tutorial APRIL 17, 2001 • page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Complete, Home

Recreating Apple's Aqua Gel Effect with Xara X
[Page 7 of 8]

Make a duplicate of the beveled text. Convert it to editable shapes (Arrange > Convert to Editable Shapes).

Ungroup twice (Arrange > Ungroup). Delete the solid portion of the text leaving just the beveled portion.

To delete in Xara just press the Delete key on your keyboard or right click and select Delete from the pop up menu.

Position the empty bevel over the beveled text.

This last step was not really necessary but enhances the light and dark of the beveled edges.

The problem with most vector applications is vector objects are too hard edged producing an unrealistic effect. If we were in Photoshop, we could apply a tiny amount of Gaussian blur to soften the white highlight and make it softer.

But who needs Photoshop when we can add a small amount of feathering right in Xara X! Select the white highlight. In the upper right corner of the Infobar, move the Feathering slider to about 2 to 2.5pix. Doesn't that look more realistic?

Since we went to all the trouble to lighten the bottom of the blue capsule using Xara's Elliptical transparency, we should go the extra 9 yards and add a soft shadow beneath the text.

Duplicate the beveled text. (Ctrl D) and convert the duplicated text to editable shapes (Shift Ctrl S)

Select the Mould Tool and apply a Default Envelope. (The first rectangle button on the Infobar). Click in each corner and drag the Bezier control handles downwards as shown. Drag the bottom handles a little more than the top ones.

One of the few features missing from Xara is a Gaussian Blur filter. But lucky for us, Ladislav Seridi has created a cute little utility called SL Blur which can be downloaded for free from the XaraXone Shareware Page along with a ton of other cool shareware and freeware stuff.

Select the text and from the Arrange menu, select Create Bitmap Copy. From the Color Depth drop down list, select True Color (24-bit). And press Create.

Copy the bitmap to the clipboard.

Open SL Blur and press the Clipboard icon on the far left to paste the bitmap.

Move the slider to 10 and check the Add Border check box. Press the water drop button to apply the blur. Press the Copy button (to the left of the hand button), to place a copy of the blurred bitmap in the clipboard. Close SL Blur and say thank you, Ladislav.

BY THE WAY: Add Border automatically expands the width of the bitmap to accommodate the blurring. If not checked, the blurring is truncated.

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Gary Priester's articles appear on Efuse.com, Designer.com, Unleash.com and Xaraxone.com as well as in Communication Arts Magazine. His monthly Web column/tutorial, "Logos for the Design Challenged," can be seen at Unleashed Productions. Priester is co-author with Dave Huss of CorelDRAW Studio Techniques (Osborne CorelPress) and the author of Looking Good in Color (Ventana Press). He can be reached at garypriester@earthlink.net. ©2001 Gary W. Priester Tutorials are for private use only. No text or images may be used or reproduced in any form (except as tutorials) without the express written permission of the author.
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