CorelDRAW Unleashed Magazine 2007

coreldrawunleashed.
com
Article Index
3 Ed i tors Note
by Fos ter D. Coburn III
6 About the Cover
7 Mail box
9 An Introduction to Objects (Layers) in
Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3
by Nathan Segal
16 Color Correction
by Craig Mertens
34 Talking with Images
by Michael Cervantes
44 Working with Encapsulated PostScript
Files
by Foster D. Coburn III
50 The Vinyl Countdown
by Jeff Harrison
63 Get Funky With Dis tressed
by Rich ard Reilly
71 The RAW Deal
by Rikk Flohr
80 Creating Comics with CorelDRAW
by Duncan Eagleson
92 CorelDRAW and the Laser
by Robert Hensley
101 Re-creating the Lord of the Rings Logo
by Scott Georgeson
110 Mar ket place Ads
CorelDRAW Unleashed: The Magazine 2
Ed i tors Note
by Fos ter D. Coburn III
Can one phone call change your life? In my case, one phone call has had a large ef fect on
my pro fes sional life. I was read ing a fo rum on Compuserve and there was a mes sage: Au -
thors wanted. Call Stacy. Since it was in a CorelDRAW sup port fo rum, I as sumed that
this writ ing pro ject had some thing to do with CorelDRAW. I de cided it would nt hurt to
give Stacy a call to get a bit more in for ma tion. She was want ing some one to write a book
en ti tled CorelDRAW 4 Unleashed for Sams Pub lish ing. Within a few days, a con tract
was signed and the writ ing be gan. That was in March 1993.
Less than a year later, the first CorelDRAW Un leashed sem i nar was held in Tuc son, Ar i zona. Pe ter McCormick
and I vis ited 40 cit ies in 1994 teach ing thou sands of peo ple how to get more out of CorelDRAW. In June 1996,
the CorelDRAW Unleashed Boot Camp was born and has been go ing strong af ter over ninety Boot Camps.
There was a break in CorelDRAW Un leashed books as Pe ter and I moved to a different pub lisher for books on
CorelDRAW 7, 8 and 9. I de cided to re vive the CorelDRAW
Un leashed brand with a self-published ebook on
CorelDRAW 12 in 2004 and fol lowed that
withCorelDRAW X3 Unleashed in 2006.
Youre now read ing the next part of the
CorelDRAW Un leashed brand, and this is sue has
taken a lot of work from a lot of peo ple be hind the
scenes. If I re mem ber cor rectly, dis cus sion on cre -
at ing a mag a zine started al most a year ago.
The next piece of the CorelDRAW Un leashed brand
will de but in July 2008 as we pres ent the CorelDRAW
3 October/November 2007
Unleashed User Conference 2008. As al ways, the goal will be to pro vide you the most in for ma tion pos si ble on
CorelDRAW so that you can in crease your pro duc tiv ity and prof its.
One thing that I want to make sure you un der stand is that the CorelDRAW Un leashed brand pro vides in for ma -
tion on Corels graphics prod ucts but our prod ucts are not pro duced by Corel in any way. We are an in de pend -
ent com pany that works closely with Corel.
Now lets look at our pre miere is sue and the wealth of in for ma tion it pro vides. Nathal Segal, au thor of The
Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3 Insider, pro vides you an in tro duc tion to us ing ob jects in Corel PHOTO-PAINT. If
you have been to one of the in dus try trade shows, youve prob a bly got ten some CorelDRAW in sight from Craig
Mertens. In this is sue he pro vides in for ma tion on color cor rec tion for out put to gar ment print ers. Keep in mind
that the in for ma tion can eas ily be used in a num ber of dif fer ent workflows. We also have one of the fore most ex -
perts in ad just ing im ages, Mi chael Cer van tes, tell ing us how to talk with im ages so that we can fine tune the
color for per fect prints. From our Boot Camps, I know that EPS files are a com mon source of con fu sion so I
tackle the is sue with an ar ti cle on work ing with EPS files. Jeff Har ri son is al ways try ing to show us ers the many
ways they can make money with CorelDRAW. He has doc u mented how you can add a vi nyl cut ter to your ar se -
nal for a very small price and with a min i mal learn ing curve. Rich ard Reilly shows how you can take an on line
tex ture and turn it into a dis tress pat tern to use on your graphics. This is a very hot de sign style in screen print -
ing right now so it is a tech nique you need to mas ter. Rikk Flohr tells you the ben e fits of shoot ing your pho tos in
RAW for mat so that you get the ab so lute best im ages to edit. Duncan Eagleson spends his days with comic
books, cre at ing them in CorelDRAW. He shows you the first steps to wards cre at ing your own com ics in
CorelDRAW. Fu ture is sues will con tinue the se ries. Rob ert Hensley sup ports hun dreds of en grav ers in his job.
He ex plains the many ways that CorelDRAW is a per fect fit for la ser en grav ers. Many of you may know Scott
Georgeson as the Aus sie voice on the pop u lar Click N Learn training CDs. Hell ex plain how you can re-cre ate
the pop u lar Lord of the Rings logo. While you may not need that ex act logo, the techiques will come in handy
as you re-cre ate other lo gos or sim ply cre ate a logo from scratch.
Whew, thats ten ar ti cles jam-packed with in for ma tion on ex pand ing your CorelDRAW and Corel
PHOTO-PAINT knowl edge. Given the in dus tries we have yet to cover and the nu mer ous ways that
CorelDRAW can be used, we know this is only the be gin ning. So with out any fur ther ado, lets get this party
started!
About the Cover
Richard Reilly feels that ren der ing a ve hi cle is ac tu ally pretty easy and es sen tially breaks down to sim ple trac ing.
He ren dered the Escalade by im port ing a pho to graph of the vehicle and lock ing the photo on its own layer. Us -
ing the photo as ref er ence, he set up a new layer for line work and started trac ing the en tire out line of the ve hi -
cle body us ing the Free hand and Bzier tools. The body color was sam pled us ing the Eye drop per tool on the
orig i nal pic ture (bitmap), and the sam pled color was as signed to the out line ob ject. Gradient blends, lens ob jects
and in ter ac tive trans par en cies were used to add the shad ing and high lights. Most of the shad ing and high lights
con sist of black and white with vary ing modes and lev els of trans par ency. One as pect of mak ing a ve hi cle ren -
der ing look as real as pos si ble is the at ten -
tion to de tail. Add ing as much detail as
pos si ble makes the fi nal ren der ing look
photo re al is tic. Us ing CorelDRAW X3,
Rich ards to tal time for ren der ing was
around 7-10 hours.
Get your art work on the cover of
CorelDRAW Un leashed mag a zine!
Send a thumb nail of your art work
along with a brief de scrip tion to
Foster, and well let you know if your
art work has been se lected for the
cover.
Mail box
We want your in put! Do you have a com ment on an ar ti cle? Is there some thing you like about the mag a zine? Is
there a topic youd like to see cov ered? Is there an area where we can im prove? Tell us! All we ask is that the let -
ter is suit able for pub lish ing. Thank you in ad vance for your feed back. Write us!
Black and White
Al most all of what I cre ate in draw is for lasering or sand etch ing. I also cre ate fills for en grav ing. The only real
color work I do is on my own time. I re al ize the color stuff is fun and sexy, but dont for get those of us who rely
heavily on black and white!
Joyce Rich ard sonAward CraftersChantilly, VA, USA
Sug gested Topics
I would like to see brief tu to ri als on sim ple sub jects in this mag a zine. I am cur rently writ ing one of seven Celtic
Art man u als, and of ten have spe cific ques tions.
For ex am ple, I use lay ers to place 1-3 grids be low a step-by-step pro ce dure, but these are usu ally squares, crosses
or dots that have to be aligned ex actly on the grid and du pli cated hun dreds of times. I have not dis cov ered how
to align or re pro duce these marks au to mat i cally.
An other prob lem is draw ing pre cise curve seg ments, in (ex actly) eights of a cir cle quickly and eas ily. In a sim i lar
vein, draw ing spe cific French-curve seg ments is a prob lemmost of the an i mal and bird draw ings uti lize pre cise
curves that are geo met ri cally de ter mined, yet for these ir reg u lar and reg u lar curves there is no way to spec ify
their cre ation by a for mula. Cre at ing shape-curves and eras ing part of them in ac cu rately de ter mined points is
very dif fi cult.
I would hope that this mag a zine will not only pro vide il lus trated step-by-step ar ti cles of this and sim i lar types,
and also that the same would be ac ces si ble in back-is sue links. These doc u ments (and any movie files that go
with them) should be down load able and al ways avail able to sub scrib ers.
Fi nally (be ing also a Graph i cal User In ter face De signer), I would like to see a re peat ing themed col umn or sec -
tion on user and de signer sug ges tions on mak ing CorelDraw a better user in ter face. This col umn would not
need to ex ist in ev ery is sue. Per haps the mag a zine could so licit e-mails from its read ers us ing ex ist ing fea tures of
the CorelDraw in ter face as ex am ples one is sue to be an swered for the next is sue. It is pos si ble that if such a
mag a zine pro vided ar ti cles on User In ter face and De sign of the pro gram, in spired by its read ers, that the Pro -
gram mers mak ing the prod uct would be better able to pro duce a far more easy-to-use pro gram with even more
use ful fea tures, for if they did, they would only in crease sales of the prod uct. I am not a tech ni cal art ist, just an
art ist: but when I work with any graphics pro gram, I am us ing a pro gram de vel oped by tech ni cians made for
tech ni cians. If I draw a box us ing four sep a rate lines, then draw an X in it, cor ner to cor ner, I should be able to
high light the lines and run a fea ture that re places all the lines with four, equal sided tri an gles. And if I want to
draw what I know is a golden rect an gle I should be able to ac cess a di a log that lets me se lect it (from other
golden fig ures, such as golden tri an gles) and then de fine it by size and spec ify which golden rect an gle it is
(i.e.: square root, cube root, etc.), then have the di a log cre ate the fig ure in a spe cific lo ca tion on the page.
I am, how ever, look ing for ward to this mag a zine. I love us ing CorelDraw, but it is some times very awk ward and
I need all the help I can get! A mag a zine like the one you pro pose will be just one more aid in help ing us all use
the pro gram better and better.
Erin AveryNa tional Col legeDanville, KY, USA
An Introduction to Objects (Layers)
in Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3
by Nathan Segal
One of the ways to cre ate magic with your im ages is to use Ob jects (a.k.a. Lay -
ers), which are in de pend ent im age el e ments that float above the back ground.
Es sen tially, Ob jects are trans par ent lay ers that are stacked, one on top of an other.
To elab o rate, lets say you open a file of a pho to graph. That im age im me di ately
be comes the back ground. If you add other Ob jects, these are added to the stack
of images.
The power of Ob jects lies in the abil ity to ma nip u late them. Among other things,
you can trans form Ob jects, ar range them in dif fer ent or ders, ma nip u late the
edges, add var i ous lev els and types of trans par ency, drop shad ows and much
more, with out af fect ing other Ob jects or the back ground in any given image.
An Introduction to Objects (Layers) in Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3 9
Figure 1: The Objects Docker
with one object selected.
The Objects Docker
Note that in Fig ure 1, one Ob ject has been se lected, in di cated by the blue bar
and the red out line.
At the top left of this docker is the Merge Mode (see Fig ure 2), which con trols
how the Ob ject in ter acts with the ones be low it. There are a wide range of op -
tions (only a few are vis i ble here). To the right of the Merge Mode is the Opac ity
con trol. This con trols the opac ity of the Ob ject. Any thing less than 100% al lows
Ob jects be low to be come vis i ble through the cur rent Ob ject. A 100% set ting is
fully opaque. To the right of the Opac ity con trol is a small tri an gle. Click ing on that gives you ac cess to Im age
Prop er ties, the New Ob ject op tion and the abil ity to in crease/de crease the size of the thumbnails.
In or der to change an Ob ject, you must first se lect it.
In Fig ure 3, each im age is a sep a rate Ob ject. The dot ted
lines you see to the right and left of the im age are guide -
lines for po si tion ing. The Fire works shot is sur rounded by a
nor mal high light ing box with eight trans for ma tion han dles
sur round ing the Ob ject. This nor mal high lighted box will
al low you to ma nip u late the size in a free form man ner.
Note: In this case only one Ob ject is se lectedif there
were mul ti ple Ob jects se lected the high light ing box will
expand to include all of the Objects.
There are other ma nip u la tion op tions avail able be low the
Stan dard Toolbar on the Prop erty Bar shown in Fig ure 4.
These in clude Po si tion and Size, Ro tate, Scale, Skew, Dis -
tort and Per spec tive. Dou ble-click ing on the dou ble tri an -
Figure 2: A few of the
available merge modes.
Figure 3: One of the objects in this graphic is
selected.
gles icon to the right of these will
open the Ad vanced Op tions which
gives you nu meric en tries for scal ing
of the Ob ject(s) and position on the
page.
Note: For ref er ence, the Ad vanced Op tions sec tion of the Prop erty Bar is
open in Fig ure 4. (Click ing the dou ble tri an gles will de crease your op -
tions.) You can also ac cess some of these dif fer ent modes by click ing on
the Ob ject mul ti ple times. To see where you are, take a look at the icon
thats been se lected in the Mode bar above.
When work ing with Ob jects, right click ing on one Ob ject will open a
popup (see Fig ure 5) with sev eral op tions, such as Cre ate Mask from Ob -
ject(s), Cre ate DropShadow, the Com bine op tion, etc. In this case, Ive
se lected three Ob jects which brings up an other op tion; the abil ity to
group the lay ers to gether. There are many more op tions than this, but this
popup gives you a taste of whats available.
Objects in Practice
In this next sec tion, Im go ing to show you how Ive used Ob jects to cre ate the im age in Fig ure 6.
One of my fa vor ite things is to cre ate space scenes. And of course, space scenes have star fields ga lore. One
method of cre at ing these is to visit NASA sites and down load roy alty free star fields for your back grounds, but
some times there are el e ments there that dont al ways work in your in tended scene. In PHOTO-PAINT, I use
tools such as a soft brush to cre ate tex tures. An other op tion is to use fil ter ef fects such as Noise to cre ate small,
distant stars.
Figure 4: A few of the options available on the Property Bar.
Figure 5: Right-clicking an object
gives you a number of options.
A sam pling of star tex tures cre ated by
us ing var i ous soft and hard brushes is
shown in Fig ure 6 and Fig ure 7.
When you cre ate a back ground, such
as a neb ula, that can be time in ten -
sive, but a sim ple way to be gin is to
use some of the ter rain maps avail able
in Bryce. Check out Bryce!
Fig ure 8 is a rel a tively sim ple im age,
us ing Ob jects in PHOTO-PAINT X3.
This im age is com posed of 3 Ob jects,
as you can see in the Ob jects Docker
shown in Fig ure 9.
Figure 8: A space that will be created using Objects.
Figure 6: A sample star texture. Figure 7: Another sample star
texture.
Figure 9: Objects Docker showing
the three objects in the image.
Ive cre ated screen shots of each Ob ject, so you can see
whats go ing on.
Fig ure 10 is the back ground only, cre ated from a ter rain
map I found in Bryce. In my ver sion of Bryce (v.5) ter rain
maps are black and white im ages that were later trans formed
into a 3D ob ject. With this par tic u lar map, I ac cessed Cam -
era: Light ing Ef fects and col ored the im age be fore blurring
it.
Ob ject 2 (see Fig ure 11), above, is a sim ple back ground of
stars, eas ily cre ated us ing the meth ods weve de scribed above. WHAT METHODS???
Ob ject 1 (see Fig ure 12). Again, this is a starfield, but of larger stars. To gen er ate the above ef fect, I ac cessed
Ef fects: Blur: Zoom and ex per i mented with the set ting to get the ef fect that I desired.
Figure 10: The background image created in Bryce.
Figure 11: The background of stars, Object 2.
Figure 12: Another starfield, Object 1.
To cre ate the fi nal ef fect, where the stars would over lay the back ground, I ac -
cessed the Merge Mode popup for each star ob ject.
For ref er ence, Fig ure 13 shows the Ob jects Docker with Ob ject 2 se lected. Here,
you see that Ive cho sen the Color Dodge set ting.
Now, Fig ure 14 shows the Ob jects Docker with Ob ject 1 se lected. Youll see that
I chose Screen in the Merge Mode popup. The back ground ob ject does nt have
any ef fect ap plied to it.
This is all thats needed to com plete the im age and to cre ate the ex plod ing neb -
ula ef fect. This ex am ple is rel a tively sim ple, but it gives you an idea of the power
of Ob jects. Fu ture tu to ri als will ex am ine this sub ject in more depth.
Nathan Segal has been working as and artist and writer for over
ten years. He has written Software Reviews, Tutorials, Tips and
Tricks, Features, Profiles and Investigative Reporting. He creates
his own illustrations, photographs and screen shots. He recently
wrote The Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3 Insider, an ebook that
shows you hot to boost your PHOTO-PAINT productivity with
proven tips, tools, and techniques.
Figure 13: Object 2 has Color
Dodge selected as a Merge
Mode.
Figure 14: Object 1 has
Screen Merge Mode selected.
