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Here's how simple it can be to create a 3d ball from just two circles and an ellipse. The white circle was given circular transparency to give the look of a soft highlight. The dark gray ellipse was given an elliptical fill for the look of a soft shadow. Easy, and very fast! The arrow was created from a simple rectangle and a triangle. I applied a linear transparency to the rectangle. Text with a red outline was simply overlaid on top of the arrow. With Xara X it is usually much faster to create simple but effective graphics than to search for appropriate clipart. You can export any graphic you create, not only for use on your webpages but also for your word processing documents, PowerPoint presentations, or even your email messages.
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These pins are examples of original clipart I've been working on for this site. (Coming soon!) The same basic technique used to create the 3d ball above can be used to create elaborate graphics.
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This paint blob is also from the future DesignStop.Com clipart collection. I used layered linear transparencies to give it a glossy look. Built up soft shadows give it the three dimensional look. Changing this blob to another color only requires changing one color. It is easy.
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Shapes filled with black and given elliptical transparencies creates a nice metallic look. Elliptical transparencies make it possible to have a gradation from one color to a second and then back to the first. You easily determine the character of the transparency interactively by simply dragging handles. Those handles can be dragged well beyond the extents of the object receiving the transparency.
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That's a picture of yours truly. Actually it was taken on my wedding day way back in the days before the internet. I don't look like that any more. I suppose late nights creating web pages has taken its toll. I now have less hair on the top of my head and I sport some wiskers - shaving is a waste of time! I'm happy to report that despite the changes my wife has kept me. Creating the soft edge to the photograph was easy using Xara X. I simply applied an elliptical transparency to the photo. If I had wanted to use it on another color of background it wouldn't have been a problem. I would have put a shape with the desired background color behind the picture prior to exporting it. The resulting jpeg would have been perfectly anti-aliased to that background color.
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For fun I played some more with the graphic I created for my first page on transparencies. Xara's transparency effects were used to do the following: tint the water and sky of the original bitmap background, created the graduated colors on the text, give the text a three dimensional look, put a subtle shadow behind the text, and to create the reflection. It really was fun to make.
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I hope these examples have given you a sense of how flexible Xara X's transparency tool is. It is an incredibly powerful tool that remains remarkably easy to use. I'm not a professional graphic artist - yet I hope you'll agree that the quality of graphics achieved with Xara software look very professional - you can do it too... The example above with the word "Xara" coming out the water shows that Xara allows you to have fun with text. In fact, with Xara X you can easily achieve a variety of cool text effects. With regards to fills and transparencies, Xara treats text the same as other shapes giving you the same incredible flexibility. Furthermore Xara's text tool has it's own powerful features. On the next page I show you some of the variety of cool text effects you can create with Xara X. |
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