Page 306 - Xara Designer Pro X17

306 Transparency

Soft erasing using the Eraser tool

Just select the object(s) you want to erase, go into the ERASER TOOL and make the
softness setting on the infobar a value greater than 0 (when softness is 0 a ‘hard erase’
is performed, which is used for permanently cutting objects and this does not use an
opacity mask). Choose an appropriate nib size on the infobar and draw over the objects.
An opacity mask is created automatically and your erase strokes are used as the mask.

Editing inside an opacity mask group
You can select objects inside the OPACITY MASK Group directly on canvas. Ctrl+click
operations will select the objects that are being masked, not the mask objects that form
the mask itself. To select the mask objects directly, use Ctrl+Alt+click. The first
Ctrl+Alt+click selects the whole opacity mask group. Ctrl+Alt+click again and it will select
the group of mask objects, so you can then drag around the whole mask inside.
Ctrl+Alt+click again and it will select individual mask objects.

You can also select any of the objects inside an opacity mask group using the Page &
Layer gallery, which lets you see the structure of the group in its entirety.

It can be difficult to make changes to the masked objects or to the masking objects as
they appear on the canvas. So you can edit either of these in a separate sub-document
view, just as you can edit inside normal groups. Right click on the opacity mask group
and choose OPEN OPACITY MASK GROUP to edit just the objects that are being masked (or
just double click on the opacity mask group). Or choose OPEN OPACITY MASK from the
same right click menu (in the OPACITY MASK sub-menu) to edit just the objects that are
forming the mask.

Advanced options
If you right click on an opacity mask group, the context menu includes an "OPACITY MASK"
sub-menu with the following operations.

Open opacity mask
This is described above – it allows the masking objects to be edited in a separate
document view.
Invert opacity mask

This inverts the nature of the transparency in the opacity mask group, so transparent
parts become opaque and vice versa. This operation actually just changes the Clipped