Working with Barcodes
I don't think the average user realizes the value of CorelDRAW. I got an e-mail yesterday that reminded me of just one of the very valuable features included with CorelDRAW that costs users living in mud huts a lot of money. To first understand, visit the Barcode Producer Web site. It is a very nice product that walks you through the process of creating a barcode. When finished, you can export as EPS, PDF or TIFF. Or the product will directly place your barcode into Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop. It all sounds great and I really like the interface. Then we get to the price of $199. That's the same price as an upgrade to CorelDRAW!
Now that you've seen the financially painful side of being an Adobe user, let's go over how we create barcodes in CorelDRAW. Simply select Edit | Insert Barcode. This brings up the barcode wizard which has many similarities to the $199 Barcode Producer. The interface isn't quite as slick, but the results are more or less the same. Oh, did I mention it is included (even in older versions of CorelDRAW) and won't cost you a thing? Once you've selected the type of barcode you want and entered the data, click Next to get to the next screen of the wizard. There you can input all kinds of details about the barcode. Typically I don't make any changes on the second page. Click Next one more time and there are yet more changes you can make. Once again, I typically don't change anything. Click Finish the the barcode is placed in CorelDRAW. That's it!
Now what is inserted is an "OLE Object". So I highly recommend you copy it to the clipboard and then select Edit | Paste Special. In the dialog box that appears, choose Metafile. Now you have a group of graphic objects that make up the barcode. If necessary, you can modify the color of the objects in that group. Just be careful about the modifications you make.
Now that I've saved you from using the Adobe products and saved $199, how about purchasing something from Graphics Unleashed Media Marketplace?
Now that you've seen the financially painful side of being an Adobe user, let's go over how we create barcodes in CorelDRAW. Simply select Edit | Insert Barcode. This brings up the barcode wizard which has many similarities to the $199 Barcode Producer. The interface isn't quite as slick, but the results are more or less the same. Oh, did I mention it is included (even in older versions of CorelDRAW) and won't cost you a thing? Once you've selected the type of barcode you want and entered the data, click Next to get to the next screen of the wizard. There you can input all kinds of details about the barcode. Typically I don't make any changes on the second page. Click Next one more time and there are yet more changes you can make. Once again, I typically don't change anything. Click Finish the the barcode is placed in CorelDRAW. That's it!
Now what is inserted is an "OLE Object". So I highly recommend you copy it to the clipboard and then select Edit | Paste Special. In the dialog box that appears, choose Metafile. Now you have a group of graphic objects that make up the barcode. If necessary, you can modify the color of the objects in that group. Just be careful about the modifications you make.
Now that I've saved you from using the Adobe products and saved $199, how about purchasing something from Graphics Unleashed Media Marketplace?
Labels: tutorial-tuesday
posted by Foster D. Coburn III at
1:00 AM
2 Comments:
Can barcode numbers be unique to name badges and merged with a layout for labels, the same way you can do a printmerge with text variables? I ask, because I think that's what one of our customers is having done for them, using the badge layout we are providing, and maybe they could be one-stop-shopping if we were to provide the barcodes instead.
Karen
Karen,
There is no built-in function for automating the creation of barcodes. You could create each barcode separately (not fun) and use a tool like MonsterMerge to merge the graphic (barcode) with the rest of the badge information. I know that several macro developers are looking into a way to automatically create barcodes as this is an oft requested feature.
Post a Comment
<< Home