Xara X Line to Shape - Transparency - Profiles
The example top left is a simple freehand line. I increased the line weight to 8 points, applied a Round Cap
in the Line Gallery and Converted Line to Shape in the Arrange menu. I applied a Fractal Clouds fill. I used a duplicate for a drop shadow and added Stained Glass transparency.
Another thing that used to drive me bonkers is arrows. When you apply an arrowhead and tail in the Line Gallery it looks fine at 1 point, but as the line weight increases,
the head and tail increase disproportionately. By converting a 1 point arrow to a shape, the proportion remains more consistent. My sanity has been saved!
Show of hands. How many times have you wished you could apply a fill to a path? I knew it! Me too. Well now we can!
The transparency options are now referred to as Painting Modes. And there are seven new modes in addition to Normal (formerly mix),
Stained Glass, and Bleach. You can see the effect of each Painting Mode as it has been applied to the top split, fountain-filled circles. Saturation produced no visible effect, so
I changed the fill to black, which in turn desaturated the color underneath transforming it to grayscale.
Remember how simple the Transparency
feature used to be? (Maniacal chortle). Well it ain't that simple any more.
I've mentioned Profiles a few times and now might be a good time to describe once again what they are and how they work. Those of you who have
worked with recent versions of CorelDRAW will be aware of DRAW's Interactive Controls. DRAW offers a movable slider, along a fountain fill path for example, that repositions the midway point of the fill. As you will see on the next page, Profiles effect each
tool in different ways but the basic principle is the same. Some Profiles have only one dialog (less confusing), such as the Fountain Fill Profile dialog shown here. All Profile
dialogs have a standard set of drop down preset settings. The area just under the white square with the squggly line shows a graphical representation of what effect the selected Profile will have. You can also modify the
Profile using the sliders.
Xara X takes this interactivity to new heights with the Profile settings. Many tools now have Profile dialogs,
including many Fill Tool fills, Blends, Contours, Shadows, Contours, Bevels, Feathering, and more.
The five Circular-filled Circles on the left show the results of the five Profile settings. The diagonal line is the default setting. The other four Profiles effect the fill as you can see, and
fortunately, in this case, a picture is worth a thousand words for I'm hard pressed to describe exactly what is happening here.
