Looking Forward to Seeing You at the Conference

"The" Conference?

Yes, it's the most awesome single event planned for CorelDRAW and Photo-PAINT users for the whole year of 2008.

If you're active in the CorelDRAW community, you'll recognize many of the instructors. You'll may even know some of the attendees, too! It's like a celebration of all things CorelDRAW, with other enthusiasts like yourself! Everyone knows that CorelDRAW users by and large are sensible and down-to-earth people. That's why we all use CorelDRAW in the first place! :-)

One thing I can guarantee is that if you come to this, you'll go home with new insight that will change your perception for how CorelDRAW is being used to generate new business, and also in industries you never could have imagined. The doors this can open for you in your community might be astounding!

If you have unusual questions or artwork examples that you'd like me (or anyone else) to look at, bring them along and I'll cheerfully share my insight.

You won't be a random number at the conference like at a typical trade show. You're very special to us and we'll do everything possible for the overall conference to have been both effective AND enjoyable for your individual needs. We'll take the time to listen to you, after you've listened to us.

Very Important: The conference isn't just for "power users". It's for anyone who loves CorelDRAW & Photo-PAINT, at all skill levels.

There was a time when I was learning too - a kind man named Ron Richey gave me the keys to CorelDRAW and aimed me in the right direction. My focus is to offer top-shelf abilities to those attending, in the same way Ron once helped me. Practical techniques you can use for real jobs when you get back home.

While there'll be a lot of instruction and content, don't feel you need to absorb it all then and there - you can take the materials home and let it all sink in at your own pace.

Please accept my invitation. If you think it over, and decide to join with the rest of us, I already know that once you're there, you won't regret coming. I'll certainly be available to talk about CorelDRAW for about 17 hours each day. That suits me fine, that's my typical day anyway! :-)

Warm Regards,

Jeff Harrison

Simple Animation in Photo-PAINT

A user asked:

"I have created my frames, but if I delete one of the elements for a frame, it is deleted from all the frames. How do I replace the various small images over the background with different images?"

The key is to combine frame contents to the background for each frame. Unless you want a single element to span all frames upon export. Keep as an object in that case.

Outputting to Non-Postscript Printers

A user was wondering about why his CorelDRAW art wasn't printing as expected.
He wrote: "You'll notice how the shadow appears on the screen, but will not appear on the print out, on any printer i am using. Mostly HP, laser and inkjets."

I'd wrote: If those printers aren't "Postscript Compatible"... you are going to struggle. I'd found this out myself, the hard way, many years ago.

I'd bought an HP 1100 brand new for about $600.00, thinking this ought to be good enough for my kind of work. Well...not really.

Printing his file "as is" to my HP 1100? After 12 min of ripping, it failed - nothing printed. There's only 2 MB of Ram on that printer. It just locked up.



So, after this setting, it printed fine;



You may have to do this for any printer that is not Postscript, if you are using lenses, drop shadows or other fancy effects in your file.

Either that, or convert the whole thing to hi-res bitmap. See my post: http://coreldraw.com/forums/t/4647.aspx

Regular printers can't normally handle some of Draw's (or Illustrator's) complex artwork, regardless of shadow method.

Using Photo-PAINT for Storyboarding

One user asked:

"I would like to be able to work with multi-page documents in Photo-PAINT, and then publish that multi-page document to a proper PDF, as we can do in CorelDRAW today. This would be very helpful for me doing storyboards and similar multi image/presentation work."

I offered this advice:

1. Make a movie document - see the Movie Menu

2. Make these hotkeys to save your sanity

3. Draw your art as required on each frame

4. Publish to PDF using Photo-PAINT's PDF engine - you can export range of frames in PDF options.

Special note: you can even impose each frame for storyboarding, if you use different PDF driver in PP print engine. Such as this one.

Comparing Resolutions for Text to Bitmap Conversions

Another designer who was was using Quark Express wanted to submit artwork to a print shop I freelance at. He'd intially sent in some EPS files in a .sit file. I know that this is a compressed Mac file. I was unable to open them, so I requested he send PDF's instead.