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Color Correction
by Craig Mertens
Color Correction Overview
Color Cor rec tion is the pro cess of ad just ing the col ors in a graphic for a spe cific printer, me dia (sub strate) or
ink. Ev ery printer will print dif fer ent col ors for the same graphic. If a me dia or ink is changed, the col ors will
also change. If a dif fer ent dig i tal cam era or scan ner is used, the col ors will change. If a heat cur ing or heat trans -
fer pro cess is used to fi nal ize an im print, the col ors will change. It is highly un likely that you will be able to take
a dig i tal photo or scan, print it out on your printer and pro duce the col ors that you want with out some form of
color cor rec tion. Ev ery im age will need some level of color cor rec tion to im prove the qual ity of the printed
graphic. Al though this sounds hope less, there are some straight for ward tech niques in CorelDRAW X3 and
Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3 to help you ob tain good color values in your digitally printed images.
Expectations are the Key
If you are print ing one off T-shirts on a di rect to gar ment printer at an event, the ex pec ta tions of the cli ent
are go ing to be lower. If you are print ing a large pro duc tion run of mugs for a cor po rate ac count, your cli ents ex -
pec ta tions are go ing to be higher. You need to be able to bal ance the time and en ergy spent color cor rect ing the
im age with the ex pec ta tions of the cli ent and the profit po ten tial of the job. Once you dial in spe cific color cor -
rec tion tech niques for your printer, you will be able to pro duce higher quality images in less time.
Learning Your Printer
Each printer and im print ing pro cess will have unique is sues as so ci ated with color cor rec tion and print qual ity.
Tech niques used for one printer may be en tirely dif fer ent for an other printer. It is crit i cal that you spend the
time to learn the var i ous tech niques that are ap pro pri ate for your unique printer and im print ing pro cess. It is
un re al is tic to think that you will be able to pull a printer from the box, in stall soft ware and print a pho to graphic
im age with sat is fac tory re sults. By spend ing a cou ple of min utes ad just ing the col ors in your im ages, you will be
able to get sig nif i cantly better col ors and print qual ity. This is a trial and er ror pro cess that ev ery one must go
through when learning the capabilities of a new printer.
Color Correction Strategies
Color Profiling
One pop u lar color cor rec tion strat egy is color pro fil ing. Some print ers sup port ICC Color Pro files that will ad just
the color space of an im age for a spe cific printer, ink and sub strate. This pro cess is nor mally han dled by a RIP
(Ras ter Im age Pro ces sor) soft ware that is de signed to im prove the print qual ity and speed of your printed out -
put. RIP pro grams are of ten in cluded with higher end print ers. You may con sider a RIP soft ware if you are con -
sis tently strug gling with im age qual ity or print times. You will need to con sult your hard ware ven dor to
de ter mine if a RIP is avail able for your printer. Each RIP will in clude color pro files for spe cific print ing pro cesses
such as sub li ma tion, wide for mat dig i tal print ing, color sep a ra tions and di rect to gar ment print ing. With out
proper set tings, the RIP may not pro duce the qual ity that you are look ing for. If print speeds are not a ma jor is -
sue, man ual color correction may be an easier color correction strategy.
Manually Correcting Colors
An other color cor rec tion strat egy is to man u ally
ad just the color val ues in your im age us ing the
tools in an im age ed it ing soft ware. CorelDRAW X3
and Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3 both con tain a
Color Ad just ment Lab fea ture that will al low you
to in ter ac tively ad just col ors in a bitmap im age. Re -
mem ber that a de sign will never look the same on
your screen as it will when it is output.
Using Color Charts and Palettes
A low tech way to color cor rect a vec tor im age is to
print out a color chart on your de vice for a spe cific
color pal ette in CorelDRAW. You can then se lect
the de sired color from the chart and re color your
im age with the col ors in the pal ette. The full ver -
sion of the Smart Designer X3 add-on in cludes a
Pantone color chart. Af ter print ing the chart on
your sub strate you will be able to see ex actly how each Pantone color will ap pear on that sub strate. Sim ply color
your de sign with col ors from the Pantone Match ing Sys tem Corel 8 color pal ette in CorelDRAW. You can also
use other color pal ettes to match col ors from a printed color chart. Smart De signer X3 in cludes pal ettes for pop -
u lar screen print ing inks as well as the Summa DC3/DC4 and Sawgrass Sublijet Inks.
Specialized Printer Drivers
Some ink or printer man u fac tur ers pro vide spe cial ized print driv ers that ad just the color val ues of an im age for a
spe cific me dia, ink or print ing pro cess. Saw grass Tech nol o gies in cludes the Power Driver printer driv ers with
Tip: CorelDRAW X3 and Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3 have
powerful automated tools for manually correcting colors in
bitmap images or photographs.The Image Adjustment Lab
is a new feature that is found in both CorelDRAW X3 and
Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3 for editing photos. It is not
necessary to purchase another photo editing software such
as PhotoShop in order to edit or color correct photos.
many of their ink sys tems for their Sublijet, ChromaBlast and NaturaLink (Di rect Ad van tage Printer) inks. Spe -
cial ized driv ers can be used in con junc tion with man ual color cor rec tion to sig nif i cantly improve the colors in a
graphic.
Understanding Color Modes
RGB Color
Your mon i tor will dis play col ors us ing the RGB color mode
in which three col ors of light pro duced by your mon i tor in
the form of pix els are com bined in dif fer ent in ten si ties to
pro duce the col ors on your screen. Dig i tal cam eras and
scan ners cap ture im ages in RGB color. RGB col ors are
formed us ing a com bi na tion of Red, Green and Blue. RGB
color is what you want to use to edit bitmap im ages such as
pho tos. The rea son that you use RGB color is so that you
can ac cu rately view changes to col ors in your bitmap on
your monitor.
Tip: RGB color is not used by a printer to out put your
graphics. A RIP soft ware or printer driver will au to mat i cally con vert RGB color to the ap pro pri ate col ors used
by your printer. Most print ers will use some form of CMYK ink for mu la tion to pro duce a printed graphic. It is
nor mally best to let the print driver or RIP soft ware con vert the colors.
CMYK Color
CMYK Color, also known as pro cess color, cre ates color by com bin ing dots of Cyan, Ma genta, Yel low and Black
ink to pro duce the full spec trum of col ors. CMYK color is used in off set print ing, high-end screen print ing and
RGB Formulas in CorelDRAW X3.
inkjet print ing. An RGB im age will be con verted to CMYK dur ing the print ing pro cess by a RIP soft ware or
print driver. There fore it is not nec es sary to con vert RGB color into CMYK color dur ing the ed it ing pro cess.
Stock pho tos, scans and pho tos from dig i tal cam eras are al ways pro duced in RGB color. The only way an im age
would be con verted to CMYK color is if it was con verted from RGB to CMYK color in a soft ware ap pli ca tion.
Once an im age is con verted to CMKY col ors from RGB, much of the orig i nal color in for ma tion is lost and the
viv id ness of the im age will suf fer dras ti cally. You should never con vert an RGB im age to CMYK. CMYK col ors
have a sig nif i cantly smaller range of col ors that can be pro duced. If the out put de vice or color sep a ra tions re -
quires CMYK color, this should be done at the end of the ed it ing pro cess through the RIP soft ware or sep a ra -
tions fea ture in CorelDRAW. Once an im age is con verted to CMYK you can not go back to the original quality
in the RGB image.
Viewing Colors on Your Monitor
The col ors that you see on your mon i tor do not rep re sent the col ors that will be out put. The only way to see the
true col ors of any art work is to print it. There are mon i tor cal i bra tion tech niques us ing an elec tronic mon i tor
cal i bra tor and spe cial ized soft ware that will al low you to cal i brate your mon i tor to more ac cu rately dis play
printed col ors. This is the land of rocket sci ence. Un less you are a tech ni cal guru and in vest in hard ware, soft -
ware and train ing to cal i brate your mon i tor, you should leave this to the geek squad. Mon i tor cal i bra tion
makes much more sense for wide for mat dig i tal print ing such as ve hi cle wraps than it does for sub li ma tion print -
ing on a mug or di rect to gar ment print ing on a T-shirt. Be fore you go down the mon i tor cal i bra tion road, you
need to weigh the costs with the po ten tial ben e fits. Other methods of color correction may make more sense for
your process.
By de fault, CorelDRAW X3 uses Color Man age ment to ad just the ap pear ance of onscreen or printed im ages us -
ing ge neric color pro files for your mon i tor and print ers. You will need to turn Color Man age ment off in or der to
pre vent color pro files from ad just ing the ap pear ance of your mon i tor and ad just ing the col ors of your printed
out put. Spe cial ized driv ers, such as Power Driver from Saw grass Tech nol o gies, will re quire you to turn Color
Management off.
Turning Color Management Off
1. Select Color Management from the Tools menu in
CorelDRAW X3.
2. When the Color Management window appears, select
Color Management Off from the Default Settings drop
down menu.
3. Select RGB under Color Mode used for effects, and
then click on OK.
Note: You will no tice sig nif i cant changes to the ap pear -
ance of graphics with Color Man age ment turned off. This
is nor mal.
Note: If you are us ing a RIP soft ware, you will need to turn
Color Man age ment off. Color pro files should be spec i fied
in the RIP soft ware, not in CorelDRAW.
Im ages pro duced by a dig i tal cam era or scan will nor mally
be com posed of RGB col ors by de fault. Some scan ning pro -
grams will let you choose a color mode dur ing the scan ning
pro cess. Make sure to se lect RGB color mode if you are given the op tion. To man u ally color cor rect an im age on
screen, you will need to con vert bitmap im ages such as pho tos or scans into RGB colors.
Converting Images to RGB Colors
1. Select the image in CorelDRAW X3 with the Pick Tool and make sure that the bitmap image is ungrouped
from the other elements in the graphic.
Color Management Window
2. If the image is a bitmap, the Status Bar at the bottom of your CorelDRAW
workspace will display the color mode for your image. For instance RGB Bitmap on
Layer 1 150 x 150 dpi as shown below.
Note: If the sta tus bar in di cates a group of ob jects, it is pos si ble that the se lected ob ject
is a vec tor im age. Ungroup the ob ject and se lect the in di vid ual ob ject to de ter mine if the
ob ject is a bitmap in the Sta tus Bar. You do not need to con vert a vec tor ob ject into RGB
colors.
3. If the bitmap object is in another color mode such as CMYK, you will need to change
the color mode.
Note: CMYK im ages will not pro duce the same color range as RGB im ages. A CMYK
im age con verted to RGB will not have the same color range as an im age that started out
RGB and may ap pear muted or dull.
4. With the object selected, choose Mode from the Bitmaps menu in the CorelDRAW
Menu Bar and select RGB Color.
5. Once the image is converted to RGB color, you will be able to accurately see any
changes that you make in the image.
Color Correction Terms
Ad just ment to col ors in a photo are de scribed by the fol low ing terms:
Tip: RGB and CMYK
bitmaps will look
entirely different on
screen. You will
notice a significant
change in colors once
an image is converted
to RGB mode. This
difference may not be
evident in the images
below since you are
viewing both in RGB.
RGB Bitmap
CMYK Bitmap
CorelDRAW Status Bar
Tem per a ture: When a photo is taken, light ing con di tions will have a ma jor in flu ence
over the qual ity of an im age. Ad just ing tem per a ture will al low you to cor rect any color
casts that are pro duced by light ing con di tions such as in can des cent light ing or sun light.
Color casts are a re sult of an im bal ance of the col ors in an im age. For ex am ple, in can des -
cent light ing can cause yellowing of a photo.
Tint: Ad just ing tint will cor rect color casts by mak ing changes to the lev els of green and
ma genta in an im age. Tint ad just ments are nor mally very small as they can se verely dis -
tort the col ors in an image.
White Point: Se lect ing a white point in an im age will ad just the con trast in an im age
based on the light est area in an im age. A white point can be used to lighten an im age
that is too dark.
Black Point: Se lect ing a black point in an im age will ad just the con trast in an im age
based on the dark est area in an im age. A black point can be used to darken an im age
that is too light.
Original Image Changed
Temperature
Changed Tint Changed Saturation
Changed Brightness
Changed Contrast
Sat u ra tion: Sat u ra tions de scribes the viv id ness of col ors in an im age. Chang ing sat u ra tion will have a ma jor im -
pact on the over all color of an im age. Most im ages will re quire an in crease in sat u ra tion to pop the colors in
an image.
Bright ness: Chang ing bright ness will al low you to brighten or darken an im age. This will al low you to fix over -
ex posed pho tos (too much light) or un der ex posed im ages (too lit tle light). Ad just ing bright ness will af fect the
en tire im age. Ad just ing High lights, Shad ows and Midtones will af fect spe cific color ranges in an image.
Con trast: Con trast de scribes the dif fer ences in tone be tween the light est and dark est ar eas of an im age. Ad just -
ing con trast can be used to sharpen the de tail in an image.
High lights: Ad just ing high lights will al low you to ad just the bright ness in the light est ar eas of an im age. This is
an ex cel lent way to darken up washed-out ar eas in an image.
Shad ows: Ad just ing shad ows will al low you to ad just the bright ness in the dark est ar eas of an im age. This is an
ex cel lent way to re duce shad ows caused by bad light ing conditions.
Midtones: Ad just ing midtones will al low you to ad just the bright ness of midrange tones in an im age. Midtones
should be ad justed af ter high lights and shad ows.
Using the Image Adjustment Lab
The eas i est way to im prove the qual ity of a pho to graphic im age or bitmap is to man u ally ad just the col ors or
tones of an im age us ing the Im age Ad just ment Lab in CorelDRAW X3 or PhotoPAINT X3. This pow er ful new
fea ture has both man ual and au to mated tools for color cor rect ing or en hanc ing the ap pear ance of im ages. Be -
fore you can use the Im age Ad just ment Lab, you must have an un der stand ing of the terms defined in the
previous section.
Tip: You can change the view for an im age in the Im age
Ad just ment Lab by se lect ing an op tion from the tool bar.
Var i ous view op tions are pro vided in clud ing im age ro ta -
tion, zoom and side by side com par i son. Be fore and Af ter
Split Pre view is use ful for com par ing re sults to your original image.
Correcting the Colors Using the Image Adjustment Lab
Note: The Im age Ad just ment Lab fea ture is found in both CorelDRAW X3 and Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3.
The fea ture is iden ti cal in both pro grams, there fore ad just ments to col ors in a photo can be made di rectly in
CorelDRAW with out trans fer ring an im age to Corel PHOTO-PAINT.
1. Verify that the image is in RGB color by selecting Mode under Bitmaps in the Menu Bar. If the image is in
RGB color, RGB Color will be greyed out. If RGB Color is not greyed out, select RGB Color to convert the
image to RGB color.
2. Confirm that Color Management is turned off
by selecting Color Management from the Tools
menu and choosing Color Management Off
from the Settings drop down list.
3. Select the bitmap or photo with the Pick tool
and then select Image Adjustment Lab from
the Bitmaps menu.
4. Once the Image Adjustment Lab opens, click
on the Snap Shot button to preserve a snap
shot of the original image as a point of
reference. You can split your screen between
the original image and the changed image by
selecting the Before and After Split Preview
View Toolbar
Image Adjustment Lab.
button from the buttons at the top of the window.
5. Select the Auto Adjust button menu to automatically correct the colors in the
image. This is a powerful tool that can give you an excellent starting point for
manually adjusting the colors in a bitmap or photo.
6. If you do not like the results produced by Auto Adjust, click on the original snap
shot to restore the image.
Note: You should take a snap shot of the im age each time you make a change. This
will en able you to go back to pre vi ous ver sions in the event that you make a change
that you dont like.
7. Before you begin color correcting the image, you should set the black and white
point of the image to improve the contrast in the image. Using the Set White
Point eye dropper tool, select the lightest area in the image. Using the Set Black
Point eye dropper tool, select the darkest area in the image.
8. To warm or cool the colors in the image, adjust the Temperature slider. You can
further correct the colors by adjusting the Tint slider. Changes to the Tint slider
will make significant changes to the appearance of an image. Adjustments to tint
should be very minor.
9. In most cases, you will need to increase the saturation of an image to enhance the
vividness of an image. Adjusting saturation will significantly improve the
appearance of a digitally printed image. Use the Saturation slider to increase or
decrease the vividness of the image. Moving the slider to the right will increase
the saturation.
10. To lighten the image, move the Brightness slider to the right. To darken the
image, move the Brightness slider to the left.
11. You have already adjusted the contrast in the image when you set the white point
and black point. To further adjust the contrast in the image, move the Contrast
slider to the right to make the lighter areas lighter and the darker areas darker.
Tip: Hints are provided
for each adjustment slider
in the Image Adjustment
Lab.
Image Adjustment Lab
Sliders
12. To brighten or darken the lightest areas of the image, adjust the Highlights slider. Once you have adjusted
the highlights, you can use the Shadow slider to adjust the darkest areas of the image. Finally you can use
the Midtones slider to improve the midrange colors in the image. Adjustments to these sliders will be very
minor.
13. Once you have made the adjustments to the image, you can select various snap shots to judge the quality of
the image. Select the snap shot that you like best and click on OK, to adjust the original image in
CorelDRAW. You can press Ctrl + Z on your keyboard if you need to restore the image to its original
colors.
14. Finally, you should sharpen the image by selecting Unsharp Mask from the Sharpen flyout menu under the
Bitmaps menu. You should zoom in on the image before making any adjustments. Unlike its name, the
Unsharp Mask will actually sharpen the image. Start with the Percentage setting at 100% and the Threshold
setting at O. Radius should be set to 1. Click on Preview to view the changes in the original image. You can
undo the changes by selecting the Reset button. Click on OK to make the changes.
