Page 299 - Xara Web Designer Premium

Photo Regions and Masks 299

1. Select one of the mask tools from the Regions and Masks tools flyout bar and draw
whatever mask shape you require around the area you wish to protect.
2. Now go into the Content Aware photo scaling tool (Photo tool fly-out bar on
the main toolbar) and click on the photo.

See the Content Aware Scaling (on page 397) feature for more information.

Photo enhance tool

Use one of the Enhance tools to apply brightness, contrast, saturation, temperature and
blur/sharpen changes to any part of a photo.

1. Select one of the Region tools from the Regions and Masks tool flyout bar and draw
whatever shape you require around the area you wish to enhance.
2. Now go into the Enhance Photos tool (Photo tool fly-out bar on the main toolbar)
and click on the photo.
3. Use the Enhance controls from the Photo tool InfoBar.

Advanced users may wish to use Soft masks to introduce graduated effects to the photo
enhance operation. See the Photo Tool and Photo Handling chapters for more
information.

Combine Shapes
There are a set of operations under the "ARRANGE" > "COMBINE SHAPES" menu that allow
you to combine shapes in a number of different ways. You can also use these with the
region tools.

For example to slice a piece of a photo out (cookie cutter style),

1. Select one of the regions tools from the PHOTO REGIONS AND MASKS tools flyout bar
and draw whatever shape you require.
2. Select "ARRANGE" > "COMBINE SHAPES" > "SLICE".

Copying Shapes To The Mask Layer

You may prefer to draw mask shapes using the ordinary drawing tools instead of the
mask tools, or to use an existing shape on your mask layer. This is particularly useful
when working with soft masks, where you are applying levels of transparency to the
mask objects. In the SELECTOR TOOL, select the shape, and copy, or cut it. Now switch