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I recently had a project that probably sounds very familiar. For many people, the artwork might come as a teeny tiny logo on a business card. In my case it came as a small logo downloaded from the company's Web site. So the quality was good for the Net, but really lousy for printing or anything else. I'll show you how I was able to convert the logos into high-quality vector artwork in no time at all.
Sure, I could have redrawn the logos. A year ago I showed you in detail the best way to redraw logos. The downside in this scenario is that the original bitmap (scan) was so small that it would have required a lot of guesswork on my part. Therefore I turned to another solution that is available when dealing with larger companies. I cheated.
There were actually three logos I was recreating and they were all from major hotel chains. As they were major companies, I turned to Digital Art Solutions Smart Logos Pro which contains over 12,000 logos. They are all in vector eps format meaning that they can be imported into any illustration software including good old CorelDRAW.
Some of you will probably be grumbling about spending money to buy these logos. Just ask yourself how much time it takes you to convert one logo. We'll use an hour as an estimate. At that rate, you'll only need to use 10-15 out of the 12,000 to make this package pay for itself. Since I had four in this project, I'm well on my way!
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Just because the artwork was prepared doesn't mean we are finished. The logos are in black and white and we need to match the colors. At right is the original logo we got from the Web. As it came from the Hampton Inn Web site, we can assume that the colors are accurate.
Legal Disclaimer: Just so the lawyers don't get all excited, please know that the companies and their logos are not endorsed by Unleashed Productions, Inc. nor do they endorse us.
If you look, you should be able to see the bad case of the jaggies that comes from printing this logo at high-resolution. Contrast that with the image at right showing the logo we imported into CorelDRAW from Smart Logos Pro.
Now that we have good artwork, we need to color it using the same colors as the original logo. For this we'll use the Eyedropper tool that is found in CorelDRAW 9, 10 and 11. Users of older versions will have to use the Eyedropper tool in Photo-Paint and make note of the colors. We'll start by selecting the outer border of the vector logo. You'll probably have to ungroup after importing to select it. Just to make sure you have just the outer border selected, fill it with Red by left-clicking on Red in the color palette. Don't worry which Red you choose as we'll get the accurate color in a minute. If you haven't already imported the bitmap logo, do that as we need to steal colors from it. Select the Eyedropper tool (it's the one with the Eyedropper on it) and click on the Red outline of the bitmap logo. After you've done this, the Fill value on the Status Bar should show the same Red color along with the color values. Now hold down the Shift key and click on the Red outline of the vector logo. You should see it change to the correct color of Red.
Next, we'll repeat the process for the Blue part of the logo. Remember to click with the Eyedropper to steal colors, Shift-click with it to apply the color you've stolen. Things do get a bit trickier with the blue as you also have to fill in the areas in the middle of the letters. So it will take a few clicks to get everything in blue.
The last step is to just make sure that all the white parts are in white. They should already be that way from the imported logo, but it is a good idea to check. Our finished logo is shown in Figure 3.
The only problem you may face with this method is that companies tend to have a number of variations on their logos. Smart Logos Pro does include some of those variations, but it doesn't have every single one. Typically the variations just involve adding a little text here and there. So if you are given the main part of the graphic, it is fairly easy to recreate the variations.
At right, I show you the original bitmap I had for Embassy Suites and the logo I recreated using Smart Logos Pro. For the map I was drawing, I didn't need the extra text. But it certainly wouldn't have been a problem to add it.
Some of you are probably saying "what was so hard about that?" Nothing! That was what I wanted to show you. I will end with some of the legal mumbo jumbo. Using logo clip-art should only be done when you have the permission of the company whose logo you are using. In the case of my project, all of the hotels were asked for permission and they were used on a map showing the location of the hotels. This doesn't mean that you can take a popular logo, plop it on a t-shirt and sell it. In fact, you'd probably get a nasty letter from the company's legal department.
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CorelDRAW X6 Font List · CorelDRAW X5 Font List · CorelDRAW X4 Font List · The Terms of Adobe Photoshop and Corel PHOTO-PAINT · CorelDRAW X3 Font List · Cropping and Rotating Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · The Magic of Color Styles · CorelDRAW's Find and Replace Wizard · Shorten Your Design Time with Templates · CorelDRAW's Multi-Faceted Eyedropper Tool · CorelDRAW and Special Characters · The Easy Way to Create Calendars in CorelDRAW · The Wide World of Labels in CorelDRAW · Including Variable Data with Print Merge · Resaving, Resizing & Resampling Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · Creating Your Own Fonts in CorelDRAW · The Evils of Using JPEG Files · Speeding Up CorelDRAW 11 and Windows XP · Symbols and Imposition · The Easiest Way to Recreate Logos · A Few Guidelines to Follow · Square Corners Can Be Sticky -- Rounding Corners in CorelDRAW · Creating Complex Shapes Easily with CorelDRAW · Identifying the Mystery Font · Two Ways to Create a Split Front Design · Last Word in Font Management · Calibrating Your Printed Colors with a Color Chart · Graphics Computing in 2001 · Hottest R.A.V.E. In Town · Get the Red Out of Eyes · Secrets of Color Management · Dressing Up Your PDF Files · How Adobe Acrobat Can Make Life Simpler · Why You Want PDF in Your Workflow · Converting a Scanned Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Designing 360 Degrees · Customizing Your Interface in CorelDRAW 8.0 · Fitting Text to a Path · Creating Cool Graphs Without a Spreadsheet · From CorelDRAW to Macromedia Flash, A Simple Example · Getting Rid of That Darned White Box · Converting a Bitmap Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Finding Clipart with ROMCAT
Xara Xtreme Pro 5.0
Serif WebPlus X2
Xara Web Designer 5.0
Xara Xtreme Pro 4.1
Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional
Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom Digital Camera
Procreate KnockOut 2
Hemera Photo Objects Volume I and II
Wildform SWfx
Macromedia Fontographer 4.1 and FontLab 4
Caligari iSpace v1.5
Xara X
Macromedia Fireworks 4
Web Site Design Made Easy
Alien Skin Eye Candy 4000
Swish 1.51
Macromedia Flash 5
Corel KPT 6
Dreamweaver Ultradev
1st Page 2000
Adobe Illustrator 9
Corel KnockOut v1.5
Xara 3D 4
Cool 3D 3
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