shows a group of three objects with different fills. Click on any shape in the group with the Fill Tool to edit individually. Or Shift click with the Fill Tool to select two more more objects within the group.

Drag and Drop Contoning Xara has always had the ability to create a Contone (continuous tone) 2-colored image. The traditional way to do this was to select the bitmap and click on a color on the screen palette with the right mouse button for the dark color and click on a color with the left mouse button for the lighter color. You can still do this. But you can also drag and drop a color onto a photo to create an automatic contoned image. This effect is very similar if not really, a duo-tone. You could use two Pantone spot colors and create a duo-tone.

RAW Photo Support Xtreme Pro 3.2 has import filters for many RAW photo formats. I just imported a photo from my Nikon Coolpix 8700 without a hitch. The advantage to the RAW file format is it is a lossless format which retains more detain and image information than JPEG which is the default for most digital cameras.

New and Improved Import and Export Filters In addition to the RAW file import and the RTF Rich Text Format import (covered earlier), the EMF Extended Metafile filters have been upgraded and there is even an Paste Special option for EMF when copying and pasting between applications. The new SVG Super Vector Graphic filter is a work in progress and can currently only be used safely for simple graphics. Xara is continuing to improve this filter. And finally support has been added for the new Windows Vista XPS-XML file format. This format is Microsoft's answer to Adobe's PDF file format but has a long way to go before it is going to give Adobe any serious competition. That said, remember when Netscape had 90% of the web browser market?

Xara has also continued to make improvements to the PDF import and Export filters. Many small, and not so small bugs have been exterminated. And here's something that will make you happy. Fonts now embed! I just created a file with a whole bunch of fonts and symbol fonts. Instead of the error message about fonts not embedding because of whatever reason, the file opened and all the fonts and symbol fonts were there. I even applied a bitmap fill to the entire block of text and placed a transparent Alt Rainbow filled circle on top. I opened the file in Acrobat 8 and it was perfect. No errors! I was even able to convert it to Adobe's new PDF/X4 file format that supports native transparency.

And remember, PDF is Adobe Illustrator's other default file format so if you need to exchange files with an Illustrator user, PDF is the way to go. And PDF/X is the preferred way to supply files to your printing professional. If she or he cannot accept a PDF/X file, I'd seriously look for another printing company.

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