Page 377 - Xara Designer Pro X17

Photo Handling 377

To create a bitmap from objects:

1. Select the object/s on the page.
2. Right click and choose CREATE BITMAP COPY or choose CREATE BITMAP COPY from
the ARRANGE menu ("Ctrl + Shift + C").
3. In the dialog box, select the color depth, the size and other options.

For maximum quality select a color depth of true color, or if you want transparency to be
included select "true color + alpha" (alpha transparency is the technical term). You can
create bitmaps with fewer colors by selecting a color depth of 256 colors or less. This
also provides control over the dithering and palette options. These options are described
in the section on exporting bitmaps (on page 613).

Note this always creates PNG images, which are the highest quality image type.
However for full color photo purposes, these require a lot of memory and file space. Use
the optimize photo option to convert PNG images into embedded JPEG images to
reduce the file size.

Photo Documents

Sometimes it's useful to work on one photo alone, rather than as "objects on a page".
This is called a photo document or "photo mode" in Designer Pro, and it behaves more
like a traditional photo editor. You can create a photo document in a number of ways:

• Drag a photo file from your file explorer onto the title bar or toolbar of Designer Pro
• Select "FILE" > "OPEN" and select a photo file
• Create a blank photo document by selecting "FILE" > "NEW" > "BLANK PHOTO"
Photo documents are characterized by the following behavior differences compared to
traditional Designer Pro documents:

• There is no visible white page. In fact the page dimensions are set automatically to
match the photo plus any other objects you've added.
• Photo documents have a 1 pixel grid by default and snap to grid is turned on. This
makes it easier to get pixel-accurate crop or clip regions.
• The Pasteboard (the area around the photo) is a darker color. This makes it easy to
distinguish at a glance between photo documents and drawing documents.
• The document zoom is set so that the photo fills the view and the PHOTO TOOL is
automatically selected as the current tool.
• Dropping additional photo files on top of an existing photo just adds a new photo to the
document instead of replacing the photo in its frame. And the view will zoom out so
you can see the whole image.
• Images are not resized to be 500 pixels on import as they are in normal documents,
but are imported at 1:1, so that at 100% zoom you're seeing the image at full size.
• The pixel smoothing options are altered. By default it selects the "Very high quality"
display mode, which is best for images scaled down or zoomed out. It also has pixel