Working with Color Charts and Palettes
The eas i est and most ef fec tive way to ad just the col ors in a vec tor im age, is to re color it. Each color in a vec tor
im age will print dif fer ently de pend ing on the ink, printer and sub strate. If you se lect a color pal ette in
CorelDRAW, print out a color chart for this pal ette on your sub strate, you will know ex actly how the col ors will
ap pear on the fi nal prod uct. You can then se lect the col ors you want from the chart and re color the im age with
these col ors. Its a low tech so lu tion, but it works perfectly.
Printing Out a Color Chart
1. Select Window | Color Palettes and then the palette which you wish to print. In my example, I opened the
Pantone Solid Coated palette.
2. Select Tools | Visual Basic | Play and youll get the dialog box shown below. Ive already selected <All
Standard Projects> from the Macros in the drop-down list and CorelMacros.CreateColorSwatch from the
Macro name list. It may
seem like this is done
backwards, but that is the
order you have to follow.
Once youve got the macro
selected, click Run.
You should now be look ing
at the di a log box at left. If
you look un der Pal ette, youll find all open pal ettes listed. Se lect the one you
want. If you wish to add the Date or Printer name, you have the op tion of en ter -
ing what will be used. Lastly, you can con trol how much space is be tween each
swatch via the Spac ing set ting. A smaller num ber puts the swatches closer to -
gether. If you want an Out line on the swatch boxes, check the Out line checkbox.
Tip: Custom Color
Charts and Palettes
are provided with
Smart Designer X3 for
popular screen
printing ink suppliers
including Rutland,
Wilflex and Union
Ink. This will enable
you to simulate
popular ink colors
with digitally printed
images. Color values
will vary depending
upon the printer, ink
and substrate.
Union Ink Chart
Pantone Color Chart
Now you sim ply need to click OK and watch the pal ette get cre ated in front of your eyes! Be pa tient as it may
take a min ute or so to fin ish. The fin ished prod uct is 46 pages of swatches for the Pantone solid coated pal ette
us ing the de fault set tings. By chang ing the spac ing be tween swatches, you can limit it to fewer pages.
3. Resize the chart on each page so it will fit completely on your printed product or substrate.
4. Create a color chart of each page on your finished product or substrate. You will use this printed chart as a
reference to select colors.
5. In CorelDRAW, select Print (Ctrl + P) from the File menu and select Pages under the Print Range options.
Type in the page number to print pages individually. Repeat this process with each page in the chart.
Note: You can re peat this pro cess for cus tom color charts that are spe cific to your printer or ink set. Both color
charts and pal ettes are avail able for pop u lar de vices such as the Summa DC3/DC3 or Saw grass Sublijet inks us -
ing the ColorSure color palette.
6. Select Load Custom Color Palettes from the Art Preparation tab in the Smart Designer Command Center to
load a different color palette.
Re-coloring Vector Images
The most ef fec tive way to im prove the col ors in a vec tor im age is to re-color an im age. Af ter you have pro duced
a printed color chart on your gar ment or sub strate, you can use the col ors in the chart as a ref er ence to se lect
new col ors. You can swap col ors us ing the Re place Wiz ard or by us ing Color Styles in CorelDRAW.
Color Correction Check List
The fol low ing check list will help you to ver ify the steps re quired to man u ally color cor rect an im age.
1. Turn Color Management off in CorelDRAW X3 from the Tools menu.
2. Verify that the color mode in the photos or bitmaps are set to RGB by selecting images with the Pick tool
and viewing the color mode of the image in the Status Bar at the bottom of your screen.
3. If the image is not composed of RGB colors, select the image and choose Mode from the Bitmaps menu in
the CorelDRAW Menu Bar and select RGB Color.
4. Manually color correct photographic images or bitmaps using the Image Adjustment Lab located in the
Bitmaps menu.
5. Select the Auto Adjust button menu to automatically correct the colors in the image.
6. Before you begin manually color correcting the image, you should set the black and white point of the image
to improve the contrast in the image.
7. Increase the saturation level in the image using the Saturation slider to increase the vividness of the image.
8. Adjust the Temperature sliders to warm or color the image.
9. Adjust the Tint slider in small increments to make minor changes to the colors in the image.
10. Use the Brightness slider to lighten or darken the image.
11. To further adjust the contrast in the image, move the Contrast slider to the right to make the lighter areas
lighter and the darker areas darker.
12. To brighten or darken the lightest areas of the image, adjust the Highlights slider. Once you have adjusted
the highlights, you can use the Shadow slider to adjust the darkest areas of the image. Finally you can use
the Midtones slider to improve the midrange colors in the image. Adjustments to these sliders will be very
minor.
13. Finally, you should sharpen the image by selecting Unsharp Mask from the Sharpen flyout menu under the
Bitmaps menu.
14. Create a printed color chart on your substrate or garment and set your color palette in CorelDRAW X3 to
match the color chart.
15. Using the color chart as a reference, use the Replace Wizard or Color Styles to re-color the image with
colors selected from the color chart.
Resolving Common Problems
Col ors On Your Screen Do Not Match Your Prints: Screen col ors will never match your printed out put un less
you have your mon i tor pro fes sion ally cal i brated. This is why it is crit i cal to learn the color ten den cies of your
printer and the man ual ad just ments in CorelDRAW that will ad dress these ten den cies. This is a trial and er ror
pro cess for ev ery printer. It is sim ply a mat ter of di al ing in the set tings of your printer and the color cor rec tion
methods in CorelDRAW.
Im age Ap pears Dull or Muted: In crease the Sat u ra tion lev els in the Im age Ad just ment Lab for the bitmap el e -
ments. Choose new col ors from your color chart for vec tor elements.
Pho to graphic Im ages Ap pears Yel low: Ad just the Tem per a ture in the Im age Ad just ment Lab.
Pho to graphic Im ages Ap pear Washed Out: Ad just the Con trast and Bright ness in the Im age Ad just ment Lab.
Pho to graphic Im ages Do Not Ap pear Sharp: Sharpen the im age by se lect ing Unsharp Mask from the Sharpen
flyout menu un der the Bitmaps menu.
Pho to graphic Im ages Ap pear Too Sharp: Soften the im age by se lect ing Unsharp Mask from the Sharpen flyout
menu un der the Bitmaps menu and ad just ing the Thresh old setting.
Vec tor Ef fects or Power Clipped El e ments Do Not Print: Some print driv ers or RIP soft ware pro grams can not
print spe cific vec tor ef fects or Power Clipped pho to graphic el e ments. Con vert the prob lem el e ments into a 150
dpi RGB bitmap by se lect ing Con vert to Bitmap from the Bitmaps menu. Make sure to save a copy of the orig i -
nal im age be fore con vert ing the image into a bitmap.
Col ors from a Pre vi ous Job Change When Re printed: It is likely that set tings for your print driver or RIP soft -
ware have been changed. You will need to ex per i ment with the set tings in or der to cor rect the prob lem. You will
also want to ver ify that Color Man age ment is turned off in CorelDRAW and that Ap ply ICC Pro file is not
checked in the CorelDRAW print win dow un der the Misc. tab.
Col ors Drop Out or Band ing or Streak ing Ap pears: This nor mally in di cates that you need to cal i brate your
printer or run a clean ing cycle.
Im ages Ap pear Jag ged or Fuzzy: This nor mally in di cates that an im age is low res o lu tion (un der 150 dpi). Se lect
the im age with your Pick tool and check the res o lu tion in the CorelDRAW Sta tus Bar. If the im age is un der 150
dpi, it may not have ad e quate res o lu tion to pro duce a quality imprint.
You Are Ex pe ri enc ing Long Print Times: This can be the re sult of com plex vec tor im ages. Try con vert ing vec -
tor el e ments in the de sign into a 150 dpi bitmap. This may also be the re sult of hav ing too much res o lu tion in a
pho to graphic im age. Re-save the pho to graphic el e ments into a 150 dpi RGB bitmap by se lect ing Resample from
the Bitmaps menu. This may also be a symp tom of us ing a print driver as op posed to a RIP soft ware. A RIP soft -
ware will sig nif i cantly re duce the print times of your designs.
Craig Mertens is the President and CEO of Digital Art Solutions and the co-creator of the
Smart Designs Art System. Digital Art Solutions was awarded the Corel Strategic Partner
Award in 2006. Craig co-founded Digital Art Solutions in 1999 with his sister Nicole to provide
software, hardware and training that assist in electronic art production. Craig is a CorelDRAW
certified trainer and a past member of the Corel Product Advisory Group for CorelDRAW.
Craig has been teaching art production seminars for industry trade associations and trade shows
for the last 10 years. He is one of the industrys leading experts on the creation and transfer of
electronic art. With over 20 years of industry experience, Craig approaches electronic artwork
from both a technical and sales point of view. Craig is the co-facilitator of the Smart Designs Art
Camps held quarterly in Tempe, Arizona.
Talking with Images
by Michael Cervantes
You may think that I am crazy, but I am not, you can talk with im ages as I do.
The com puter rev o lu tion has placed sev eral dark rooms in our hands and with them dif fer ent meth ods and
prom ises to fix dig i tal images.
You can find many auto-tools with prom ises that they will fix your im ages, but the re al ity is that us ers feel frus -
trated and hope less be cause they do not ob tain the prom ised results.
WYSIWYG is a fa mous phrase fre quently used, but the truth is that rarely what you see on your mon i tor is what
you get when it prints, spe cially if the files are printed by third par ties.
Color Man age ment has brought great hope, but af ter sev eral years it has be come just a good, stan dard guide.
You can not ob tain good prints 100% of the time with them. On the other hand, ex pen sive op ti cal equip ment
and a deep knowl edge of them is a re quire ment for them to work ap prox i mately well.
Why Color Managers are not 100% Reliable
1. Monitors cannot display Cyan Chromatic. Lately, some monitor manufacturers claim that theirs does.
2. Monitors do not display yellows as rich as print.
3. RGBs gamut is bigger than CMYK. That is why some colors on your monitor cannot be printed.
4. They cannot identify bad highlights, shadows, neutrals, and skin tones.
5. They are not aware of the influence of surrounding colors or light conditions.
Here are ex am ples to prove the above facts.
1. This rectangle is filled with Cyan 100%. Compare it with a printed piece of the
same value. Do you see them as equal?
2. Take a print displaying rich yellow and try to match it while filling a rectangle in
your application.
3. How many times have your beautiful intense RGB images been printed muddily?
4. How often have you seen a beautiful skin tone on your monitor and it prints wrong? How often have you
seen pleasant shadows on your monitor and they print completely dark without detail? How often have your
monitor neutrals printed reddish or yellowish?
5. Color managers and expensive optical devices will tell you that the
green fills of these two squares are equal. Do you think that they
are equal?
The Rope Breaks at the Weakest
Part
When you send an RGB im age to a print shop and it does not print well, can you prove that it did not print well
be cause the print shop did not do it right?
No mat ter how much money you spend on ex pen sive op ti cal equip ment to cal i brate your sys tem and to cre ate
proper pro files, you can not prove that the print shop is wrong. No mat ter how hard you try to prove that the
print shop failed, you just cannot.
The com puter rev o lu tion has placed the prepress re spon si bil i ties on the graphic art ists, pho tog ra phers, and
scan ner op er a tors, and this is why when im ages do not print well, the re spon si bil ity lays over you.
You can learn to be come the strong rope that never breaks dur ing print ing. You can learn ink read ing to fix im -
ages, and if you know how to read ink val ues, you can then talk with im ages. If you want to learn this lan guage,
keep read ing!
CMYK and Corels Color Manager are Married
Why are they? It does not mat ter if Color Man ager is ac tive or not, Corels ap pli ca tions use the pro file ac tive in
the Color Man ager Sep a ra tion field to con vert to CMYK. Since this pro file is what dic tates how your RGB im -
age will be con verted to CMYK, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you use the right profile there.
Why a Separation Profile is Important
First you should know what hap pens when you con vert from RGB, or Lab, to CMYK; this will tell you why this
pro file is so im por tant.
RGB is formed by three chan nels called Red, Green and Blue. When the in for ma tion in these chan nels is con -
verted to CMYK, the Red Chan nel be comes the Cyan Chan nel, the Green Chan nel be comes the Ma genta
Chan nel, and the Blue Chan nel be comes the Yel low Chan nel. At this point you may say So if they are equal,
why convert?
Im ages have dark ar eas, and RGB rep re sents them by re duc ing light, but print ers can not use light to print. The
prob lem was solved by us ing Black ink to darken those ar eas when they are printed. This so lu tion turned the
Black ink into the key of CMYK print ing be cause the Black plate holds the im age details.
My dear friend and mae stro Mr. Dan Margulis told me that print shops are noisy and press op er a tors scream to
each other. They were pushed to read lips fre quently, and since blue and black have al most sim i lar lip move -
ments, they changed the name for Black Ink to Key. They scream re duce key or in crease key to each other.
GCR/UCR
You should be think ing about how it is de ter mined what goes to the Black Plate. GCR (Gray Com po nent Re -
place ment) and UCR (Un der Color Re moval) are reg u lat ing agents that pro duce the Black Plate. In the Corel
world, they work in side the color pro file that is ac tive in the Corel Color Man ager Sep a ra tion field. The re sult -
ing Black Plate could be Light, Me dium, or Heavy. How ever, Heavy Black Plates are not used be cause it is eas ier
for a press op er a tor to in crease ink than to re duce it. There fore, this is why us ing Light GCR/UCR is a better op -
tion than Me dium or Heavy. If the im age is dark, like those that are shot at night, then Medium GCR/UCR is
better.
For tu nately, the Color folder in side Corel Graphic Suite CD con tains eight color pro files that are ex cel lent for
con ver sion to CMYK, and they take into con sid er ation GCR/UCR and To tal Ink. They are named Ge neric US
Neg a tive Proof ing. These pro files are SWOP (Spec i fi ca tion for Web Off set Pub li ca tions) which is the stan dard
in the Amer i can print ing in dus try. In side the Color folder you can also find pro files that are ho mol o gous for
European and Asian specifications.
You would think, ... dif fer ent GCR/UCR and To tal Ink, and now what. To tal Ink! What is it?
Total Ink
To tal Ink is the ink that com poses an im ages darker area. This area is where the larg est amount of ink hits the
pa per in the press, and there is a limit based on the types of pa per and print ing press used to print an im age.
Im ages that print fine on a good press us ing good pa per would print in cor rectly on news print in a webpress if its
To tal Ink is not ad justed prop erly. A Webpress To tal Ink is lim ited to less than 290, while sheetfed presses can
go higher than 300.
You can read ink val ues in side Corel PHOTO-PAINT by plac ing the mouse pointer over the im age and the ink
com po si tion un der the mouse pointer will be shown by the Info Docker (Ctrl + F1). You could use the Eye -
drop per (E) to read them also, but it is not avail able when you are us ing fu tures as the Tone Curve, the Con trast
En hance ment, or the Im age Ad just ment Lab. The ad van tage of the Eye drop per is
that you could change the amount of pix els that it reads from 1 x 1 to 3 x 3 or 5 x
5 while the Info Docker only reads 1 x 1 pix els. In CorelDRAW, you can use its
Eye drop per in con junc tion with the Color Docker to read ink com po si tion in
bitmap im ages. When you click over the im age, the ink value of the clicked area
will be displayed by the Color Docker.
Let Us Talk With the Image
You know the darker area has a limit dic tated by the To tal Ink, and that is why
you should mon i tor this area. This is the first ques tion you should ask of your im -
age, how much ink do you have in your darker area? When you pass the mouse
pointer over the im ages darker area, the Info Docker will dis play the CMYK
value and the To tal Ink value an swer ing your ques tion. Can you see that you are
start ing to es tab lish a con ver sa tion with the image already?
Corel Photo-Paint Info Docker can read the CMYK val ues in the Pri mary Color
field and To tal Ink in the Sec ond ary Color field. The Pri mary Color field shows
an im ages ac tual color space by de fault. Click on the top ar row icon at the Info
Docker and se lect To tal Ink un der the Sec ond ary Color menu. The Show Sec -
ond ary op tion should be ac tive for the Info Docker to display it.
When you use the read ink method to cor rect im ages, it is very im por tant that
Info Docker is al ways dis played. It is a good pol icy to un dock the Info Docker
and redock it back in a way that you can see the Ob jects Docker and the Info
Docker si mul ta neously. See Fig ure 1.
Figure 1: The Image Info and
Objects Docker in a stacked
configuration.
When you read the darker area in the im age used in
the first ex am ple of this ar ti cle (See Fig ure 2), the Info
Docker shows C84M72Y72K82 and a To tal Ink of 310
(84+72+72+82). If this im age is go ing to be printed
in a sheetfed press with good qual ity pa per, the ad just -
ment that should be done is easy, be cause the only
thing to do is to bring down the Black Ink to 76%(See
Fig ure 3). You should no tice that the im ages darker
area lives in the Tone Curve around the 3/4 of tone (as
high lighted by the red cir cle). Since in creas ing ink
rather than de creas ing it is eas ier for the press op er a tor,
C85M73Y73K76 is a good num ber for the darker
shadow with this type of press and paper.
