Xara X. The Color Gallery (Continued)

Sort... opens the Gallery Sort Options dialog (shown here) in which you can rearrange the colors using two kinds of sort criteria. Sort options include: Name, Hue, Intensity, and Model. Name refers to named colors, Hue refers to the position of each color in relation to its location on the color wheel, Intensity refers to the saturation, or lack of saturation, of a color and Model refers to named, Browser, Pantone, etc.

Properties... offers three options for how the colors are displayed in the Color Gallery window. The screen shot of the full Color Gallery window on the previous page demonstrates the results of selecting Display full information.

NOTE: In preparing this article, I experimented with the different Sort and Properties options. The results of these sorts were not that predictable. Moreover, I was unable to find a way to reset the screen palette colors to their default positions. So unless you are very adventuresome, I would leave well enough alone. Same goes for the Properties options. I was unable to reset these to their defaults as well.

Help... follows Options and provides context-sensitive help which can be very useful (where do you think I get all this information?)

Redefine permits you to change a named color to a newly mixed color by selecting the newly mixed color, then the color you wish to change in the Color Gallery, and then pressing the Redefine button. For example, let's return to my color named Blanche, which when last visited was a pale green. I decided I did not like this pale green and mixed a new Robin's Egg blue color. With the pale blue color selected, I clicked the color called Blanche in the Color Gallery, then pressed the Redefine button. Blanche is now Robin's Egg blue and Bob's your uncle.

Edit opens the Color Editor and lets you modify any selected color in the Color Gallery. Editing a named color, will effect all instances of the color that occur on the page.

Name lets you change the name of any color in the Color Gallery. Since Blanche is now Robin's Egg blue, I might select Blanche and rename the color Robin's Egg.

Background is the final button in the Color Menu and makes the selected color the page background color. This is useful if you are preparing graphics with transparent backgrounds that will be displayed over a colored background. Xara anti-aliases objects to the page color.

In the example shown here, the blue object was exported as a Gif image with a transparent background, first against a white background and then against the orange background. When the image is anti-aliased over a white background, Xara creates an anti-aliased fringe of white which against a white page is not noticeable. But when placed over a colored background, such as the orange background shown here, is very noticeable. When exported over an orange page background color, Xara anti-aliases the image to orange producing a clean outline.

Variations on a Theme.

One of Xara's unique features is the ability to create a named color, create shades of the named color, then apply this named color and it's shades to an object, and then modify the named color and see all instances of this color reflect the changes.

I created a new color called Teal. I clicked on Teal in the Color Gallery, clicked New -- Make Color a Shade Of , and created a lighter Teal. I repeated the last step and created a darker teal. I used these three related Named colors to create the teal-colored circular-filled sphere in the upper left. I Selected the teal color in the Color Gallery and Edited the color. In the Color Editor, I moved the Hue slider back and forth and as I did so, the named color Teal, and its two shades, Dark and Light Teal, reflected these changes as you can see in the other three examples. You can also modify the Value (light and dark) and Saturation (percentage of color). These modifications were made in HSV Color Model mode.