Page 400 - Xara Web Designer Premium

400 The Photo Tools

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.

Content-aware photo zoom
An alternative to content aware scaling is the whereby the photo remains the same size
and the content is intelligently zoomed inside it. Here's an example of the effect.

Use the zoom slider on the InfoBar to control content-aware
photo zoom.

The picture remains the same size, but the program automatically detects and scales
(zooms) the 'interesting' content. Note this is not just a crop of the girl, but that every
element, cloud, and grass that appears in the original is still there in the zoomed version.
The program automatically detects the girl is the 'region of interest' and so enlarges her
only.