In this case, the im age will be printed on a webpress with good pa per like those used to print a mag a zine. There -
fore, a good num ber for the darker area de creases to C80M70Y70K70 and a To tal Ink of 290. The Tone Curve
should be used chan nel by chan nel, and it should be a move made around the 3/4
of tone to re duce the darker area to the cor rect num bers. See Fig ure 4.
Figure 3: Adjusting the black
ink in the image.
Figure 4: Each of the four inks adjusted in the Tone Curve dialog box.
Figure 2: The darker area of the image is selected.
When print ing the im age on a webpress with highly ab -
sor bent pa per like news pa pers, the To tal Ink goes down
to less than 260 and a good num ber could be
C70M63Y63K64 or lower. You could use dif fer ent
meth ods to ar rive at this num ber, but this will be a
topic for a fu ture article.
Tips
Sheetfed press with good pa per. Darker Shadow
C85M73Y73K76. To tal Ink 307.
Webpress with good pa per. Darker Shadow
C80M70Y70K70. To tal Ink 290.
Webpress with highly ab sor bent pa per. Darker Shadow C70M63Y63K64. To tal Ink 260.
You Should Keep Talking With the Image
The darker area is not the only area that you should mon i tor. You should ad just the more rep re sen ta tive white
area of the im age to ad just high lights and con trast. This white area is found in any ob ject pres ent in the im age
that you can iden tify as white. It could be a shirt, a painted wall, a stone, or a piece of pa per. Re flec tions do not
count.
The im age used in this ex am ple (See Fig ure 5) shows an area that is a good rep re sen ta tive of white. Info Docker
shows C3M3Y14K0 that will print higher yel low in a wall that you know is white. The op ti mal num ber for this
white area is C5M2Y2K0, but some peo ple pre fer C4M2Y2K0. This num ber is better when the im age will go to
screen too, be cause it looks neu tral in the mon i tor than when it shows 5% of cyan. Since the sun is hit ting that
wall, you could let the yel low go up to be tween 4% and 6% if you pre fer a warmer and more realistic look.
Figure 5: The whitest area of the image is selected.
You should open the Tone Curve (Ctrl +
T) and ac ti vate the Cyan Chan nel from the
Chan nel drop-down list and move the han -
dle at the bot tom left of the curve a lit tle up
to force the ink to in crease to 4% or 5% in
the high lights, the area cir cled in red in Fig -
ure 6. You should de crease ma genta to 2%,
but in this case, the curve needs han dle
nodes in the 3/4, 1/2 and 1/4 of tone to pre -
vent move ment in those ar eas. You should cre ate an other han dle in the high light area, and you should move it a
lit tle down. This will force the ma genta to go lower be tween 6% and 2%. You should use a sim i lar move ment to
the Yel low Chan nel curve, but this time the move ment of the high light node is more dras ti cally down. See Fig -
ure 6.
Are you see ing your im age im prov ing? This means that the method works. The im age has talked to you, and you
are ad just ing ac cord ingly to make it print and look better.
Neutrals
You have ad justed high lights and darker shad ows, but what about the other ar eas of the im age? You can reach
them by ad just ing the neu trals, and the other col ors gen er ally get into po si tion like a pow er ful magic force is
touch ing them.
The im age used in this ex am ple, has neu tral ar eas that are darker and oth ers that are lighter. You can find them
in stones and shad ows over ar eas that you know are white. See Fig ure 7.
The info Docker shows C43M20Y36K0 in the lighter shadow and C67M49Y78K7 in the darker one. This
means that you should in crease ma genta to com pen sate. Good neu tral shows ma genta and yel low equals, and
Figure 6: Adjusting the highlight area of the image.
cyan a lit tle higher. Hu mans per ceive blueish neu trals
more gray than yel low ish and red dish ones, but here
you can let yel low go a lit tle higher, be cause the sun is
bright en ing the scene.
This move ment in the Ma genta Chan nel curve will in -
crease ma genta in the mid dle and quar ter of tone,
while darker shad ows and high lights will stay the same,
be cause you have al ready ad justed them. The rest is a
lit tle ad just ment in the same area of the Yel low Chan -
nel, but this time you should de crease yel low ink to
neu tral ize the gray ar eas. See Fig ure 8.
Tips
The most rep re sen ta tive white area with out count ing re flec tions should mea sure C5M2Y2K0 in any image.
Neu trals should mea sure Ma genta equal to Yel low with Cyan a lit tle over.
Conclusions
The mo ment of truth is when you fin ish ad just ing, and you com -
pare your cor rected im age with the orig i nal. Has it im proved? Are
the col ors better? See Fig ure 9.
The good part is not that the im age looks better, it is that the im -
age will print well, and you will be con fi dent that it will print right.
If it does not print right, you can com plain to the print shop be -
cause the num bers in your im age are not in the print.
Figure 7: A dark neutral area of the image is shown.
Figure 8: Adjustments made to the magenta
and yellow channels.
These are not the only num bers to mon i tor in your im ages. One way is to ask your im age what is go ing on with
cer tain ar eas as skin tones when peo ple are pres ent. Also, you should learn to bring a value from an other chan -
nel when they are not there in the cur rent chan nel. How ever, these are top ics for fu ture ar ti cles, so you should
keep your self tuned, and talk ing with your images.
Michael Cervantes is a Corel C-Tech Volunteer, a CorelDRAW Certified Expert, and a Corel
Certified Instructor. He is a Desktop Publisher who graduated from the Southern Institute of
Business and Technology of Dallas, Texas, and a freelance Graphic Artist since 1989. He has
published several articles about CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT, and he is constantly
helping Corel users in Corels support newsgroups.
Figure 9: Our image before and after editing.
Working with Encapsulated
PostScript Files
by Foster D. Coburn III
One of the more com mon file for mats (and most mis un der stood for mats) sent to CorelDRAW us ers is En cap su -
lated Post Script (EPS). Im go ing to go over the de tails of work ing with these files in clud ing in for ma tion for
those who sup ply the files to you.
EPS Files
Be fore we talk about how to work with EPS files, we need to know a lit tle bit about the EPS for mat. It was de -
vel oped as a sub set of the Post Script printer de scrip tion lan guage. Ba si cally EPS is treated as a black box by
most soft ware. The soft ware re serves a spot on the page of spec i fied di men sions and then passes the EPS data
di rectly to a Post Script printer.
Over the years, the name EPS has been used in a lot of dif fer ent ways which fur ther causes con fu sion. Some Il -
lus tra tor files have been la beled EPS even though tech ni cally they are not EPS files. They are very sim i lar, but
not truly EPS files. And it is not un com mon for Photoshop us ers to save a bitmap as an EPS file. Yes, it is an EPS
file, but it would have been better if the file were saved as a TIF.
EPS files can con tain vec tor and bitmap data.
Some times they have both, some times they only
have one or the other. So us ers who feel that EPS is
a vec tor file may be in for a sur prise if the file truly
con tains bitmap data.
The Two Parts of an EPS File
A proper EPS file can con tain two pieces of data.
The first part is the header. The header is meant to
be a low qual ity rep re sen ta tion of the file used for
screen dis play. The header could be in vec tor for -
mat, it could be in bitmap for mat or it may not
even be pres ent. When an EPS file is cre ated, the
user has the choice of what type of header, if any,
will be included.
The other part of the EPS file is the ac tual Post -
Script data. It rep re sents the full qual ity of the file.
Given that there have been three re vi sions of Post -
Script over the years, it could be the orig i nal Post Script Level 1, Post Script Level 2 or Post Script 3. Any soft ware
sup port ing EPS files should be able to work with Level 1 files. The newer ver sions may or may not be fully
supported.
Fig ure 1: Se lect ing EPS files in the Im port di a log box.
Importing EPS Files to CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW X3 has a sin gle list ing for EPS files in the Im port di a log box where CorelDRAW 12 and be low of -
fered two dif fer ent fla vors of EPS. While it may seem that X3 of fers fewer choices, it just sim pli fies the pro cess
for most users.
From the Im port di a log box, se lect EPS, PS, PRN - Post Script in the Files of type drop-down list as shown in
Fig ure 1. Choose the file you wish to im port and press the Im port but ton.
The next di a log box youll see is shown in Fig ure 2, and it is new to CorelDRAW X3. You are given the choice
of im port ing the file so that it is editable (this was called the In ter preted Post Script fil ter in pre vi ous ver sions) or
plac ing the EPS file on the page (this was the EPS Placeable fil ter in pre vi ous versions).
Lets start by look ing at plac ing EPS files as this is the area where us ers are most con fused. When plac ing EPS
files, you will only see the file header on screen. Since this is of ten a very low qual ity, us ers feel that the file is of
poor qual ity when, in fact, it is just the op po site. If you print the
placed file on a Post Script printer, it will re veal the full qual ity.
But, it is im por tant that you print to a Post Script printer as the
header would print on non-Post Script printers.
Fig ure 3 shows four EPS files placed on the page. The top ver sion
of the file did not have a header, so the only thing that dis plays on
the page is a gray box. How many of you have seen this be fore?
Be low that is a ver sion of the file with a black and white bitmap
header. The onscreen qual ity is rel a tively poor, but it does show
the size and shape of the graphic cor rectly. Next is the 8-Bit color
bitmap header. This looks fairly good on this im age but hon estly
is nt any more use ful than the black and white header. At the bot -
tom is a ver sion of the file with a WMF header. It does look the
Fig ure 2: Im port EPS di a log box.
best but re mem ber that looks can
some times be de ceiv ing. If you ac ci -
den tally printed any of these head -
ers, rather than the EPS data, the
printed qual ity would be de graded.
If this page were printed on a Post -
Script printer, all four of the
graphics would look identical.
The key thing to re mem ber about
plac ing EPS files is that the header
is sim ply a place holder for the ac tual
data. As long as it al lows you to po -
si tion and size the file, it has done
the job. It is also im por tant that you
out put to a Post Script de vice so that
the ac tual EPS data will be used.
If you click on a placed EPS file, the Sta tus Bar will show
that that the file is an EPS file, but will list a res o lu tion as
shown in Fig ure 4. In the ex am ple shown, it shows 72 dpi
be cause that is the res o lu tion of the bitmap header.
CorelDRAW does not look in side the EPS file at the ac -
tual EPS data so the only way to know the qual ity of the data in side the file is to print it.
CorelDRAW can work with EPS files in an other way. It can in ter pret the EPS data and con vert it into
editable CorelDRAW ob jects. In the Im port EPS di a log box shown in Fig ure 2, you would choose Im port as
Editable. This leaves you with one other choice, do you want the text to be im ported as editable text or do you
Fig ure 3: Four ver sions of a logo, each with a dif fer ent type of header in
the EPS file.
Fig ure 4: The Sta tus Bar in di cates the EPS is 72 dpi
though this is sim ply the header and not the ac tual
EPS data.
want it con verted to curves? If you need to make changes to the text, youll cer tainly want to choose to im port
the text as text. This can lead to a prob lem. If you do not have the font used by the cre ator for the file on the
text, you will get font sub sti tu tion, and the file will not look the same. Choos ing to im port the text as curves can
use the em bed ded font, if any, so that the text will look ex actly as the cre ator in tended. The down side is that
the text is not editable.
Most us ers pre fer to im port EPS files as editable since the files look good on screen and they can make any nec -
es sary changes. The big gest ben e fit to plac ing EPS files is that the file will look ex actly as the cre ator in tended. If
in doubt, you can al ways im port the file both ways and do a test print to make sure noth ing was changed on the
editable version.
In Closing
Once you un der stand how EPS files work, youll find they are not very dif fi cult to in cor po rate into your pro jects.
The big gest prob lems us ers have faced is that they see the header on screen and feel that the file is of very poor
qual ity. Now that you un der stand it is sim ply a low-qual ity place holder, you will know that it will print out at full
qual ity and not con cern your self with the onscreen version.
In the next is sue, Ill show you the ways to prop erly work with Adobe Il lus tra tor files.
Foster D. Coburn III is the managing editor of CorelDRAW Unleashed. Hes written eight
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The Vinyl Countdown
by Jeff Harrison
Per haps you mostly use CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT for the print or Web de sign in dus tries. Af ter
to day, you may be in ter ested in an en tirely new field. It can be both en joy able and very prof it able. This ar ti cle is
an in tro duc tion to vi nyl cut ting. Sign age, de cals, and au to mo tive dec o ra tion are a few ap pli ca tions for the final
output.
Some of you read ing this may be vi nyl cut ters al ready, and may also be in volved in Large For mat print ing and
cut ting. This ar ti cle fo cuses on the reg u lar old-style vi nyl cut ting thats been around for a while. Im sure youll
agree that it still has its place in sign mak ing, both now and into the future.
I was thrust into do ing this kind of work some what by ac ci dent. I had done some free lance de sign at a print shop
that also dab bled in vi nyl cut ting. A rush job had come in, and the reg u lar per son who knew how to run the
equip ment was away that day. The shop owner asked if I could come down to the shop to see if I could fig ure
out how to make this job hap pen. At this point, I did nt know any thing about vi nyl cutting at all.
In pass ing, Id seen the other op er a tor have the art work onscreen in CorelDRAW as out lines only. I knew the
blade on the ma chine would even tu ally fol low those curves. When the cli ent had ap proved the fi nal art work,
we were ready to be gin the or der. The cus tomer in di cated the fi nal art work should have a blue fill and no out -
line. Just be fore send ing to the ma chine, I changed the art on CorelDRAWs page to have a hair line outline but
no fill.
In side CorelDRAW, ev ery thing seemed quite in tu itive (as it al ways is). For our cut ting ma chine, there was even
a print driver that was ac ces si ble in CorelDRAWs list of avail able print ers. Id made sure the art work on screen
was at ac tual size. The art work fit in side CorelDRAWs print en gine pre view win dow, rel a tive to the size of the
me dia Id set up. The blue vi nyl was loaded onto the ma chine and tri ple-checked to make sure it was run ning
straight. The art work was about 12 feet long, so I had to en sure it would nt go off the tracks! The art work would
be mounted to a white banner later.
The fi nal job turned out very well, and the owner was sur prised that the job went so smoothly for my first time.
The main rea son it went well was be cause I was al ready very fa mil iar with CorelDRAW. Its re ally help ful for
any one pre par ing the curves to know what theyre do ing, and to vi su al ize what will be com ing off the ma chine
later. Thats why CorelDRAW has al ways been very pop u lar among vi nyl cut ters. A skilled CorelDRAW
userper haps your selfis al ready well on their way to us ing their skills for a whole new rev e nue stream if they
so choose. It did nt take me long to see the po ten tial. Since then, the sign por tion of the busi ness at the shop has
far outpaced the printing division.
Im go ing to walk you through the steps of re build ing a de sign for vi nyl cut ting. Hope fully youll en vi sion that
this is some thing that you can do as well. If you arent in ter ested in buy ing the ac tual cut ting equip ment, you
could de sign for your ex ist ing cli ents and sell the or ders. If you al ready have vec tor art work for most of your cli -
ents, youre in great shape! Find a per son or com pany who al ready has cut ting equip ment, and farm out the pro -
duc tion to them. Let them know youre us ing CorelDRAW, and you might just hear a whoo-hoo! on the other
end of the phone line!
Limited Palette
Dur ing the de sign stage, we need to con sider that the fi nal out put wont be printed. It will be a phys i cal ma te rial
thats per me ated with a color. Its help ful to show cli ents ac tual sam ples of the vi nyl, since that will be the real
color of the fi nal job. Theres a lim ited pal ette of col ors to choose from. Vi nyl man u fac tur ers of fer swatch books
of avail able col ors. Per haps 8 to 10 shades of blue
will fall within the price point of the vi nyl your cus -
tomer has cho sen. See Fig ure 1.
How ever, there are also in trigu ing op tions avail able
that are im pos si ble with printed ma te ri als, such as
brushed met als, re flec tive vi nyl, and a ma te rial that
re sem bles frosted or etched glass. There is even a
spe cial vi nyl avail able that can be ap plied to
t-shirts with a heat press.
Lets Go For It!
I of ten vi su al ize the fi nal re sult and work back -
wards in my mind. It raised is sues such as:
1. The customer wants the logo to be in bluetheir usual corporate color. However, the side of their vehicle is
also blue. Do we need to install some white vinyl or other color behind the logo so it can be seen? Were
going to need more vinyl for this job
2. If the lettering for a sign is on the inside of the glass, it needs to be cut in reverse so that the adhesive sticks
to the glass. Is the window tinted? Perhaps the lettering wont be visible enough this way, compared to
having it on the outside of the glass.
3. A backlit sign using 2 or more colors of vinyl needs trapping. This is so that slivers of light dont slip
through spaces where 2 different colored vinyls may meet. I often use 1/8" trap for larger signs. For signs less
than 6 square feet I may try to get away with 1/16" trapping. If black vinyl is involved, then things get
interesting. You wouldnt need to trap black text against a colored background.
4. How complicated is the artwork? There is a minimum thickness that areas need to be for the vinyl to keep
some integrity. 1/16" is absolute minimum from my experience. For outdoor use, I prefer nothing smaller
Figure 1: Phys i cal vi nyl of fers a lim ited pal ette of col ors.
that 1/8". For this reason, I prefer Sans Serif
fonts when possible. Theyre easier to weed
and also resistant to small parts of the letters
peeling off. Weeding is the removal of the
excess unwanted vinyl after cutting.
5. Are there sharp tips or corners in the artwork?
Often Ill round these slightly, this reduces the
chance of a corner lifting. The new Fillet
feature in CorelDRAW X3 aids greatly in this.
