Creating A Photo Montage
Creating a photo montage like this is pretty easy using Xara Xtreme.
1) Create a rectangle that is the background of the 'Polaroid' style image. Give this a pale gray fill (e.g. 10% black from the color bar) and no outline color.
2) Add a second white square on top of this. Make sure the margins are exactly even around the left, top and right side. Fill color white, no outline color. This will contain the photo.
3) To add a photo, just drag and drop (or import) any photo onto a blank area of the page. This photo will almost certainly be very large if it's straight from your digital camera�but that's fine. Once you've imported it, you can now delete it�just select it and press the Delete key. The reasons you're taking this (perhaps unexpected) action is because the photo remains in your Bitmap gallery, even after you've deleted it from the page and we're going to use it as a bitmap fill for the rectangle. Only when you save the file does Xara Xtreme really delete unused photos.
So now select the white rectangle, and in the fill tool select 'Bitmap' fill from the drop-down menu.
The white rectangle will now be filled with the default gray Xara bitmap. But on the InfoBar there is a drop-down menu that shows you all the bitmaps and photos you've used in your document, including the ones you just imported. See below:
Selecting any bitmap from the drop-down menu will fill the rectangle with that photo
On the filled object there are two fill arrows that control the width and height of the bitmap fill. You can drag the ends of the fill arrows to adjust size or stretch the photo, and perhaps more usefully you can drag the center handle to push the photo around inside the rectangle.
To position and resize your new photo, simply drag on the photo (not on the fill arrows). This creates a new tiled fill using the new photos. Importantly this is the correct aspect ratio. Just drag so the photo is the right size. You can drag on the center fill handle to re-position your photo.
Tip: if you drag one of the fill arrows it resizes in just that direction, leaving the other fill handle, causing your photo to be stretched. If you hold down the Shift key when dragging, one fill arrow will adjust the other to maintain the current aspect ratio.
Tip: holding the Ctrl and Shift keys down while dragging one fill arrow handle will not only lock the aspect ratio of the photo, but constrain the angle as well. So if you want to ensure the photo is resized exactly horizontally remember to use Ctrl and Shift.
So you should have something like this:
4) Add a caption. Select the Text tool and drag a line across under the photo. Type some caption text. Select the Center align option from the InfoBar. The font used in these examples is bundled with Xara Xtreme, and is called Ingenius. It appears under the 'Script fonts' section of the Font gallery. Drag this font (or any other you prefer) from the Font gallery over your caption text. If the font is not installed, Xtreme can install it for you.
5) Add a drop shadow behind the photo. In the Shadow tool click on the gray rectangle to select it, and just drag to create a soft shadow. The examples used here have the following settings: Blur: 10 pixels; Transparency: 55%; X Offset of 1pix; and Y offset of -5pix. You image should now look like this:
6) Make copies, resize, rotate as required. If you group all the parts you've made so far (in the Selector tool drag select around the whole drawing, and then press Ctrl-G). Now it's a group it's much easier to handle. You can rotate and resize using the Selector tool as usual.
Tip: a really quick way to make a copy of any object or group is to drag using the right mouse button instead of the normal left button. You'll see as you drag that the original remains where it was. Just left click to drop a copy while you're dragging. Each successive left click (while still holding the right mouse button) drops a new copy.
7) To edit or replace the photo. Because your photo is now a grouped object you need to select the photo rectangle inside the group in order to replace the photo with a new one (or you could un-group the object). To Select inside a group, just hold the Ctrl key down while clicking on the photo. The status line should show '1 rectangle (inside)'.
Once you have the photo rectangle selected inside, you can replace the photo as described in step 3. i.e. select the Fill tool and from the drop-down select an alternative bitmap. Remember you should have imported the photo first in order for it to appear in the drop-down menu.
8) Arrange. Now just rotate and position your photos on the page as you require. Using the Bring to Front or Put to Back options (under the Arrange menu) you can alter the stacking order.
Tip: if you want to copy your collage into other applications, you can just select all the photos, Copy and then Paste into the destination application. With some applications, such as Microsoft Outlook, this will automatically embed a JPG at the same size as the 100% screen size in Xara Xtreme. In some other applications such as Microsoft Word you are better off selecting the Paste Special menu option.
If you're short on time and just want to create a montage quickly, we've included the .xar file of the above photo montage so that you can use it as a template. Click here to download it.
To replace the photos with your own, import your own photos, and then delete them from the page. Ctrl-click on the photo to 'Select inside', go into the Fill tool and select from the drop down menu of bitmaps. Now just drag on the photo to resize, and rotate the photo as required. Drag on the center of the fill arrows to re-position in the rectangle. Using the Text tool just click anywhere on the caption text and type the replacement text.
�2007 Xara Group Ltd.
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