Depth-of-Field Effects in Corel PHOTO-PAINT

Blurry or out-of-focus pictures aren’t usually very appealing in a layout. But strategically applying blur effects to an image can sometimes work to your advantage. Blurring specific areas of a picture enables you to clean up messy background clutter and focus in on the subject at hand. This technique is also great for exaggerating depth-of-field created naturally when using a wide camera lens aperture.

In Corel PHOTO-PAINT, you can use a variety of filters to blur pixels in different ways. Radial, directional, motion, and gaussian blur filters each offer variations on the smoothing effect you can achieve. Depending on your picture subject, some filters work better than others, but the idea is the same.

Let’s explore a brief series of steps you can use to simplify the clutter in a typical scene.

1. Open this image file saved Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3/X4 format or open your own image to work on suitable for this technique. Perform any necessary image corrections or adjustments before you begin and decide in advance which areas you wish to blur and which areas will remain in sharp focus. For my example image (shown below), I’ve chosen to blur the background and leave the main subject in sharp focus.
2. Using whichever masking tools suit the task, isolate the area, or areas, where you wish to apply your blur effect. To save a little time, I’ve already isolated a portion of my example image. To load this saved mask now, choose Mask > Load > Cow Face (see below).
3. To ensure you can see the mask onscreen while editing (see below), toggle the mask overlay on by choosing Mask > Mask Overlay.
4. The next step is to slightly feather the edges of the selected area to avoid leaving hard edges between the area you wish to leave in focus and the blurred area. To feather the edges of your selection, open the Feather dialog (see below) by choosing Mask > Mask Outline > Feather. In the Width box, enter 2 as the pixel value, choose Inside as the direction, Linear for the Edge shape, and click OK to close the dialog. Your selection mask is now slightly feathered.
5. With mask feathered, you can apply the blur effect. Im my case, I’ve chosen a straightforward gaussian blur style. Feel free to experiment with others if you wish, but for now choose Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur to open the filter dialog (see below). Enter 10.0 as the Radius in pixels and click OK to apply the effect and close the dialog.
6. Remove the mask overlay and view the results by choose Mask > Remove (Ctrl+R). Notice that some hard edges still remain between the sharp and blurred areas in the example we’re using. If you’re using your own image, you’ll likely need to do some work to smooth the transition area between the sharp and blurred areas. The quickest tool to use for this operation is the Touch-Up Brush (7). You’ll find it in the Toolbox grouped with other Touch Up tools in recent versions of PHOTO-PAINT (see below).
7. Using the Property Bar, set the Touch-Up Brush options to round-feathered nib shape, 20 pixels in width, and a Strength setting of High (as shown below).
8. Using a click-drag action, follow the contour of the cow face area with the Touch-Up Brush cursor. This will eliminate most of the hard edges left by blurring the mask. The final image (see below) focuses attention on the central picture element leaving the background objects much less prominent

Source : TutorCorelDraw

How to Crop Bitmaps in CorelDRAW

In this tutorial, I’m using an older version of CorelDRAW to demonstrate. But you can use these same techniques with virtually any version. Before we get started though, let me clarify one potential confusion point. If you’re using a recent CorelDRAW version, you might understandably reach for the Crop Tool.

The Crop Tool provides an automated way of cropping objects — including digital images. When it was first introduced (version 13) applying it to an object essentially deleted all content outside the cropping area you specified. Although this meant it was treat tool for cropping individual objects, it prevented you from cropping objects already inserted or embedded into an existing arrangement or montage. If you’re using version 15, you’ll discover this behavior has been fixed. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

The technique I’ll cover in this tutorial is the manual method that will enable you to crop at the vector level by manipulating the invisible path surrounding the digital image using the Shape Tool (F10). The Shape Tool method is more involved and perhaps less convenient than the Crop Tool, but it provides more control and gives you the added bonus of being able to custom craft the bitmap shape to an unconventional shape if needed.

Unlike bitmap-editing applications, all digital images in CorelDRAW are essentially bitmap-based objects housed inside invisible containers. This means the clipping path contains the image and its shape determines the bitmap’s overall shape. Although these containers are inherently invisible, they are an integral characteristic of each bitmap in your document. Control the shape of the container and you control the cropping of the bitmap it contains.

To shape a bitmap container, you’ll need to use the Shape Tool to change the position of the path nodes comprising it. Let’s walk through at a typical rectangular-shaped cropping operation by following these brief steps.

