Page 22 - Xara Designer Pro X17

22 Getting Started

The FREEHAND & BRUSH TOOL allows you to draw freehand as you would with a
pencil as well as creating brush strokes. See the FREEHAND & BRUSH TOOL (ON
PAGE 154) for more information.

The SHAPE PAINTER TOOL allows you to ‘paint’ with a ‘nib’ to extend an existing
shape or draw a new one. The strokes you draw with this tool are merged on
the fly to form filled shapes. See the SHAPE PAINTER TOOL (on page 159) for
more information.

Fill Tool
You can easily put a graduated color fill onto a shape using this tool
(and a lot more besides). Select the tool and just drag across your
object.

The fill arrow can be adjusted by dragging the ends to alter the direction, angle and
extent of the graduation.

Rounded rectangle with a graduated fill.

Note: If you drag with the FILL TOOL across a grouped item, such as a text panel, then
everything in the group takes on the same fill style. To overcome this you must first
select just the item you want to fill. You can do this several ways. A single click on the
item with the FILL TOOL will select just that item, as will a click in the SELECTOR TOOL with
the "Ctrl" key pressed (this is called 'select inside' because it selects just the one item
inside the group). Now when you drag it will fill only the selected object.

To edit the start or color of the fill just drag and drop a color from the color line onto the
shape, or you can select the end of the Fill Arrow in the FILL TOOL and use the Color
Editor (on page 193) ("Ctrl + E").

You can create a multi-stage graduated fill by making sure the fill arrow is visible (select
it with the FILL TOOL), now just drag a color from the Color Line (on page 189) and
carefully drop it on the arrow line where you want the new color. You can now drag this