Heres an ex am ple: a cus tomer brings in a logo such
as Fig ure 2.
If youve re built art work such as this for print work, the
next step will be fa mil iar. A vi nyl cut ter only un der stands
vec tor shapes and curves, so the art work must be re built
from the bitmap the cus tomer pro vided. Lets as sume that
youve ex hausted all at tempts to find a vec tor ver sion of
the art work. The cus tomer has ac cepted your fee to con -
vert to it a vec tor ob ject. How much do art ists charge? Be -
tween zero to one hun dred dol lars! If an art ist charges
zero, chances are they are throw ing in the re build ing
time on a very large or der. The cus tomer thinks that time
is free, but its re ally just built into the final price.
Once the bitmap has been im ported into CorelDRAW,
youll need to de cide how to re build the art. I wont cover
ev ery tech nique to day, but Ill use a hy brid of meth ods for
this ex am ple. Firstly, Im go ing to con vert the art work to
Figure 2: A typ i cal bitmap logo pro vided by a cus tomer, in
rough con di tion as usual.
Figure 3: Con vert ing to 1-bit Black and White.
1-bit Black and White in side CorelDRAW (Bitmaps |
Mode | Black and White), us ing the set tings shown in
Fig ure 3.
If the Bitmap is still se lected, there will be an icon on the
Prop erty Bar next to Edit Bitmap that will launch Corel
PowerTRACE. Choose High Qual ity Im age. See Fig ure 4.
Once PowerTRACE has launched, use the set tings shown
in Fig ure 5 to au to mat i cally con vert the Bitmap to vec tor
ob jects. No tice the fea tures in the Op tions area. Press OK
when done.
You should be back in CorelDRAW, with a Group of 2 ob -
jects be fore you. If you ap plied a hair line out line to
those shapes and re moved the fill, you COULD
send this art work to a cut ter at this point! How -
ever, were go ing to im prove some things first. One
more min ute of work will make the fi nal re sult
better. Its heart break ing to see a job come off the
ma chine that is a lit tle off, es pe cially if there are
many duplicates!
Ungroup the shapes. Zoom in with the F2 key so
that the moon fills your screen. Cre ate a new el -
Figure 4: Launch ing Corel PowerTRACE.
Fig ure 5: Us ing Corel PowerTRACE to con vert a bitmap to
vec tor shapes.
lipse to re place the al most per fect re sult from Corel PowerTRACE. Give it a dif fer ent col ored fill than black so
you can see how it lines up. Cut the new moon to the clip board (Ctrl+X). Se lect and de lete the old moon that
was nt per fectly round. Paste the new moon back in (Ctrl+V). Now you have a per fectly round moon. Se lect it
and the rest of the wolf scene. Press the Quick Weld but ton on the Property Bar.
Corel PowerTRACE rec og nized the curved out side bor der quite well, much better than the old CorelTRACE
would have. How ever, its easy to make our bor der per fect. To do this, I made a square with rounded cor ners.
Then I con toured in wards us ing the In ter ac tive Con tour Tool. Both of these rect an gles should be just out side
the orig i nal bor der. Ad just the con tour dis tance and quan tity by us ing the ar eas on the Prop erty Bar. I made the
main art work gray tem po rarily so that you could see the con tour lines better. See Fig ure 6.
Se lect the Con tour and break it apart by press ing Ctrl+ K. The con tour piece is now sep a rate from the orig i nal
shape. Se lect the two pieces and Com bine them by press ing Ctrl+ L. You should be able to fill this sin gle piece
with a color. It should cover the orig i nal bor der.
Weld this piece to the wolf scene. The im per fect
bor der un der neath was slightly smaller, and has
now been ab sorbed into the perfect new border.
You should have only one ob ject in CorelDRAW.
You can check the Ob ject Man ager Docker to be
sure. Give the ob ject a hair line out line, and re move
the fill. You could ex port this file from
CorelDRAW as an EPS file. Some cut ters come
with their own soft ware that can im port EPS files.
In my case, there was a driver for the Roland
Camm-1 in CorelDRAWs Print En gine. No ex -
port ing was required.
Fig ure 6: Con tour ing a square with rounded cor ners.
Af ter load ing the vi nyl into the ma chine and mak ing sure it was
run ning straight, I printed the file to it. The ma chine du ti fully
cut the art work into the top layer of vi nyl, but not through the vi -
nyls back ing sheet.
Youll see be low that Id
sent two cop ies to the
ma chine. There was
room on the 24" wide
vi nyl to fit two 10" x 10"
wolf scenes side by side. When cut ting vi nyl, its wise to fill the area in
a prac ti cal man ner, oth er wise theres too much waste. Once the cut ter
had fin ished, it was time to weed the ex cess vi nyl. See Fig ure 7.
The next step is to ap ply trans fer tape. I like to mea sure it out by
roll ing it over the art work up side-down (the sticky side up). See Fig -
ure 8.
Care fully I flipped the trans fer tape over and squee geed it down with
the gray plas tic tool you see in Fig ure 9.
Fig ure 7: Weed ing ex cess vi nyl.
Fig ure 8: Mea sur ing out the trans fer tape
against the art work.
Fig ure 9: Press ing the trans fer tape
against the art work.
Next, I cut away the
left over trans fer tape
and back ing sheet.
See Fig ure 10.
This leaves us with
two ex am ples that
are ready to in stall.
See Fig ure 11.
We are go ing to
mount our vi nyl to a
Sub strate. A sub -
strate is the ma te rial that you mount the vi nyl to. Two com mon
ma te ri als found in sign shops are Coroplast and Sintra. They are avail able in a lim ited va ri ety of col ors.
Coroplast is very eco nom i cal, usu ally less than $10.00 for a 4x 8 sheet. While the low price cant be beat, there
are ridges on the sur face of the ma te rial that will af fect the art work when seen at cer tain an gles. For crit i cal ap -
pli ca tions where im age is im por tant, I pre fer Sintra. I know of one shop where the or der was re jected be cause
the fi nal prod uct in tended for a trade show dis play looked too cheap on Coroplast. En sure the cus tomer knows
what theyre get ting. See Fig ure 12.
To day well mount one of the lo gos to Coroplast.
There are five steps. See Fig ure 13.
1. Applying masking tape to hold the artwork in
position.
2. Flipping the artwork upwards and removing the
backing sheet, which exposes the sticky part of the
vinyl.
Fig ure 10: Cut ting off the left over trans fer
tape and back ing sheet.
Fig ure 11: Two ex am ples ready to in stall.
Fig ure 12: Some com mon sub strates.
3. Pressing the vinyl against the Coroplast.
4. Removing the transfer tape.
5. Admiring the final product for the next 2 hours.
When mount ing to a ve hi cle, the pro cess is very sim i lar. See Fig ure 14.
Clean the area to mount to (I did nt in Fig ure 14, since I was re mov ing the vi nyl right af ter the pho tos). Of ten
in stall ers will spray both the mount ing area and the ex posed ad he sive with wa ter. This makes it eas ier for bub -
bles to es cape (or be squee geed out), and it also serves as a sec ond chance if the vi nyl did nt lay down cor -
rectly the first time. You can lift it back up and re ap ply. Some times in stall ers will sat u rate the trans fer tape with
wa ter be tween Steps 3 and 4. Af ter a few min utes, the trans fer tape soft ens and is very easy to peel away.
Fig ure 13: Mount ing to Coroplast.
Fig ure 14: Mount ing to a ve hi cle door.
Summary
I used an old ma chine to cut a typ i cal de sign. Then we mounted it to eco nom i cal but du ra ble Coroplast. We also
mounted to a ve hi cle door. This kind of work is at the en try level for the sign in dus try, but youd be sur prised
how of ten its still re quired. It serves a fun da men tal pur posesim ple and clear communication.
The rea son I chose a sim ple ex am ple? I want you to en vi sion some pos si bil i ties in your lo cal mar ket place, and a
pro ject within your ca pa bil i ties as a CorelDRAW user. Mod ern sign shops still cut sin gle-color vi nyl, but many
have also added large-for mat full color sol vent print ing. I use one of those ma chines as well, a Roland SP-540v.
The ma chine prints the de sign in full color and can also con tour cut the de sign out later. If this tech nol ogy in -
ter ests you, send an email to Foster or myself, and Ill con sider an ar ti cle for that type of equipment.
Wher ever you live, there are busi nesses with sim ple sign age needs, and the tech nique I showed you to day is ex -
actly what the cus tomer wants. You dont need a $25,000.00 large for mat printer to do this kind of work. There
are new and used ma chines un der $1,000.00 that will do ex actly what I showed you to day. Thats why you
should be in ter estedits a re al is tic and in cred i bly
af ford able way for al most any one to en ter the sign
busi ness. Its es pe cially true if they are al ready a
skilled CorelDRAW user.
The ma chine I used was a first gen er a tion Roland
Camm-1, a work horse in the in dus try. I found a
used one at the time of writ ing on Ebay for a Buy
it Now price of $599.00. A busy sign shop will
have this paid off by lunch time! There are newer
mod els from Roland, such as the GX-24 (see Fig ure
15). The price of that unit will range be tween
$1,700.00 and $2,000.00 online.
Figure 15: Roland GX-24.
Hope fully youve en joyed the tu to rial, and if you did, please send me an email, jeff@pmgindex.com. If you are in
the sign busi ness as a CorelDRAW user and have some thing you feel is im por tant to cover for a fu ture ar ti cle,
send in your ideas, and Ill give you credit if I use them.
Look at the next page for ex am ples of fi nal jobs that used a vi nyl cut ter.
Jeff Harrison is a working graphic artist who consults with print shops who call him in for the
tough jobs their in-house artists would rather not touch. He has produced artwork for almost
every type of output imaginable. Hes also a professional musician and audio engineer.
unleash.com/jeffh
Take a look! Theres cool stuff there for every
level of CorelDRAW User. Itll rock your world!
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quality bitmap images from clients and face the challenge of turning
these into high-quality vector images for business cards, brochures,
promotional items, or signs. The new Corel PowerTRACE solves this
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Get Funky With Dis tressed
by Rich ard Reilly
Ev ery art ist, at some point in their ca reer, will come across the need for a dis tressed or grungy de sign. This de -
sign treat ment is ram pant in the graphics mar ket to day and can be seen in all types of ad ver tis ing from t-shirt
de signs to cor po rate im ag ery. This trendy look is a great way to spruce up a rather bor ing or sim ple de sign. In the
screen print ing mar ket, many print ers are re quired to work with lim ited color pal ettes thus making it hard to
cre ate an ef fec tive de sign. The use of tex tures and ef fects can turn a bland de sign into an award win ning one.
Through out this ar ti cle we will cover some sim ple steps in
CorelDRAW on cre at ing this trendy look. There are many dis -
tressed fil ters to be found on the internet, yet we can eas ily cre ate
our own us ing found im ages. Cre at ing your own also helps your art
to stand out above all the oth ers and truly be a cus tom job.
First we need to find im ages that will work well for this ef fect.
Look ing for im ages with high con trast and many el e ments will
work best for this ef fect. For this tu to rial I am us ing a tex ture (see
Fig ure 1) found on the Mayang texture Web site.
Im port (Ctrl+I) the tex ture into a blank CDR doc u ment.
Figure 1: The texture used for this project.
We need to con vert the im age to grayscale
by se lect ing Im age | Mode | Grayscale.
This gives us the im age in Fig ure 2.
Next we need to ad just the con trast us ing Tone Curves. Se lect Ef -
fects | Ad just | Tone Curve. Ap ply a Z shape curve as shown in
Fig ure 3. In this step we are dark en ing the dark ar eas and light en -
ing the light ar eas. This gives the tex ture shown in Fig ure 4.
Es sen tially we are con trol ling the level of con ver sion to black and
white. Ev ery im age will be dif fer ent in the curve ad just ments, yet
the ul ti mate goal is to have a highly con trast ing im age for an op ti -
mum and easy to use dis tressed ef fect texture or overlay.
Figure 2: The texture converted to
grayscale.
Figure 3: The Tone Curve used on the texture.
Figure 4: The texture after applying the
Tone Curve.
Af ter ad just ing the con trast we need to change the
mode to black & white (1-Bit). Se lect Bitmaps | Mode | Black and White to get the di a log box shown in
Fig ure 5.
Chang ing the mode to Black and White will help to achieve better edge def i ni tion and con trast than the
grayscale im age. In the Con vert to 1 Bit dialog, choose Line Art for your con ver sion method and while pre view -
ing the re sults, ad just the slider un til youre happy with the out come and click OK. For most im ages the de fault
set ting should be fine for this ef fect. It re ally all de pends on the im age at hand and how much of the tex ture you
want to apply to your image.
Trace this Black and White bitmap (see Fig ure 6) to vec tor, re mov ing all white or black ar eas in the de sign
(which ever you wish to use as the dis tressed fil ter). Once the trace is com plete, group or com bine all the ob -
jects. We now have a vec tor dis tressed graphic tex ture.
Figure 5: The Convert to 1 Bit dialog box.
Figure 6: Corel PowerTRACE is used to convert the
texture to vector artwork.
Trace us ing High Qual ity Im age, use the de fault Smooth ing and
change the De tail to max i mum. Color mode should read Black &
White and num ber of col ors 2. In the op tions area, Se lect re move
back ground, Spec ify color and check Re move color from en tire
im age. Next click the eye drop per tool and choose a color, ei ther
black or white, which is the color you wish to re move from the
trace. Click Ap ply.
Fig ure 7 shows the vectorized tex ture. Note that I placed the dis -
tressed el e ments on a green back ground so you can see the traced
re sults.
There are many op tions for cre at ing var i ous dis tressed looks. The
dis tressed graphic tex ture can be placed over any ob ject and col -
ored the same as the back ground to
give the graphic a dis tressed or
washed out look. The stan dard
most widely used method is to use
the cut out ef fect (fill the same
color as the back ground), yet in ter -
sect ing the dis tressed ob jects to
your graphic and col or ing a dif fer -
ent shade will yield a to tally dif fer -
ent yet unique look as shown in
Fig ures 8 and 9.
Some de signs might re quire only
cer tain el e ments to be dis tressed.
Figure 7: The vectorized texture on a green
background.
Figure 8: Coloring the distress the
same as the background.
Figure 9: Coloring the distress
another color.
This is where I would ei ther in ter sect or trim the dis tressed
graphic to those spe cific el e ments. In Fig ure 10, I have ap -
plied the dis tressed tex ture to the car club logo in the
back ground. It adds a nice up-to-date look with out over
pow er ing the de sign.
When print ing, you need to be care ful when work ing with
dis tressed vec tor ob jects as the node counts can be very
high caus ing print er rors or fail ure. I have come across this
in both print ing di rect to a post script printer and through
RIP soft ware. The workaround is to con vert the im age to
a high res o lu tion bitmap. When print ing to a color printer,
I will con vert the en tire im age to a high res o lu tion bitmap
and out put to the de sired printer. When print ing color sep -
a ra tions, I change the dis tressed ob jects to white and con -
vert the graphic to a high res o lu tion bitmap with a
trans par ent back ground. I place this im age on the mas ter
layer so the fil ter will print on all plates in the advanced
print options dialog.
In some in stances, work ing with a bitmap as an over lay is quicker and eas ier. To go this route, fol low the steps to
con vert ing the im age mode to Black and White. Con vert ing to Black and White will give us the con trast
needed for the best ef fect. How ever, we need to re vert the mode back to grayscale in or der to get the trans par -
ency needed.
Se lect Bitmaps | Mode | Grayscale.
Next open the Bitmap Color Mask docker by se lect ing Bitmaps | Bitmap Color Mask as shown in Fig ure 11.
Figure 10: Here the distress is only applied to the
background.
Se lect Hide Colors in the docker and check the first box in the scroll ing win dow.
Se lect the eye drop per tool and click the color in the bitmap you wish to make
trans par ent. Ad just the tol er ance slider un til you are sat is fied with the re sult and
click ap ply. This will make your bitmap trans par ent giv ing you a dis tressed fil ter.
De pend ing on the back ground color and the ef fect youre af ter, you may need to
edit the bitmap even more to mimic the background color.
Note: You may need to place a col ored ob ject be hind the bitmap so you can pre -
view the color mask.
One thing you need
to re mem ber when
cre at ing dis tressed
el e ments is that you
can eas ily go over -
board. Try to match
the dis tressed fil ter
to the im age. If you
are us ing a light
script font, you do
not want to use a heavy fil ter or the type most
likely will be to hard to read. Same goes with
graphics; too much dis tress ap plied can ren der the
de sign use less or un rec og niz able.
More sam ples of us ing dis tress in de sign are shown
on this page and the next page.
Figure 11: The Bitmap Color
Mask Docker allows you to
hide selected colors.
Rich ard G. Reilly is the owner of Fluid
De signs, Inc., an au to mated screenprinting,
em broi dery and graphic de sign com pany
lo cated in Jack son ville, Florida. A nat u ral
born art ist, Rich ard has been work ing in the
graphics de sign / tex tile screen print ing
in dus try for over eleven years and his art work
is rec og nized in ter na tion ally; he is self taught
in the area of graphic soft ware and has writ ten
sev eral tu to ri als on CorelDRAW. E-mail
Rich ard at richard@fluiddsn.com or visit his
Web site www.fluiddsn.com.