1. To begin, you’ll need to have a bitmap at the ready. Bitmaps may be converted from vector objects using the Convert to Bitmap command, or brought in from an external source using the Import command (Ctrl+I). Once on your page, simply click to select the bitmap itself.
2. If you choose to Import your bitmap, you can crop it before it reaches your page by choosing Crop from a drop-down menu in the Import dialog (shown next).
3. After choosing Crop and clicking OK, the Crop Image dialog (shown next) will open enabling you to either use the Hand-style cursor to interactively set the rectangular cropping, or by entering values in the Top, Left, Width, and Height boxes followed by clicking OK. Doing this will enable you to place a permanently cropped copy of your selected bitmap onto your page.
4. If the image you wish to crop already exists in your document, and you wish to crop it, choose the Shape Tool (F10) and click to select the bitmap. Notice four nodes appear at the corners of the image (shown next). Dragging these points will cause the bitmap’s clipping path shape to change, enabling you to hide portions of the bitmap from view withoutdeleting the pixels.
5. Using the Shape Tool cursor, click one of these nodes and drag it toward the center origin of the image. Notice that after you release the mouse, a portion of the image is hidden (as shown next).
   
6. Drag the same corner node back to roughly its original position and notice that the hidden portion of the image is visible again. You have just performed the most basic of cropping operations.

Most digital images are usually cropped either vertically or horizontally to fit a square or rectangular space. This requires moving the corner nodes while maintaining their alignment.

To perform a side, top, or bottom cropping operation on a bitmap, you’ll need to have at least two corner nodes selected at one time, and they must be moved either using nudge keys or by dragging. The dragging operation is a little trickier than you might think, since it involves selecting and moving two corner nodes while holding a modifier key to constrain the drag movement.

To crop a bitmap by dragging, follow these steps:

1. Using the Shape Tool, click to select the bitmap. Determine which side you wish to crop, and select both corner nodes on the side by holding Shift while clicking once on each node, or click-drag to select them with the marquee.
2. Once the nodes are selected, hold Ctrl as the modifier key while dragging both nodes toward the center of your bitmap. Holding Ctrl constrains your dragging movement, which keeps the sides in vertical and horizontal alignment.
3. Continue cropping any of the sides using this same procedure until the cropping operation is complete. The example shown next illustrates typical results of cropping.
4. As a final optional step, you can eliminate the hidden portion of the image using the Crop Bitmap command either by choosing Bitmaps > Crop Bitmap or by clicking the Crop Bitmap button (shown next) in the Property Bar using the Pick Tool and while a cropped bitmap is selected. Doing this will permanently remove the image portions which are hidden from view enabling you to reduce your document file size.
   

Keep in mind that you can also use this cropping technique to create non-rectangular cropping shapes by adding nodes to the bitmap container and manipulating the curve properties as shown below.

The next two examples illustrate the benefits of careful photo cropping. In these examples, a photo montage has been laid out without cropping and then improved through careful cropping and re-arrangement.

Source : TutorCorelDraw

How to Export Perfect MS Office Graphics from CorelDRAW

If you use CorelDRAW to create graphics for Powerpoint presentations or MS Word documents, you’ll be pleased to know that the export process has been vastly improved from previous versions. You can now use the Export For Office dialog (below) to optimize your graphics for excellent results every time.

In this tutorial, we’ll examine how to use the Export for Office tools to create the best possible graphics for importing into your favorite MS Office application. We’ll also investigate some of the compatibility and troubleshooting issues you should be aware of. This feature was first introduced in version 12 and so the interface you see here is CorelDRAW 12 running under Windows XP. It’s also consistent through recent versions of CorelDRAW including versions X3 and X4.

Browsing the Tools
The Export For Office dialog features several standard conveniences for previewing your CorelDRAW graphic before exporting it (see below). You can click the Zoom In or Zoom Out tool buttons to interactively change the view, or you can click the Hand Tool button to pan through a zoomed-in view.

 

You’ll also notice three drop-down menus at the top of the dialog. The first drop-down menu enables you to specify the destination application for your exported drawing; the second and third drop-down menus provide further options. Below the preview window, CorelDRAW estimates the size of the file you’re about to export, based on your menu selections.

Weighing the OptionsDepending on which options you choose, the graphic you export can be prepared in different ways, meaning that it can be saved in one of several file formats. The main question you need to answer is whether you plan to import the drawing into WordPerfect Office or into one of the Microsoft Office suite applications – such as Word, Access, Publisher, or PowerPoint.

If you choose WordPerfect Office, you’ll ultimately be setting WPG (WordPerfect Graphic) as the format for your graphic file, which makes it fully compatible and editable in WordPerfect after it has been imported. If your graphic is destined for a Microsoft Office application, however, you’ll have a few more options to ponder.

At this point, you need to choose between one of two conditions for your graphic from the second menu: Compatibility or Editing (see below). This rather pivotal fork in the road helps you determine whether the exported file will become a bitmap image, in which case the individual objects cannot be edited, or a collection of vector objects, which for the most part can be altered with the basic editing and drawing tools in Microsoft Office applications.

