Page 380 - Xara Designer Pro X17

380 Photo Handling

• Otherwise, the default bitmap.

You can select a different bitmap:

• From the dropdown list,
• From the BITMAP GALLERY (click the "TRACE" button), or
• By clicking on any bitmap in any Designer Pro document.

By default, the tracer does a "photographic" trace. That is, it produces a drawing with lots
of colored shapes to simulate the photographic bitmap being traced. If you want to trace
a black-and-white scanned bitmap, such as a logo or symbol, select one of the other
trace modes such as monochrome or 256 colors. These are optimized for producing
simpler but generally more precise tracings.

Click "INSERT" to copy the tracing into the document.

Click "TRACE" to start the trace operation.

Press "ESC" to abort a trace operation.

Trace mode
This lets you specify the maximum number of colors in the final object:

• Monochrome-2 colors.
• Grayscale-256 shades of gray.
• 256 color-256 colors.
• Photographic-16 million (24 bit) colors.

Selecting more colors than exist in the original bitmap is usually not beneficial. The only
time increasing the colors is useful is when tracing a heavily dithered 256-color bitmap
and you want near-photographic quality.

Each of these modes can have different settings for passes, color tolerance and so on.

To restore the settings to their saved defaults click "RESET SETTINGS".
To make the current settings the default, click "SAVE SETTINGS".

To restore the settings to the factory defaults, click "DEFAULTS".

Passes
(Range 1-5)

The greater the number of passes, the longer the trace operation takes and the greater
the resultant file size, but the final result is closer to the original.

With each pass, the tracer attempts to more closely match any shading in the original
bitmap. Obviously, this increases the memory required for the final object. You may