The RAW Deal
by Rikk Flohr
Unraveling the Mysteries of the RAW File Formats for the
CorelDRAW User
The world of Dig i tal SLR Cam eras ush ered in a new era in both Pho tog ra phy and Im age Ed it ing. With dig i tal
out put now the norm, the par tic u lars of that out put have caused de bate and con fu sion among us ers try ing to
an swer the ques tion: Do I shoot RAW or JPG or both? Each for mat car ries with it a dis tinct set of ad van tages
and disadvantages.
All Dig i tal Cam eras out put JPGa few even out put TIFF. Al most all dig i tal cam eras with in ter change able
lenses (and a few point-n-shoots) sup port some type of RAW file for mat. I sup pose be fore I con tinue we should
an swer the burn ing ques tion: What is a RAW file?
Sim ply put, a RAW file is a file gen er ated by the cam eras pro ces sor. It con tains the raw sen sor data from your
CMOS or CCD sen sor along with metadata de tail ing con di tions, cam era set tings, lens used, date, etc.
Strictly speak ing, there is no such thing as a RAW file for mat. There are many dis tinctly dif fer ent RAW file for -
mats. Each cam era man u fac turer cre ates a pro pri etary file for mat unique to their brand-of ten unique to the
The RAW Deal 71
cam era model. Canons RAW file is a dif fer ent for mat from
Nikon, Olym pus, etc. De spite a mul ti tude of RAW file for -
mats, the the ory be hind and the pro cess ing of RAW
remains the same.
RAW-JPEG Differences:
A RAW file is cre ated di rectly from the sen sor data. It
con tains no color space, no white bal ance in for ma tion, no
sharp en ing, gamma cor rec tion, or anti-aliasing. In fact, the
RAW file does nt con tain any col ors. It is grayscale with at -
tached color in for ma tion de tail ing whether a given pixel is
a red, green or blue pixel. A RAW file con tains more than
8 bits of in for ma tion per pixel per color chan nel. DSLR
Cam eras, when shoot ing in RAW mode, typ i cally cap ture 12 or 14 bits of in for ma tion. The sen sor data is re -
corded, aug mented with metadata and saved to the memory card.
A JPG file is cre ated from the sen sor data as well. The JPG file is cre ated by the cam eras onboard pro ces sor to
pro duce an im age that will look like the users ex pec ta tions. The sen sor in for ma tion is clipped into a color
space, usu ally sRGB. A white bal ance is ap plied by in ter pret ing the data and tak ing a best guess or us ing the
cam eras white bal ance set tings if they are sup plied. The im age is anti-aliased, sharp ened and ad justed for
bright ness and con trast. A gamma cor rec tion is ap plied, and the file is saved to the mem ory card as a JPG us ing
a lossy compression algorithm.
High-bit Files: The Key to the RAW Advantage
RAW file for mats of fer many ad van tages (and a cou ple of dis ad van tages) over JPG. RAW files start with all the
data. They are a high-bit file, mean ing they con tain more in for ma tion than a stan dard 24 bit RGB file.
Figure 1: Nearly all Digital SLRs and some
point-n-shoots have a RAW setting.
The RAW file con tains at least 12
bits per color chan nel in stead of the
usual 8. Each bit rep re sents a dou -
bling of in for ma tion con tained
within the color chan nel. An 8 bit
file con tains 28 or 256 steps be -
tween black and white. When you
look at the RGB Col ors of a file and
see a num ber like 0 0 0, you are see -
ing the rep re sen ta tion of the Red,
Green and Blue Chan nels each be -
ing set to 0. This color is black. If
you see 255 255 255, you are
looking at white.
The RAW file con tains 212 or 4096
steps be tween black and white for
each color chan nel. Al though no
con sen sus ex ists for rep re sent ing the
12 bit file in the three-num bered
no men cla ture, 0 0 0 is still black.
White is rep re sented two ways, ei ther as a per cent age 100 100 100 or as a num ber 4096 4096 4096. For the pur -
poses of this ar ti cle, I will use the lat ter as it is more like the RGB method in use for 8 bit files.
For ev ery step from black to white in an 8 bit file, the 12 bit file con tains 16 steps. What does that mean in the
real world? Lets say you have an im age where you have a lot of bright ar eas and the de tail is at risk of be ing lost
to white. The RAW data con tains in for ma tion in 16 steps within the sin gle 8 bit step from RGB 254 254 254 to
255 255 255. The de tail is cap tured by your sen sor in the 4095 4095 4095, 4094 4094 4094, etc. col ors. The
The RAW Deal 73
Figure 2: With White Balance set to AUTO, the following image was
recorded in both formats. Histogram A is a camera-created JPG file.
Histogram B is the same captured in RAW Format. Histogram C is the
RAW File as auto-processed in the camera's proprietary software.
Histogram D is the file after being processed through a RAW File Software
Package.
RAW file pre serves these pieces of im age de tail for re cov ery and ed it ing later. The JPG file has forced them all
to white or 255 255 255.
There is an even greater ben e fit to the high bit im age when it co mes to mak ing ad just ments. Dig i tal sen sors and
hu man eyes (or film for that mat ter) do not re spond to light the same way. Sen sors are lin ear. Be cause sen sors
cap ture in for ma tion lin early, each F-stop of light con tains ex actly half the light of the stop brighter. If your cam -
era has a 7 stop range, the light works out as follows.
F-Stop RAW 12 Bit File Steps JPG 8 Bit File Steps
EV-0 Brightest F-Stop 2048 128
EV-1 1024 64
EV-2 512 32
EV-3 256 16
EV-4 128 8
EV-5 64 4
EV-6 32 2
A quick glance at this chart shows us many things. For each F-Stop of range in our re corded im age, the RAW
file has sig nif i cantly more in for ma tion than the JPG. Again, real world, what does that mean? The bulk of your
in for ma tion is in the brighter stops. 75% of it is in the bright est two stops. 2.3% of the in for ma tion is in the
dark est two stops. If you un der ex pose your im age you are re cov er ing from less in for ma tion en coded in the orig i -
nal file cap ture. But, if you are re cov er ing an un der ex posed photo in RAW you have 16 times the information
from which to recover!
When you ap ply a Tone Curve in Corel PHOTO-PAINT to punch up the mid dle of an im age, you are es sen -
tially tak ing in for ma tion and mov ing from one tonal range to an other. If you have some darker grays like 60 60
60, 61 61 61, and 62 62 62 and try to ad just them you might end up with some thing
like 59 59 59, 61 61 61 and 63 63 63. The more you ad just, the greater the vari ance,
and the more risk for band ing, loss of lo cal de tail, or posterization. If you are work ing
with the in creased gran u lar ity of a high-bit RAW File, you can keep ad ja cent tonal val -
ues closer to gether while still pos i tively impacting your image.
RAW Files are color space in de pend ent. In or der to cre ate a file which is of use to an
im age ed i tor, a mon i tor or a printer, it must be mapped into a color space. Pop u lar color
spaces in clude, (in in creas ing or der of gamut, sRGB, Adobe RGB 1998, the typ i cal dig i -
tal sen sor, and ProPhoto RGB. The RAW file con tains no con straints in color other
than the lim its of its sen sor el e ments. When con vert ing RAW in for ma tion to JPG in
the cam eras pro ces sor, one of the op er a tions per formed is the as sign ment of a color
space. This is one of the data-loss cul prits when shoot ing JPG. Be cause there are col ors
cap tured by your sen sor not within the dis play gamut of sRGB and its larger rel a tive
Adobe RGB, col ors are com pressed or clipped to fit within the color space.
The RAW File con tains no white bal ance in for ma tion. It does nt need to know you
were in sun light, shade, or tung sten light ing when you took the im age. It cap tures the
raw data. JPG pro cess ing by the cam eras on-board pro ces sor is at tempt ing to give you a
fin ished pic ture and looks at the white bal ance set tings and de struc tively ad justs the
im age to color com pen sate for the per ceived lighting factors.
JPG files also un dergo al go rithms to anti-alias the im age, ap ply sharp en ing, and in some
cases noise re duc tion. Each of these items is ap plied to your im age with out you hav ing
the chance to see and de cide for your self. Then, a JPG file is writ ten to the mem ory
card us ing a high qual ity JPG com pres sion al go rithm. More data loss oc curs here as the
com pres sion rou tines strip out de tail for the sake of file size. This data loss leaves you less ma neu ver ing room
when ed it ing later as the JPG com pres sion ar ti facts are sus cep ti ble to pixel deg ra da tion. Skin tones, skies, and
gen tle gradients are particularly at risk.
The RAW Deal 75
Figure 3: A copy of
Histogram A and B are
overlaid with the
Merge Mode set to
Difference illustrates
the difference in the
information delivered
to your hands.
When you dis till the RAW file ad van tages to their es sence, you get a high bit file with sub stan tially more gran u -
lar ity and flex i bil ity at all ends of the tonal range of the im age. No data is lost due to color space map ping,
sharp en ing or con trast en hance ment rou tines. White bal ance can be ad justed after the fact.
RAW is no Holy Grail
All is not rosy with RAW by any stretch. JPG does of fer ad van tages and is some times the better choice for a par -
tic u lar photo. RAW is big. The file sizes are 3-4 times the size of their JPG coun ter parts. This means fewer im -
ages per mem ory card and more hard drive space is needed to store these im ages. It also means, when you shoot
RAW, that your cam eras buffer fills up quickly and you can take fewer im ages in burst mode be fore paus ing to
al low your cam era to catch up.
RAW pro cess ing is time con sum ing. All that work done for you by your cam eras pro ces sor is now be ing done by
you. While soft ware helps au to mate this task, you are still forced to pro cess large num bers of im ages by hand.
This is an ad van tage be cause you have com plete con trol, but it co mes with a cost in your time.
RAW pro cess ing re quires spe cial soft ware to trans late data into a us able pic ture for your im age ed i tor. You can
per form ed its to your im ages in 16 bit color and get better re sults when push ing ex po sure, ad just ing white bal -
ance, and other changes; how ever, you are do ing that in a ded i cated soft ware pack age that has a lim ited tool set.
Ul ti mately RAW soft ware can not take the place of your ded i cated im age ed it ing soft ware. This is an added cost
and an added strain on your computer resources.
Lastly, RAW is not an in dus try stan dard file for mat like a TIFF or a JPG. Each cam era maker cre ated a unique,
pro pri etary for mat. While each cam era man u fac turer pro vides soft ware to in ter pret and con vert its own brand
of RAW, one has to won der about the long term stor age and the read abil ity of these RAW files. How many file
for mats have fallen by the way side over the years of com put ing? I can re mem ber when I worked al most ex clu -
sively in PCX for mat. Now, I won der how long be fore my fa vor ite ed it ing packages drop it all together.
A Time and a Place for Each-Maybe Both
Each for mat has unique ad van tages and dis ad van tages which make them the better or the poorer choice for var -
i ous tasks. To me, a RAW file is like a neg a tive. Some have lik ened a JPG to a slide, but I feel it is more like a
print. The neg a tive, like the slide, con tains more in for ma tion and is suit able for en larg ing, but the print can be
passed around right now. It is a fi nal output of an image.
JPG tends to be the choice of cir cum stances re quir ing smaller file size-when you have to fit 500 12.8 Megapixel
im ages on a 2 GB card. It is also the for mat of choice when you have to shoot rap idly as the smaller file size al -
lows for more files in the cam eras buffer at once. JPG is also the pre ferred choice if you know you will not be
able to pro cess the pho tos by hand.
RAW files are the file of choice when you know you will need to ex tract the max i mum qual ity of an im age from
the file. It con tains the full gamut of the sen sor so you can con vert it dif fer ent ways for dif fer ent pur poses. It is
for giv ing of un der and over ex po sure and can be pushed
and pulled with less noise, band ing and posterization. It is
also cor rect able if you have a cam eras white bal ance set
in cor rectly or if you are shoot ing in con stantly chang ing or
dif fi cult light ing con di tions. RAW files al low you to cre ate
su pe rior large prints show ing finer detailespecially in
shadow areas.
In an ideal world, I would shoot both and have both. I
would have in stant ac cess to a us able im age with the abil -
ity to go back and tweak it later. Both would take more
mem ory and re duce my burst speed.
Ev ery thing in pho tog ra phy is a trade off. You sac ri fice shut -
ter speed for ap er ture and ISO. You sac ri fice fo cus for
The RAW Deal 77
Figure 4: When in doubt, shoot RAW and JPG.
Many cameras allow both to be simultaneously
recorded.
speed; you sac ri fice noise tol er ance for faster shut ter speeds and smaller ap er tures. Should the RAW vs. JPG
trade off be any different?
If you are con vinced to give RAW a try, stay tuned for the next is sue where we cook a lit tle RAW
Rikk Flohr founded his design firm, Fleeting Glimpse Images, in January of 2006 after serving
as a corporate marketing department for ten years. After receiving his degree in Computer
Science in the early 80s, Rikk turned to photography as a passion. Rikk has been taking pictures
professionally since 1983 and has won numerous awards. His pictures and HD Video have been
featured by Twin-Cities television stations, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the
National Wildlife Refuge, and the National Park Service. In the spring of 2007, Rikk served a
month long residency at Badlands National Park as the Artist in Residence. Rikk began using
CorelDRAW with version 5 and is active in the on-line Corel Community today.
Creating Comics with CorelDRAW
by Duncan Eagleson
Main stream com ics in the U.S. are gen er ally pro duced by a group of sev eral art ists. Usu ally one art ist pen cils,
one inks, a third let ters, and a fourth pro vides col ors. Of course, de pend ing on the pro ject, a sin gle art ist may
some times do more than one, or even all, of those jobsthis auteur ap proach of one art ist do ing ev ery thing is
more prev a lent in in de pend ent and small press com ics, though it hap pens oc ca sion ally in mainstream works as
well.
Any or all of these steps can be done in CorelDRAW and/or Corel PHOTO-PAINT. In this tu to rial se ries, well
look at var i ous ap proaches to each of these jobs us ing CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT.
Part 1: Script to layout
In the early days of com ics, art ists started with a rough out line of a story, laid out the pages, cre ated the art, and
then di a logue and nar ra tion would be filled in af ter ward. To day, most com ics and graphic nov els be gin with a
script. Since scriptwriting for com ics is be yond the pur view of this se ries, lets as sume youve got a script. By way
of ex am ple, well use the script for the first is sue of Hollow by Larime Taylor.
On Page 16, our punky her o ine, Iris Vega, is at the mov ies with a male friend. Bored with the film (Last Des ti -
na tion 8"), she re treats to the lobby to get her self a snack, where she en coun ters a mys te ri ous fel low who shed
ear lier thought for a brief mo ment was one of the
aliens from her re cur rent night mares (ac tu ally, he
is one of the aliens from her night mares, though we
wont dis cover that until later).
I start lay ing out the page, sketch ing on sheets of
stan dard 8 x 11 printer pa perits in ex pen sive,
readily avail able, and only slightly larger than our
ac tual print size will be, so I can rough out the
pages more or less to
size. I scan the
sketch, bring it into
CorelDRAW, and
be gin my dig i tal
page layout.
I start by open ing up my stan dard com ics page tem plate (see Fig ure 1).
Save your page with a unique file name (mine is Hollow01_Pg16.cdr. Okay, thats
not so unique or orig i nal, so sue me). Im port or paste the scan of your sketch on
Layer One. Well be us ing mul ti ple lay ers here, so if you dont al ready keep your
Ob ject Man ager Docker open, go to Tools, and se lect Ob ject Man ager to open it.
Its a good idea to name all your lay ers, so you can keep them all straight. Ill call
this layer Art. Cre ate a new layer for each panel on the page (in the Ob ject
man ager, click the right ar row but ton next to Layer and from the pull-down
menu that ap pears, choose New Layer) and name them ap pro pri ately (Panel
1, Panel 2, etc.). Now cre ate one more layerthis one will hold your cap tions
Figure 1: Duncans standard comics page template.
Figure 2: The Object
Manager showing the layers
used.
and word bal loons; I usu ally call it text. Fig ure 2 shows
the Ob ject Man ager with the var i ous layers previously
discussed.
By de fault, CorelDRAW gives all graphic ob jects a hair line
out line. For the pur poses of your com ics page, youll want a
thicker out line for your pan els, word bal loons, and cap tion
boxes, so with noth ing se lected, go to the pen flyout and
se lect the 1 point out line. CorelDRAW will warn you that
new ob jects will have this prop erty, and ask which ob jects
to ap ply it to. Be sure only Graphic Ob jects is se lected
and click Okay. Next, youll want to turn off editability
on the Art layer, so you dont move your scanned sketch
in ad ver tentlyclick on the lit tle pen cil icon next to the
Art layer in the Ob ject Man ager and that layer will be
locked.
Now we be gin lay ing out the pan els. In the tem plate, Ive
pro vided guide lines which al low for a va ri ety of panel lay -
outs with a stan dard 1/8 inch gut ter be tween the pan els. Make sure your Panel 1 layer is the ac tive layer, turn
on Snap to Guide lines (View | Snap to Guide lines), and us ing the rect an gle tool, draw the out line of Panel 1
to cor re spond to the first panel of your rough lay out. Re peat the pro cess for each suc ceed ing panel on the page.
You can change the ac tive layer be tween draw ing pan els, but I find it quicker and eas ier to just cre ate all the
pan els on one layer, and then drag the pan els to their ap pro pri ate lay ers in the Ob ject Man ager once Im done.
