Page 368 - Xara Web Designer Premium

368 Photo Handling

VERY HIGH Displays images using bicubic sampling. This displays images at the
QUALITY best quality, particularly for large hi-res images that are scaled down
(DEFAULT) or zoomed out a lot.
HIGH QUALITY Anti-aliasing on, but images are rendered faster and at lower quality.

FULL COLOR No anti-aliasing, thus showing individual pixels. This can be useful
when you're zoomed in and you need to clearly see the separate
image pixels. The downside is that images generally look poor
when reduced or enlarged resulting in clearly visible pixelation and
jagged "staircase" edges, especially if you rotate the image.
OUTLINE WITH Is particularly useful for seeing outlines of the various steps of a
BLEND STEPS blend. Blends are not supported in Xara Web Designer Premium but
imported .xar files could contain blends.
OUTLINE Only object outlines are shown. This is useful for finding and
selecting objects that are difficult to see due to other objects in front
of or behind them.

There is an additional control that allows you to stop all image smoothing or anti-aliasing
on images that are scaled up or zoomed in. In other words, instead of a smoothed image,
you see all the pixels when zoomed in. Open the BITMAP GALLERY and right click on the
image and select "properties". In the dialog un-check the "Smooth when scaled up"
option. Now, no matter what viewing quality you select the image (and all copies) will
always show the un-smoothed pixels when enlarged or zoomed in.

Note: If you use the PHOTO TOOL sharpen / blur control then images have to be displayed
at maximum quality. So if you think the viewing quality has stopped working, it's almost
certainly because you have sharpened or blurred the image with the PHOTO TOOL.

Saving & Exporting Photos

Selecting the SAVE option will always save a native .web file. To save a photo as a JPEG,
PNG or other image file type, it's necessary to use the EXPORT option, or the shortcut
"Ctrl + Shift + E".

There are two icons available on the top bar that are short-cuts to save
the selection as JPG or PNG. These are in the flyout bar shown when you
move the mouse pointer over the Export HTML icon.

For photos we recommend saving as JPEG (sometimes called JPG) as this offers the
greatest compatibility and the best size / quality compromise.

When you export a JPEG or PNG, there is a SETTINGS option on the Save Dialog.
Selecting this provides many advanced export options, as well as compare side-by-side
alternative settings or even alternative file types such as PNG.