Your Very Own Woodshop
One of the areas where CorelDRAW really excels is in the wide variety of fills it supports. Often with such powerful features, they get under utilized. The two fill types that I feel can do more for users are the full color pattern fills and the bitmap pattern fills. The key to either is having a good source of fill patterns that will tile correctly.
Creating full color pattern fills is not terribly difficult, but it can be very time consuming to get a really good pattern. I'll cover this process in a future tutorial. Bitmap pattern fills are a bit different. There are a number of good collections that can be purchased or downloaded. If the sample you need is in the collection, you're in luck.
The ultimate is to have a way to generate your own patterns. There are various applications that can do this. If you still have an older copy of CorelDRAW (v6-v10 to be exact), the Corel TEXTURE utility packs a lot of power. Another great resource is Wood Workshop from Spiral Graphics. It has over 100 preset wood textures and you can modify them in a number of ways. When you have the pattern you like, it can be rendered in a number of sizes. Then it is just a matter of using it with the Bitmap Pattern Fill in CorelDRAW or Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Of course it would also work in any other application that supports bitmap pattern fills. Given that Wood Workshop is free, you just can't go wrong.
If you want the ability to create even more patterns, check out Spiral Graphic's Genetica with over 500 presets and the ability to create all kinds of different bitmap patterns. No, it isn't free. But if you need these types of patterns, it is a bargain.
Creating full color pattern fills is not terribly difficult, but it can be very time consuming to get a really good pattern. I'll cover this process in a future tutorial. Bitmap pattern fills are a bit different. There are a number of good collections that can be purchased or downloaded. If the sample you need is in the collection, you're in luck.
The ultimate is to have a way to generate your own patterns. There are various applications that can do this. If you still have an older copy of CorelDRAW (v6-v10 to be exact), the Corel TEXTURE utility packs a lot of power. Another great resource is Wood Workshop from Spiral Graphics. It has over 100 preset wood textures and you can modify them in a number of ways. When you have the pattern you like, it can be rendered in a number of sizes. Then it is just a matter of using it with the Bitmap Pattern Fill in CorelDRAW or Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Of course it would also work in any other application that supports bitmap pattern fills. Given that Wood Workshop is free, you just can't go wrong.
If you want the ability to create even more patterns, check out Spiral Graphic's Genetica with over 500 presets and the ability to create all kinds of different bitmap patterns. No, it isn't free. But if you need these types of patterns, it is a bargain.
posted by Foster D. Coburn III at
2:00 PM
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