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	Xara X. The Transparency Tool (Continued)




	As with many of Xara's Fountain Fills, you can select Simple or Repeating Transparency. Simple Transparency applies the gradient transparency in one continuous flow whereas Repeating Transparency (if the dimensions of the transparent shape are less than the transparent shape) creates a pattern as shown on the left. NOTE: You control the Transparency Shape in the exact same way you create Fountain Fill shapes by dragging the fill path arrows.

If the last example was confusing, you can also add Profile settings to Repeating Transparency with the results shown on the left.

HOW TO: If a Profile is available, one or two arrow icons will appear on the Infobar. Press the button to open the Profile dialog. You can select the Profiles from the drop down list of preset profiles or use the sliders to modify the presets.

You can create effective montage images by applying Circular or Elliptical Transparency to the top image.

In the example shown on the left, a Circular Transparency was applied to the butterfly image revealing a portion of the keyhole and eyeball image (created in Xara 1.2!) beneath.

Using the same butterfly image (from the September 1998 Trompe L'Oeil tutorial), I made a bitmap copy and used Xara's Bitmap Effects (Utilities > Bitmap Effects and Plugins > Bitmap Effects > Color Depth > Grayscale) to make a grayscale version of the color image.

I applied a simple, Linear, Mix Transparency and adjusted the fill path arrow as shown. The result is a graduation from 0 saturation to full saturation.

This technique works quite well with a wireframe version as well.

Another good use of transparency is creating a "ghosted" portion of an image over which to place text.

The stair step shapes were removed from the white rectangle (Arrange > Combined Shapes > Subtract Shapes) and 20% Mix, Flat Transparency applied.

The reverse of this technique is to make the rectangle black and make the background darker and the text white or a lighter color.