Printing Overview

Xara LX provides a wide variety of choices for printing your documents. If you need information on imagesetting and commercial printing, see Printing multiple copies.

Printing Methods

Printers do not support transparency so Xara LX sends any areas of your document containing transparent objects to the printer as bitmaps. This is why printing takes a little longer for transparent objects and also why print jobs can be larger. When you print a document, you can use one of three methods to print the document. One method is just like a normal print from any other program, except that transparent areas of the document are sent to the printer as bitmaps. The other two methods both send the entire document to the printer as a bitmap. One sends a standard bitmap of the document, the other sends an anti-aliased
version. The printing method is set in the Output Options.

For most drawings, choose the Normal method (This option reads PostScript if a PostScript printer is selected.). This method works well for all drawings except those that include large areas of bitmaps or large areas containing transparent objects. With these drawings printing can be slow. If it is slow, choose the Bitmap or Anti-aliased Bitmap option. The resolution of the bitmaps is controlled by the Resolution field. Generally Anti-aliased Bitmap gives the best results. Though, you may find drawings containing fine lines do not print as well. Try printing in Normal mode and, if you have any problems, try again using Bitmap or Anti-aliased Bitmap.

Paper Orientation

When you create a document you draw objects onto a page which can be either Portrait or Landscape. This setting does not affect printing in any way. The setting in the Print Layout Options sets whether the objects in the document are printed upright or sideways on the page. Upright means the page is printed the way you see it, sideways means it is rotated by ninety degrees. To see how your document will appear on paper, turn on the print borders (see Displaying the print borders). Note there is also a setting for paper orientation in the Print Setup dialog box, always leave this set to portrait.

Fitting Documents on the Paper

When you print a document, you have several choices in the Print Layout Options on how the page is fitted onto the paper. With Custom Fit you can choose the size and position of the page on the paper manually. With Multiple Fit you can choose how many copies of the page are printed on each sheet of paper and at what size. When you choose Best Fit, Xara LX will automatically size the page so it exactly fits on the paper. Choosing Best Fit dims the Scale Field and the Orientation buttons. For many documents, though, the easiest method is to use Automatic Fit option, this will set all the Print Layout Options to the most suitable values.

If you want to print a page at a different size from the size it is in your document, you can scale it by enter a scaling (as a percentage) in the Scale field in the Print Layout Options.

Double Page Spreads

Normally when you create a document it will be a single page. If you want to create a double page spread, set the Double Page Spread Option in the Page Options.

When you print a double page spread, you can choose (in the Print Layout Options) either Print Individual Pages or Print Whole Spread. The former prints each page in the spread as a separate page, the latter treats each spread as a single page.

The Print dialog box contains options so you can choose whether to print both pages, or just the left or right page.

Layers

When you print a document, you can choose in the Output Options which layers are printed. You can choose to print all the foreground layers in a document (background layers never print) or just those layers which are visible. To make layers visible and invisible, you use the Layer Gallery. See Hiding layers for more details.

Printing Selected Objects

In the Print dialog box, you can choose whether all the objects in your document are printed or just the selected objects.

Printing Multiple Copies

In the Print dialog box you can choose how many copies of a document you want to print.

Printing Transparency, Shadows, Bevels and Bitmaps

When you print a document containing transparency (transparent areas are printed as bitmaps
) you can control the resolution of the bitmaps sent to the printer. The higher resolution you choose, the better any bitmaps and transparent areas will look, but resolutions over 150dpi are usually not necessary. The Automatic setting is suitable for most drawings - Xara LX automatically selects a resolution suitable for the current printer. If necessary, type in a value to choose a specific resolution (in dots per inch or dpi). The maximum value is 600dpi - this gives very high resolution but can produce very large print jobs that take a long time to print.

Xara LX uses bitmaps for bevels and shadows. The resolution of these is set when you create them. You can change the current value in View in the Options dialog box.

Bitmaps created using Create bitmap copy: the resolution is controlled by Bitmap size in the Create bitmap copy dialog box.

Printing Graduated Fills

When you print a document using Normal mode (this means not PostScript, Bitmap or Anti-aliased Bitmap mode) you can set the number of steps in all the graduated fills. Usually you can leave this setting on Normal, but if your drawing uses large numbers of graduated fills try using the Low setting to decrease the size of the print job. If you think your graduated fills would look better with more steps, try the High setting, but this slows down printing.

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