Page 407 - Xara Designer Pro X17

The Photo Tools 407

Note: You can't mask more than half the image. The prepare operation will give an error
if you try this.

Adjusting a mask, or adding a new mask
You can't add a mask to an image that has already been stretched. Instead, if you want
to add a new mask or adjust an existing one, you have these options:
1. Click the RESET button and draw a new mask
2. Click undo as many times as necessary to get back the mask, and then use the
mask painter tool to adjust the mask shapes.
3. Or, before you select the PREPARE buttons, copy the mask to the clipboard. If you
want to use this later, perform a RESET on the image, then re-enter the MASK
PAINTER TOOL and paste the shape back onto the mask layer.

There is another alternative that you can 'fix' a stretched image using the OPTIMIZE
feature, and then apply a new mask. This is not recommended in most cases because it
will produce lower quality results than resetting the image and applying a mask to the
original image.

Alternative Content Aware Scaling
When stretching photos there are two alternative ways to scale the image. The method of
just dragging the size arrows sometimes doesn't work so well with some image types.

However by holding the "Alt" key when dragging one of the side handles in the CONTENT-
AWARE PHOTO RESIZE TOOL (on page 404) performs a different intelligent scale using an
alternative algorithm.

Content Aware Scaling notes
• You can only compress an image to half its initial width or height
• If you save a document with a photo that has been prepared for Content Aware
resizing, then it saves the resizing information in the document. The advantage of this
is that you can later re-adjust the photo using the Content Aware feature. There is a
significant file size overhead of saving photos like this.

The Brightness Levels Dialog

Click the Levels Tool icon on the Photo Tool fly-out bar.

The LEVELS TOOL provides detailed control over the brightness levels of photos. It's a
very powerful, multi-purpose tool that not only shows a histogram of the brightness levels
of the photo, but provides a greater degree of control than the simple brightness or