Fig ure 3 shows each of the panels on the corresponding layers.
Save your file. If youre at all ex pe ri enced with com puter graphics, sav ing your file fre quently should be an in -
grained habit by now. If its not, you should make it so.
Figure 3: Each of the panels has been placed on the
corresponding layer.
On this par tic u lar page, Ive used a cou ple of in set pan -
els (see Fig ure 4), so called be cause they are ei ther en -
tirely or par tially con tained within the bor ders of an other
panel. Well ex plore two ways of cre at ing this sort of
panel.
Since we wont need the lay out sketch for the next sev eral
steps, you can turn off the vis i bil ity on the Art Layer.
Youve al ready cre ated rect an gles for Pan els 2 and 3. Lets
start with Panel 3, since the fi nal re sult here will be more
ob vi ous. With the Panel 3 rect an gle se lected and with
Snap to Guide lines on, drag Panel 3 to align the right
edge of the panel with the right edge of Panel 1. Open the
Con tour Docker (Win dow | Dock ers | Con tour). In
the Con tour Docker, choose Out side for the type of
con tour. Since we have two in set pan els and theyre
small pan els, we dont want to take up too much of
Panel 1 with gut ters, so well make the gut ters around
these in set pan els half the size of the nor mal gut ters.
Set the off set to 0.065 (1/16 inch), set the Steps to 1,
and click Ap ply. In the Ob ject Man ager, Panel 3 will
now have a sec ond, slightly larger rect an gle called
Con tour Group linked to it. See Fig ure 5.
Next, with the newly cre ated Con tour Group se lected,
go to Ar range | Break Con tour Group Apart (or
Ctrl+K). Now we have two sep a rate rect an gles, the
Figure 4: Example of an inset panel.
Figure 5: Example of the Contour Docker and the
finished result.
panel and the larger con tour rect an gle (the gut ter out -
line). In the Ob ject Docker, drag the new larger rect -
an gle to the Panel 1 Layer. With this rect an gle still
se lected, open the Shap ing Docker (Win dow | Dock -
ers | Shap ing), and from the pull-down menu at top,
choose Trim. Uncheck both Source and Tar get ob -
jects, hit the Trim but ton, and with the large ar row
cur sor this gives you, click on the Panel 1 rectangle.
The re sult should look like Fig ure 6.
The Panel 1 rect an gle will now be listed in the Ob jects
Docker as a curve in stead of a rect an gle. Re peat
the same pro cess with the rect an gle for Panel 2cre -
ate a Con tour with the same set tings, break the con tour group apart, drag the larger rect an gle to the Panel 1
layer, and use it to trim the Panel 1 curve. This time you wont see any vi sual change in the draw ing, but in stead
of be ing a larger rect an gle, the outer edge of the gut ter around Panel 2 will now be cut out of the Panel 1 curve.
With your pan els laid out, we can start putt ing in the let ter ing.
Part 2: Lettering Comics in CorelDRAW
Nor mally, let ter ing is one of the later stages of com ics cre ationgen er ally, its done af ter the ink ing, some times
af ter the col or ing. But one of the big gest prob lems for art ists new to com ics is learn ing to al low ap pro pri ate space
for di a logue bal loons and nar ra tive cap tions. Over time, as you be come more ex pe ri enced at lay ing out com ics
pages, youll be gin to get a vis ceral sense of how much space to leave, and will be able to tell just by look ing at a
script page. If youre rel a tively new to com ics, or if you pre fer to be cer tain ahead of time (rather than risk hav -
Figure 6: The finished panel after trimming.
ing to re-draw or have your gor -
geous ren der ings cov ered up by
bal loons in the fi nal prod uct), cre at -
ing even a rough ap prox i ma tion of
the lettering is helpful at this stage.
Ever since Todd Klein de signed
some fifty or so dif fer ent fonts for
var i ous char ac ters in Neil Gaimans
Sandman, theres been this ten -
dency on the part of com ics letterers
(es pe cially among newbies who use
only com puter fonts) to give ev ery
char ac ter in a comic their own dis -
tinc tive font. Unique fonts for ex -
tremely unique char ac ters can be
use ful when ap plied ju di ciously, but
un less youre a hand letterer with
the ex pe ri ence and abil ity of a guy
like Klein, Id ad vise against go ing
over board with this sort of thing.
The rules of good graphic de sign ap -
ply to com ics as much as to other
types of de sign, and too many dif fer -
ent fonts on a page can give the
page a cha otic, dis or ga nized look
and make reading difficult.
Comics Lettering
Com ics let ter ing used to be done by hand, but these days al most all com ics let ter ing
is done dig i tally, with fonts de signed to look hand let tered. There have been a num -
ber of at tempts over the years to use more reg u lar fonts in com ics, but the re sults
have al ways been awk ward and ar ti fi cial-look ing. Theres just some thing about that
hand-let tered look that gives the en tire page a more uni fied and or ganic ap pear ance.
Many pro fes sional com ics letterers have cre ated fonts based on their own hand let -
ter ing, and some of these fonts have even been made avail able com mer cially. If you
want your comic to look like it was let tered by Jim Lee or Tim Sale, for in stance, you
can pur chase fonts based on their let ter ing from Comicraft (comicbookfonts.com/).
If you have some skill with hand let ter ing, it is pos si ble to cre ate your own font, us ing
CorelDRAW. Cre at ing fonts is clearly be yond the scope of this ar ti cle, but you can
find tutorials for font creation at unleash.com.
Blambot, which de vel ops and sells com mer cial com ics fonts, also of fers free down -
loads of many com ics fonts for non-com mer cial use.
Commercial:
http://www.blambot.com/
http://www.comicbookfonts.com/
http://www.studiodae.com/whizfont.html
http://www.fonts.com/
Freeware:
http://www.ronevry.com/witzworx.html
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=102
http://www.themeworld.com/fonts/comic.html
http://www.fontriver.com/fancy/comic/
Since most of the text on this page will ap pear in the same fontas with the out linesI find it eas i est to choose
the font first with noth ing se lected, so that any text I cre ate will au to mat i cally be ren dered in that font and at
the size and in the for mat I want. Win dows sys tems will have Comic Sans MS in stalled by de fault, but its not re -
ally a very use ful font. Far better com ics fonts are eas ily avail able these days, both from com mer cial font houses
and from free font down load sites (see sidebar on pre vi ous page). For the pur poses of this dem on stra tion, well
use ACME Ex plo sive, a freeware font avail able at acidfonts.com.
With the type tool ac tive, in the font menu choose an ap pro pri ate com ics font (youll get the same warn ing
again, make sure Ar tis tic Text is checked, and click Okay). Set the font size to 10 or 12 and choose Cen ter
for hor i zon tal alignment.
Hope fully, you have your script as a text doc u ment of some sort, so you can copy and paste your text and not be
typ ing it in as you go. Open your script file in the text ed i tor of your choice; se lect and copy the text for your
page. I find it te dious to copy and paste ev ery word bal loon and cap tion in di vid u ally, so I copy the en tire page
and then edit it in Draw. Go back to Draw, and in the ob ject man ager, turn off the editability of all the lay ers ex -
cept Text. This in sures that you wont dis turb any of your pan els or your sketch while work ing on the let ter ing.
Turn off Snap to Guide lines and with the type tool, click some where off the page on the desk top and paste
your text. If your script is in Word Per fect, Word, or other word pro cess ing or DTP ap pli ca tion, it may in clude
ty po graphic em bel lish ments like bolding or italicization. If you want to pre serve these as pects when you paste
the text, when Draw asks whether you want to main tain fonts and for mat ting, choose Main tain for mat ting
only. Edit the text to take out at tri bu tions (JOHN: ) and stage di rec tions or panel de scrip tions, leav ing only the
di a logue and cap tions. By this point, you should be fa mil iar enough with your script that you should nt get con -
fused about what goes where, but if not, you can always refer back to the original script.
Se lect the text for the first word bal loon, cut it (Ctrl+X), click about where you want to po si tion the first word
bal loon, and paste (Ctrl+V). Re peat for each of the other word bal loons and cap tions. Your page should now
look some thing like Fig ure 7.
Now, there are a cou ple of dif fer ent ways you could
ad just the lines of text to fit into bal loon shapes.
The eas i est is to con vert the ar tis tic text to para -
graph textmar quee se lect all the text and ei ther
right click and choose Con vert to para graph text,
or just hit Ctrl+F8. Once the text is all para graph
text, you can re shape it by us ing the han dles on the
text boundary boxes.
Per son ally, I like hav ing more con trol over where
the text lines break. Com ics is a si lent me dium, so
we have to use the text it self to con vey things like
loud ness, tone of voice, speak ing pace, and vo cal
em pha sis. We can do this by us ing line breaks as
well as bolding, ital ics, and font size. For this pur -
pose, youre better off leav ing the text as ar tis tic
text and cre at ing line breaks by hand.
Most com mer cial com ics fonts in clude a bold or italic ver sion. Usu ally theyre the sameits a con ven tion of
com ics let ter ing that bold and italic are gen er ally used to gether for em pha sis. I dont think we should al ways and
only fol low such con ven tions blindly, but be aware that when you break such con ven tions, read ers will no tice it,
and it may cre ate a small speed bump. Any thing that calls at ten tion to the
phys i cal form of the comic can break the sus pen sion of dis be lief, in ter rupt the
flow of the nar ra tive, and jar the reader out of the story. Use such vari a tions
ju di ciously as in Fig ure 8.
If your cho sen com ics font does not have a bold ver sion, you can still em pha -
size words or phrases this way; its just a lit tle more dif fi cult. Cut and paste
Figure 7: Template with panels and text included.
Figure 8: Bolded comics font.
your em phatic word or phrase as a sep a rate piece of ar tis tic text, leav ing space for it in the orig i nal text (add ing
spaces with the spacebar or add ing a line break). With the sep a rated text se lected, add a hair line out line. If you
want it ital i cized, click it with the pick tool, and open the Trans for ma tions docker to Skew (Win dow| Docker |
Trans for ma tions | Skew), set the skew an gle to be tween 10 and 20 de grees or so (the ex act Skew an gle will
de pend on what works best for the par tic u lar font youre us ing), and click Ap ply. You could also use the pick
tool to click a sec ond time on the type to get the skew and ro tate han dles and skew the text slightly by drag ging
the top cen ter han dle to the right. How ever, I sug gest us ing the docker to set the an gle nu mer i cally, as this will
allow you to set the same degree of skew every time.
This ap proach to fak ing bolding and italicization will have tra di tional graphic de sign ers pull ing their hairits a
big ta boo in the de sign busi ness. But, hey, its just a comic book, af ter all. If you were a graphic de sign pur ist,
youd have pur chased a real com mer cial com ics font any way and would nt have to do this.
Okay, so weve got our text blocks ed ited and ma nip u lated to our sat is fac tion; time for the word bal loons and
cap tion boxes.
Cap tion boxes are easy. Rect an gle tool, draw rect an gle around cap tion, fill with white, Ctrl+PageDown to send
to back and youre done. Bal loons are a lit tle more com pli cated.
There are a va ri ety of dif fer ent ap proaches to the shapes of word bal loons. Some letterers pre fer nicely rounded
bal loons, oth ers like to ma nip u late the shape of the bal loon un til the edges are as close to the text as pos si ble,
leav ing the max i mum amount of art show ing and the min i mum amount of white space in the bal loon. Per son -
ally, I find the more rounded bal loon shapes more at trac tive and eas ier to read, but well take a look at creating
both types.
The rounder bal loons also take less fuss ing with. Us ing the el lipse tool, draw an el lipse around your text and
then ad just the shape us ing the han dles.
For more shaped bal loons, start the same way, cre at ing an el lipse around your text. Con vert the el lipse to a
curve (Ctrl + Q, or use the Con vert to Curves but ton at up per right, or go to Ar range | Con vert to
Curves). Se lect the
Shape Tool and pull
the curves nodes in
un til the edges are
closer to the type. If
you like, you can
add more nodes to
get a more cus tom -
ized shape and/or use the node han dles to ma nip u late the curve
shape (see Fig ure 9) to get ex actly what you want.
Now for the tails, those pointy shapes lead ing from the bal loon to
in di cate which char ac ter is speak ing. Se lect the Free hand tool,
and click once in side the bal loon, then dou ble-click some where
near the char ac ter that bal loon be longs to, dou ble click again back
in side the bal loon, and then sin gle click on the node you started
with. Now you have a curve shaped as a rough tri an gle point ing
to ward your char ac ter as shown in Fig ure 10. With the Pick Tool,
go to Win dow | Dock ers, and se lect Shap ing. In the Shap ing
Docker, choose Weld from the pull-down menu at the top, make
sure Source Ob ject and Tar get Ob ject are both un-checked.
With your bal loon tail se lected, click the Weld to but ton, and
then click on the bal loon. Your bal loon and the tail should now be a sin gle ob ject as in Fig ure 11. Fill this ob ject
with white and send it to back (Ctrl + PageDown). If you want to add a lit tle curv i ness to the bal loon tail,
choose the Shape Tool, mar quee se lect the three nodes that make up the tail, and click the Con vert Line to
Curve but ton on the toolbar. You can now use the Shape Tool to pull the lines into curves or use the node
handles to curve them.
Figure 9: A text balloon being shaped.
Figure 10: One example of a balloon tail.
Figure 11: The balloon tail after Welding.
Re peat this pro cess for each word bal loon and your let ter ing work is
donefor the mo ment. Once your il lus tra tions are fi nal ized, you may
want to come back to ad just and fine tune word bal loon po si tions or the
length and di rec tion of the tails.
Now, ei ther de lete the scan of your sketch from the Art layer or turn off
its vis i bil ity, editability, and printability (click ev ery one of those lit tle
icons be side the layer). Mar quee-se lect all (in clud ing the crop marks),
and go to File | Ex port. In the Ex port di a logue box, for Save as Type
choose CPT - Corel Photopaint Im age and click Ex port. Youll get a
Con vert to Bitmap di a logue box. In this box, set your width and height
to 100%, set your res o lu tion to 300 dpi, and make sure
Anti-aliasing, Main tain as pect ra tio and Main tain lay ers are
checked. (See sidebar on size and resolution.)
Now that the con tents of your .CDR file have been ex ported to a .CPT,
were ready to start putt ing these pan els and bal loons to gether with the
il lus tra tions. In the next is sue well ex plore il lus tra tions and as sem bling
the page.
A professional freelance artist for thirty years, Duncan
Eaglesons comics work has appeared in Neil Gaimans
Sandman, Anne Rices The Witching Hour, and the
DC/Paradox Big Books series. He has written and
illustrated the online comics Railwalker and ArcMage, and
is currently illustrating Hollow, due out from Archaia
Studios Press in January 2008. His work can be seen at
Eagleson Design and Shapeshifter Masks.
Size and Res o lu tion
Tra di tional me dia com ics are usu ally
cre ated a lit tle over twice the size of
the fi nal printed im age, drawn on bris -
tol boards that are 11x17 or larger.
The rea son for this is that when these
il lus tra tions and let ter ing were re -
duced for print, they cre ated a
sharper, clearer im age than draw ing at
ac tual size would have (and it al lowed
il lus tra tors to cre ate more de tailed
draw ings and letterers to cre ate bal -
loons with out us ing the very fin est of
rapidograph pens, and go ing blind
while do ing so).
Work ing dig i tally, this is no lon ger re -
ally nec es sary. In CorelDRAW and
Corel PHOTO-PAINT, you can zoom
in to tweak the ti ni est of de tails. How -
ever, many com ics art ists to day, even
when work ing dig i tally, still pre fer to
work at the larger size. Some pub lish -
ers may even re quire this. Ex cept for
the size of the re sult ing file, there is nt
re ally a great deal of dif fer ence. If
youre work ing for your self, for plea -
sure, or to self-pub lish, the choice is
up to you. If you ex pect to be work ing
pro fes sion ally for a com ics pub lisher,
con sult the pub lisher about what page
size and res o lu tion they re quire.
CorelDRAW and the Laser
by Robert Hensley
CorelDRAW is by far the most prac ti cal soft ware pro gram used by the CO2 la ser in dus try. Lay outs for en grav ing
and cut ting through var i ous sub strates are cre ated in CorelDRAW and are out put to the la ser through a print
driver.
Since the la ser in ter faces through a print driver, most vec tor and bitmap pro grams can be uti lized to cre ate lay -
outs. But by far, 90% of la ser own ers use CorelDRAW. Its pop u lar ity is cred ited to the following:
Ease of use of text
Industry wide support of CorelDRAW
Tools and options for creating vector-based logos
Low initial cost of program and updates
Graphics Suite package includes both vector and bitmap
editing (Corel PHOTO-PAINT)
Laser Power
The la ser can be used to ras ter or vec tor en grave text and to vec -
tor cut out shapes and let ter ing. When ras ter en grav ing, the la ser
beam makes a se ries of bi-di rec tional, hor i zon tal lines to pro duce
an im age. When vectoring, the la ser beam fol lows the path of the
out line (if pres ent) of the graphic.
The la ser uses three main func tions for en grav ing and cut -
tingpower, speed, and PPI (pulses per inch). The power and
speed can be set in in cre ments from 0 to 100%, and the PPI from
10 to 1000.
