We're almost finished.

Paste the bitmap ( Edit > Paste). A dialog box will appear with two choices: Bitmap and Device Independent Bitmap. Select Bitmap and press Paste.

Position the blurred bitmap text below the beveled text. With the bitmap selected, select the Transparency Tool and apply a Flat, Stained Glass transparency. Stained Glass treats white as transparent.

Marquee select the beveled text and the white highlight (drag a rectangle around it with the Selector Tool) and bring the beveled text and white highlight to the front (Ctrl F).

NOTE: Unlike Illustrator, you have to marquee select the entire objects not just a portion.

To increase the intensity of the white highlight, you can make a duplicate (Ctrl K).

And here's the final image.

So what do you think?

Any of you Mac users impressed or do you think you can do the same thing in Illustrator, FreeHand or Photoshop?

Let me know. By all means, please e-mail me your comments.

If you want to see more really great art created primarily with Xara, visit the Featured Artist page at Xaraxone.com.

I want to thank Ross Macintosh, Big Frank, and all the contributors to the Xara Conference for suggesting many of the techniques used in this tutorial. The final effect was a genuine collaboration.