Choosing Compatibility sets the final format to PNG (Portable Network Graphics), whereas choosing the Editing option sets the final format to EMF (Extended Windows Metafile). You’ll next discover why these two specific file formats are best suited to their respective graphic types.

Evaluating the Graphic Formats
To import a picture into a Microsoft Office application, you just choose the Insert > Picture > From File command from within the application (or click the Insert Picture button on the Picture toolbar) and browse to the PNG or EMF graphic you created. In case you’re wondering which file format you should be using, let’s take a walk through the finer points on how these two graphic file formats differ.

Let’s start with the PNG format, which is what you get if you choose Compatibility as your export preference. Often pronounced as “ping,” this special bitmap file format features a wide range of capabilities, but its real strength is lossless compression, meaning that the PNG format can store a high degree of detail and color without compromising picture quality or inflating file size. The PNG format is also capable of storing other properties, like alpha channel masks and objects with varying degrees of transparency. Because it supports a color depth of up to 16.7 million colors, it is superior to other lossless-compression formats, such as the popular GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), which is used for many Web graphics.

If you choose the Compatibility option as your export priority, you also need to specify a destination option for the PNG file you’re about to create. The Optimized For menu contains three options: Presentation, Desktop Printing, and Commercial Printing. Choosing one of these options (see below) sets the resolution of the file to a specific number of dots per inch (dpi). Resolution essentially determines the amount of pixel detail in a bitmap. Although screen image requires a relatively low resolution, higher resolutions are needed for various levels of print reproduction quality.

Choosing the Presentation option produces a PNG graphic with a resolution of 72 dpi, which is ideal for PowerPoint users. If you choose either Desktop Printing or Commercial Printing, the PNG graphic features a resolution of 150 or 300 dpi, respectively. All files are exported using RGB (red, green, blue) colors, and anti-aliasing is automatically applied to smooth the appearance of object and text edges.

If you choose Editing as your export priority, you’ll be exporting an EMF file. Unlike the PNG bitmap format, EMF files are device independent, meaning that they can include vector objects as well as bitmaps. Objects you export are preserved after they reach the Microsoft Office application. To begin editing your picture, right-click it and choose Edit Picture. In the most recent Microsoft Office suite, a prompt appears. For example, if you’re using PowerPoint, you’ll be asked to confirm the operation by clicking Yes in this dialog:

To edit the individual picture elements, right-click the picture group and choose Grouping > Ungroup. From there, you’ll be able to use tools from the Microsoft Office drawing toolbar (see below) to fine-tune your drawing.

As you begin to edit your drawing, you may discover that a few things have been lost during the translation, and certain object types may not be what you’d expect. Here are some of the common pitfalls to avoid if you plan on editing:

• Long Text Strings: Text that spans multiple lines in your CorelDRAW document is imported into the Microsoft Office application as separate objects, one for each line of text:

• Combined Fills and Outlines: Each object applied with both fill and outline properties is imported as two separate objects, each representing the fill and outline portions.

• Outline Styles: The outline styles in CorelDRAW are not compatible with Microsoft Office. For example, each dash in a patterned line is imported as a separate shape:

• Special Fill Colors: Fountain fills applied to objects are converted to collections of solid-colored objects. This means that a single object filled with fountain color could potentially result in hundreds of objects on export (like the conical fill shown below). Objects with two-color, full-color, texture, and bitmap fills are each converted to bitmap objects. Here is how a typical object applied with a conical fill appears during editing in PowerPoint:

• Complex PostScript Fills: The objects that make up the detail in PostScript pattern fills are each converted to separate objects when exported. The pattern itself can be edited after import only on an object-by-object basis. This complex arrangement was once a Colored Leaves PostScript pattern applied to a rectangle:

• CorelDRAW-Specific Effects: The dynamically linked objects created by effects – such as blends, contours, drop shadows, and extrusions – are imported as separate objects, and the dynamic link is eliminated.

• Shadows and Transparency: Drop shadows and objects with transparency effects that are applied with the CorelDRAW 12 Interactive Transparency Tool are imported as bitmap objects.

• Special Object Types: Rectangles, ellipses, polygons, and objects applied with distortion or envelope effects are imported as ordinary shapes.

In general, the wisest strategy to follow when preparing your CorelDRAW graphics for export and editing in a Microsoft Office application is to keep things relatively simple. For best results, use the features of each program for the tasks in which they’re most efficient, and consider following these rules of thumb:

• Although small strings of text created in CorelDRAW are easily converted and can be edited or applied with Text Effects after they are imported, it may be more efficient to use the dedicated text tools in the Microsoft Office application to enter text that is longer than a single line.

• Use the Microsoft Office Fill Effects dialog tools (see below) to apply gradient color as an alternative to editing the CorelDRAW fountain fills. This is likely the best strategy for applying other special fill types, such as pattern, texture, or bitmap fills, or for applying transparency to objects. Transparency can be applied by using the Fill Effects in the Microsoft Office program.