Power is used for con trol ling the amount of la ser power ap plied to
the ma te rial, which con trols the depth of en grav ing. Speed de ter -
mines the rate of travel of the la sers mo tion sys tem, which af fects
both the out put time and qual ity of en grav ing. The PPI set ting in -
di cates how many la ser pulses, per lin ear inch, the la ser car tridge will emit. When vec tor cut ting, the pulses af -
fect the qual ity of the material cut.
The power set tings are based on the watt age of the la ser and the prop er ties of the ma te rial be ing lasered. A
man ual is usu ally pro vided with the la ser sys tem that in cludes set tings for var i ous materials.
Print Driver
Each of the la ser power func tions can be as signed to col ors in the print driver. In the name tag ex am ple shown
in Fig ure 1, the text and logo use the de fault black color for etch ing, and the out line in red is for cut ting out.
As you can see in the print driver (Fig ure 2), black is as signed to 30 power, 80 speed and 500 PPI. These set -
tings will al low the la ser to etch the text and logo slightly through the top layer of the mi cro-sur faced plas tic ex -
pos ing a con trast ing color. For cut ting out the name tag, the red color set tings are changed to 50 power, 5 speed
and 200 PPI. The in creased power and slower speed will al low the la ser to cut com pletely through the plastic.
The set tings for cus tom ma te ri als can be saved in de pend ently of the art work for later use.
Figure 1: The black graphic will be etched
into the material; the red will cut out the
name tag.
There are al most as many in dus tries us ing CorelDRAW as
there are fonts in the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite pack -
age. A few of the in dus tries and their use of CorelDRAW
are dis cussed on the fol low ing pages.
Awards and Engraving Industry
The awards and en grav ing in dus try uses both CorelDRAW
and the la ser for cre at ing plaques and tro phies for rec og ni -
tion and achieve ment. Whether for sports or busi ness,
most lay outs usu ally in clude Ar tis tic Text and a logo. For
col umns of names or us ing large blocks of text, Para graph
Text is better.
Clipart from CorelDRAW can be used for many of the
awards, but most of the art work co mes from bitmap im ages
sup plied by the cus tomer. High qual ity bitmapped im ages
can be used for the lo gos, but vec tor im ages are pre ferred
as they can be resized with out loss of res o lu tion or clar ity.
PowerTRACE has made the ras ter to vec tor con ver sion much eas -
ier, but it can never to tally re place the Bezier Tool and other ba sic
CorelDRAW tools for cre at ing quality artwork.
The big gest chal lenge for the awards in dus try is cre at ing lay outs
for mul ti ple awards for busi nesses and sports teams. While the lay -
outs are ba si cally the same, they may re quire a name or place
change. The user can use Print Merge or the Trans for ma tion
Docker to du pli cate the lay outs into one big mas ter lay out (as in
Fig ure 3) that can be lasered and cut out in one job. The pro cess
Figure 2: An example of a print driver for laser
engraving.
would be much smoother if ex ter nal
data (text files from cus tom ers, etc.)
could be im ported di rectly into Print
Merge, or within the duplicated
plates layout.
Scrapbook Industry
The Scrap book in dus try is a $2.5
bil lion in dus try that uses
CorelDRAW and the la ser.
The end user cre ates a scrap book of
pho tos and im ages of loved ones.
They dec o rate the scrap book pages
with la ser cut im ages and dec o ra -
tions.
In the past, the pa per dec o ra tions
were cut us ing metal dies. But the
la ser has al lowed more cus tom iz ation and faster changes to de vel op ing
trends.
The im ages are of ten the names of places that have been vis ited, such as
Las Ve gas. For the lay out (Fig ure 4), an Ar tis tic text style such as Brody
Script is used. The Shape Tool is used to over lap the let ters, and the Weld
Tool com bines the let ter in to a sin gle unit for la ser cutting.
Figure 3: An example of a whole sheet of customized artwork.
Figure 4: An example of a word to
be cut for a scrapbook.
And when us ing mul ti ple
lay ers of pa per, a con tour of
the text is cre ated. The im -
age is then Bro ken Apart,
and a gang or mul ti ple-lay -
out is cre ated from the orig i -
nal let ter ing and from the con tour. Fig ure 5 shows the steps in this process.
Embroidery Industry
The em broi dery in dus try cuts out multi-col ored lo gos and let ter ing from
twill and other fab rics. The tools used in CorelDRAW are sim i lar to those
used in the scrap book in dus try; Ar tis tic Text, Shape Tool, Weld and Con -
tour. The big gest dif fer ence is that the com plete im age is cut out in one
op er a tion. The orig i nal text out line is usu ally red, and the contour
another color.
Two pieces of ma te rial are placed on top of each other and the la ser power
set tings are set. The top color power set tings cut only through the first
layer of ma te rial, with out burn ing the bot tom layer of ma te rial. Then the
Con tour line color power set tings cuts through both lay ers of ma te rial.
The ex cess ma te rial of the top layer is then weeded re sult ing in a finished
product.
Sign Industry
The fast grow ing sign in dus try cre ates di rec tional and ad ver tis ing graphics for in door and out door use. The la ser
can cut many sub strates in clud ing acrylic, mi cro-sur faced plas tics, wood, Ma son ite, Corian and many other
laminates.
Figure 5: Steps for creating the contoured text.
ADA Sign age is one of the most re quested ar eas
of the sign in dus try. The la ser can meet those
needs with its re peat abil ity and graphics ca pa bil i -
ties.
While the stan dard in the in dus try has been the
fam ily of Cadlink prod ucts, CorelDRAW is fast
be com ing an in te gral part of the sign-mak ers tool
kit.
Photographs
One of my fa vor ite uses of the la ser is etch ing pho to graphs into mar ble, gran ite
and acrylic as shown in Fig ure 6. CorelDRAW can be used for ed it ing most of
the ba sic bitmap func tions. Some of the tools I use when ed it ing bitmapped im -
ages in CorelDRAW in clude the Eraser Tool, Shape Tool and the Power Clip
effect.
But PHOTO-PAINT al lows better con trol of im age mid-tones, a must for the la -
ser en graver. And the Cut Out Lab is great for quickly crop ping out and chang ing
back grounds.
Industrial Applications
La ser sys tems can ac com mo date a wide va ri ety of ma te ri als in clud ing met als such as an od ized alu mi num and
coated brass, plas tics and acryl ics, pa per, rub ber, cord mat board and much more. Gas kets can be pro duced us -
ing pa per, rubber and cork.
For years AutoCAD led the in dus trial mar ket. Now more are join ing the CorelDRAW rev o lu tion be cause of
friend lier text en try and lower pro gram and train ing costs.
Identification Tags Di rec tional Sign age
Figure 6: Laser etched photo.
Crafts Markets
The la ser of fers the crafts man a unique tool for work ing with wood, leather, pa per
and many more ma te ri als. Cre at ing in lays, craft pieces, boxes, or na ments and tile
pieces are just a few of the many thou sands of pro jects that you can cre ate with
the la ser and CorelDRAW.
Much of the art -
work used in
model mak ing that
is used in
CorelDRAW co mes from AutoCAD DWG files.
These files usu ally im port seamlessly into
CorelDRAW.
Gas kets Parts Mark ing Tool Mark ing
Barcode Tag
Model Mak ing Crafts
Corel Steps Up
Prior to CorelDRAW X3, noth ing was men -
tioned in the Help Files or sup port ing doc u men -
ta tion about us ing CorelDRAW tools with the
CO2 la ser in the awards or sign in dus tries. But
with CorelDRAW X3, all of that has changed.
Not only has Corel started rec og niz ing the en -
grav ing and la ser in dus try, it is send ing speak ers
to these in dus tries to spread the word and hear
how their prod ucts works and is being used.
They are also lis ten ing to us ers in many other in dus tries when de ter min ing the path for fu ture up dates of the
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite.
Im sure if CorelDRAW did nt ex ist to day that the la ser en grav ing in dus try would still be thriv ing. How ever,
CorelDRAW has made the la ser a much eas ier tool to use. And with the sup port through mag a zines such as this
one, it makes learn ing a lot more prof it able and fun.
Robert Hensley teaches CorelDRAW for the laser and is a CorelDRAW Certified Expert. Since
1998, he has taught classes devoted to teaching CO2 laser systems users how to use
CorelDRAW layouts to produce products and image on various substrates. He has created a
teaching manual, CorelDRAW for the Laser, and offers free CorelDRAW downloads at his
extensive Web site. His company, Engravers Network in Arlington, TX, is a distributor for laser
and engraving equipment.
La ser Cut Greet ing Card Wood Work ing
R
R
R
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
ad 1.pdf 10/3/07 2:18:51 PM
Re-creating the Lord of the Rings
Logo
by Scott Georgeson
This pro ject is a great ex er cise for both de vel op ing the skills to re-cre ate a logo and to ex tend your think ing re -
gard ing the use of in di vid ual let ters within the de sign pro cess. I per son ally think this logo is a bril liant ex am ple
of cre ativ ity and think ing outside the box.
So here we go...
You will need to download the example logo to help you work along.
1. Import the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) logo to the bottom of your page and place some guide lines. We only
want four horizontally and two vertically to create some points of reference. When finished, move the
original logo up the page. Hold down the Ctrl key as you move the LOTR logo up so the image stays aligned
with the guidelines as shown in Figure 1 on the next page.
Place Guidelines, then holding the Ctrl key down, move the LOTR logo up to the top of your page
1 2
1
2
3
4
Figure 1: Use the original graphic to place guidelines as shown and then move the original out of the way so that
you can begin to re-create the logo.
2. Type the word LORD and RINGS using the type face Aldine 401 BT; this font is near perfect to the
original, but feel free to try other fonts you might have.
3. Place LORD according to the Guides (2) & (3) in Figure 2. Align and resize accordingly. As you will see
from the original, we have some work to do. Note how the designer takes a regular font and begins to alter it
so that the font becomes distorted beyond anything standard. Letter spacing, trunk size and heights are all
altered. It is good practice to stray away from standard for a logo design.
ORD
x
1 2 3 4
RINGS
L
L
1
2
3
4
Figure 2: Start placing the letters within the guidelines you created.
4. Add two Vertical Guides (3) & (4) to align with the L and D of the original. Break Text Apart (Ctrl + K),
and resize the L based on Guides (1) & (4) then squash the L to align with Guide (3).
5. Before squashing the other letters it is important to space all the letters first so they all retain the same
percentage of scaling. Lets move the letters by eye; thats right, no guides! I want to do this to help you get a
sense of design. The LOTR video tutorial shows this off very well. Hold down the Ctrl key, move the O left
until it is spaced the same distance from the L as in the LOGO, then space the R and then the D, select the
ORD and squash until the D aligns to (4) as in Figure 3.
6. Its not that obvious, but the letter O has been slightly rotated anticlockwise. So just select and rotate about
5 degrees on the Property Bar... bet you didnt see that!
O
RD
1 2 3 4
RINGS
L
x
Space Letters First then scale left
Squash Left
1
2
3
4
Figure 3: Use the guidelines to help you position and possibly squash the letters into the correct locations.
7. As with LORD, resize and align RINGS. First move Guide (4) in Figure 4 to align with the R. Remember to
space the letters by eye. Squash the letter I straight down using the center top handle. If you scale it down
using the corner handle, the trunk will become to small. Scale up the letter R using a corner handle while
holding down the Shift key, this will scale from the center out. Increase size until the top of the R is half way
between guides (1) & (2). Convert the R to Curves (Ctrl + Q) select the Shape tool and draw a marquee
around the bottom two nodes on the R and drag right.
1
2
3
4
O
RD
1 2 3 4
ING
S
L
Space Letters first Squash straight down
Scale R up using SHIFT and a corner resize handle
Drag nodes Right
Figure 4: With LORD finished, use the same procedures to complete RINGS.
8. Time to add the last of our text as shown in Figure 5. The only piece I will comment on is the THE TWO
TOWERS. I have used the font BakerSignet BT, but there are some others that will do. I have used three
spaces between each word and then used the Shape tool to spread the letters apart (kerning). So place your
text over the original and scale until you have the right height, then align the left first and use the Shape
tool to spread out your characters until they are aligned to the right.
9. Convert all your text to curves for the follow procedures. Using your Shape tool, work the nodes until you
have taken out the lip on the letter G.
Time to use a re ally in ter est ing tool, the Smudge Brush
Tool. We use this to cre ate lit tle chinks in the text. You
can get this tool from the Shape tool flyout. When se -
lected, there are a few set tings on the Prop erty Bar (see
Fig ure 6) to change. Set brush size to 2mm, Dryout Ef fect
to 10 and an an gle of 55 degrees.
Be fore us ing this you must con vert all text to curves (Ctrl + Q). To use, se lect text first, then place the tool
out side of text edge then drag in ward.
1 2
Remove lip on G
Chink
1
2
3
4
Figure 5: Using the Smudge Brush to put some chinks in the text.
Figure 6: The Smudge Brush settings to enter on
the Property Bar.
10. Select everything and convert to a bitmap.This gives us the image in Figure 7. Go to Bitmaps, Convert to
Bitmap and use the following Settings: Resolution = 300 dpi, Color Mode = RGB, Anti Aliasing = ON,
Transparent Background = ON.
We now want to open the im age in Corel PHOTO-PAINT and ap ply some ef fects so right-click on the bitmap
and choose Edit Bitmap. The im age will open in Corel PHOTO-PAINT ready to go. When it opens, tap the
F4 key so you can see the whole im age.
11. We need to mask the logo to add some effects, so go up to Mask | Create | Create Mask from Object.
Here we go!
Effect 1: Fill Mask...
Edit | Fill | Tex ture Fill | Edit
Texture Library = Styles.
Texture List = Mineral. Speckled 2 Color.
Click OK. See Figure 8.
Figure 7: The black and white logo is finished.
Figure 8: The logo after adding a Texture fill.
Effect 2: Elephant Skin
Ef fects | Tex ture | El e phant Skin
Age = 1, Randomize = 1, Color = Black.
Effect 3: The Boss Filter
Ef fects | 3D Ef fects | The Boss
Edge Tab: Width = 23, Height = 60,
Smooth = 37, Drop Off = Mesa. Be sure to
select Invert = ON.
Lighting Tab: Brightness = 100, Sharp =
30, Direction = 225, Angle = 45.
Effect 4: Lighting
Ef fects | Cam era | Light ing Ef fects
Preset Tab: Choose Texturize Light top
Right and click OK.
Repeat Effect by selecting Effects | Repeat
| Repeat Lighting Effect.
12. Close Corel PHOTO-PAINT and Save. The image will automatically save back to CorelDRAW.
13. Apply a Drop shadow in CorelDRAW. Drop Shadow: Opacity = 30 and Feathering = 4. This should give
you the final image shown in Figure 12.
Figure 9: The logo after applying the Elephant Skin texture.
Figure 10: After The Boss, our logo is looking three
dimensional.
Figure 11: Adding a Lighting Effect gives the gold the look
we desire.
I hope you en joyed this. A video tu to rial is avail able which is very com pre hen sive and well worth purchasing for
only $9.95.
Scott Georgeson is the Aussie voice of the popular Click N Learn series of CorelDRAW and
Corel PHOTO-PAINT training. The new WorkPlace Ready Training course for X3 brings
Scotts total number of CorelDRAW training CDs to 31. He began his 18 year journey with
CorelDRAW in the sign industry and was one of the first in Australia to ever operate a sign
cutting plotter. Scott became a self inspired trainer of CorelDRAW due to the enormous number
of calls he received about sign cutting. In 1999 Clicknlearn.com was born, and the Web exposed
Scott to the rest of the world. Scott has been a regular CorelDRAW Beta tester and loves
working with people to solve problems.
Figure 12: The finished logo.
Marketplace Advertising
CerMark Products
PhotoGrav 3.0
Marble & Stone
Crystal & Glass
Wood Gifts
Rowmark Products
Acrylic Awards
New!
www. l aser bi t s. com
1 - 8 0 0 - 7 3 3 - 7 7 0 5
LaserBits, Inc.
your laser supply source
Your ad
could be
here!
Click for details!
Advertiser Index
15 CorelDRAW Pro
33 Dig i tal Art Solutions
49 CorelDRAW X3 Unleashed
62 CorelDRAW X3 Graphics Suite
70 JC Print ing
79 CorelDRAW Un leashed User Con fer ence
2008
91 CorelDRAW Un leashed Boot Camp
100 Engravers Network
110 Click-N-Learn
110 Laserbits
110 MacroMonster.com
110 Southwest Slideshows
110 Top most World, Inc.
Oc to ber/No vem ber 2007
Ed i tor/Pub lisher: Foster D. Coburn III
Ad ver tis ing: DeAnn Blascoe
Of fices
38049 N. La Canoa Drive
Cave Creek, AZ 85331
800/7368973
480/5950065
http://www.coreldrawunleashed.com
Subscriptions: There is no charge to sub scribe to
CorelDRAW Un leashed. Visit
coreldrawunleashed.com to sub scribe.
Advertising: Visit coreldrawunleashed.com to down -
load a Media Kit or con tact DeAnn for more in for ma -
tion.
Authors: CorelDRAW Un leashed ac cepts sub mis sions
from graphics ex perts. E-mail Foster for de tails.
Copy right 2007 by Un leashed Pro duc tions, Inc.
All Rights Re served.

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lets users quickly and easily retouch and enhance photos. It is

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selected to meet the needs of design professionals and business users;

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