• Use the Microsoft Office program to apply any outline styles, such as dashes or stripes, to your lines after you import them instead of using the outline styles featured in CorelDRAW.

A Few More Tips for Office Exporting
Here are several more points to consider when you export to Microsoft Office applications. If you’re exporting from a multipage document, keep in mind that Export For Office exports only one page at a time and only from the current page in view. Moreover, in order for objects to be included in the export, they must be inside the page boundary or at least straddle the edge of the page. Any objects outside the page boundary are left out.

If you’d like to export only a portion of your drawing, just select your specific objects. When you do this, the Export For Office command automatically omits all other objects (provided they are at least partially on the document page). Proceed with caution, though. If you’re exporting for compatibility (that is, if you’re using a PNG graphic), watch for objects that reach the edge of the exported image. In such cases, it may be wise to create an invisible border around your arrangement of objects to add an artificial boundary.

If your document page has a colored background applied in CorelDRAW, this background is included – regardless of whether specific objects are selected. Vector-based EMF picture files include the background as a separate rectangle, which can be edited or deleted if necessary.

Although the filter types used by the Export For Office command are the same as the filters that are available when you use the main Export command in CorelDRAW 12, the Export for Office dialog dramatically streamlines the decision-making process making the export operation relatively foolproof. Using the tips and tricks covered here, you can optimize your drawings for better results when you import them into your office suite application.

Source : TutorCorelDraw

Create a 3D Gear Extrude Rotation Effect

For many versions now, CorelDRAW has included extrusion features that enable to apply depth to a single object and rotate it interactively. While it’s far from 3D modelling, it certainly presents some interesting creative possibilities for drawing objects that would otherwise be challenging to manufacture using manual methods. In this next tutorial, I’ll show you how to use 3 ordinary objects to manufacture a single curve that can be extruded and rotated in simulated 3D for some very impressive results. It takes only a few clicks, but you’ll need to follow the instructions precisely to be successful. Let’s get started:

1. Download the CorelDRAW file I’ve provided here.
2. Open the 3D Gear.CDR file contained in the Zip archive and open it in CorelDRAW. (Note that this is a CorelDRAW X6 file.)
3. We’ll start by creating a gear shape using the three objects on the page (shown next). Using the Pick Tool, hold your Shift key down and click the large ellipse and then the large polygon (in that order).
   
4. With both objects selected, click the Trim button in the Property Bar (shown next). This will trim the star points of the polygon using the ellipse as the trimming path.
   
5. With the newly trimmed object still selected, press Ctrl+K (the Break Apart command). This will separate the trimmed portions from the main object (as shown next).
   
6. Deselect all objects by clicking on a blank part of your page using the Pick Tool. Hold your Shift key down and click to select the large polycom portion and the red ellipse. Cut (Ctrl+X) these two objects to your clipboard.
7. Delete the unwanted portions that remain on the page by pressing Ctrl+Athen Delete.
8. Paste (Ctrl+V) the two objects from your clipboard back onto the page (shown next).
   
9. Deselect all objects (click a blank area on your page). Hold Shift and click the large object then the red ellipse (in that order). Both objects should now be selected.
10. Use the Combine command (Ctrl+L) to combine the two objects into a single compound path. The new object will take on the fill properties of the ellipse. You now have the basic gear shape created (shown next).
    
11. Choose the Extrude Tool from the Toobox (shown next).
    
12. Using a click-drag action, click from a filled part of the object directly to the center of the open area. Although it doesn’t look like much yet, you have applied a default extrusion to the object.
13. With the Extrude Tool selected, click once directly on extrusion portion – that’s the small red ellipse object in the center of the arrangement (as shown next).
    
14. Notice that your object now features a series of circles and squares around it. These represent the extrude rotation interface (shown next). Your cursor has also changed to rotation cursor.
    
15. Using a click-drag action, click anywhere inside the circle and drag in any direction. Notice how the original object and the extruded portions rotate in three dimensions (as shown next).
    
16. Using a click-drag action, click anywhere outside the circle and drag in any direction. Notice how the original object and the extruded portions rotate in a circular direction only.
17. Note that although the extrusion is rotated, you can still control the depth of the extrusion. To demonstrate, let’s set the extrusion depth to 5 using the Depth option (shown next).
    
18. One of the cool things you can do with extrusions is to convert them to ordinary objects by breaking apart and ungrouping (Ctrl+U) the extrude portions. To do this, click to select the extrude portion of the effect and use the Break Apart command (Ctrl+K). Then, choose the Pick Tool, click the resulting group of objects and click the Ungroup All button in the Property Bar (as shown next).
    

Source : TutorCorelDraw