There was an updated single EPS already in transit, and I was able to open it. Even though EPS's can support both Vector and bitmap data, the business card artwork was a flattened 300 DPI bitmap.

As some of you might already imagine, the fine text on the card was in rough shape.

I spent at least 15 minutes trying to explain why the whole project would be best sent as vector shapes only. There was nothing complicated about the job or the logo.

The designer specified gold ink (not foil - which I always clarify, since many customers who want gold ink actually envision gold foil).

Turns out, the original designer charged the hotel an enormous sum, and after my guidance submitted something we could use. Curves only...

The hotel ended up needing cards right away. There was no time to run this job on the press as intended with gold ink. I was away from the shop, and the people there ran the order through the Xerox DC-240. The customer was delighted with the results, and paid 348.00 + Tax for:

3 names of 500 cards
Full bleed
4/4

During the technical process, I made a diagram to send to the other designer to show what happens to the integrity of fine text when converted to bitmaps. Ron Richey had done something like this for me many years ago. He's the guy who got me started with CorelDRAW.

There is a myth out there that simply converting everything to 300 DPI is the best solution. When fine text is involved, you can see the results here. In critical cases 600 DPI preserves far more integrity. Preserving vector shapes whenever possible offers the best results.

click on the file to see a clear version;

Full Hex support in CorelDRAW

One user asked:

I would like to know if any knows where I can get hold of a full hexidecimal palette for CorelDRAW X3. There is a "Web Safe" palette that comes with the program but I need to be able to use the full hexidecimal range for websites. Many colors just don't look right in the "safe" option.

I agree 100%. Many Draw users would find FULL hex support valuable. And in 2008, normal. I've been asking for this for 8 years.

Since it may or may not happen from Corel, the awesome staff at Macromonster.com have the intelligence and creativity to make our own solution. Thankfully Corel was clever by making this potential possible through VBA and other technologies.

The web safe palette... . Save your sanity and don't spend one more second trying adapt to it's unreasonable limitations.

So, consider this on the list of future products. See the dialog below for an idea...

Text handling when opening PDF's in CorelDRAW

When opening PDF's in CorelDRAW using the Text as Curves option, a user should not know - or care - that the original PDF had fonts that were:

1. embedded fully or as subset

2. are protected somehow

3. already converted to curves - fully or partially

when importing as curves, Draw should "deal with it" and accurately place curves shapes into the Draw work space. The technology exists.

Click on the image below.

re-interepreting PDF/PS/PRN/EPS... tip toe through the minefield

unfortunately one of the major challenges of working with PDF/PS/PRN/EPS is that when re-interepreting any of them, no matter what software you use, there are no guarantees of 100% perfection. It's frightening, but true.

You have no control over how those files were generated before being given to you.

That's why I insist my clients sign off on all conversions of this nature.

It's no wonder that some production staff throw up their hands out of lack of time or patience and simply save out of Acrobat at 300 DPI for color files, 600 DPI for grayscale as rasterized images. The perfect sharpness of vector shapes and text is gone, but it's WYSIWYG at least. And that can prevent lawsuits, missing critical elements, deadlines, whatever.

So, it's a minefield.

The bottom line... What makes most sense in 2008? Fighting with a file for 30 - 60 min trying to:

1. preserve clarity of vector/fonts, the whole while nervous something may be missing

2. reducing file size - relative to the rasterized version - in order to save 30 seconds of hi-speed upload time

3. Dealing with transparencies, slivered bitmaps, inverted or flipped images, etc etc...

It depends on the time available and the technical interest/challenge for the designer of dealing with such files.

I applaud Corel and other vendors such Adobe themselves for their best efforts in reverse engineering PDF/PS/PRN/EPS files. But IMO the users need to be aware of the grave possibilities for negative consequences.

A. Missing "i's" in a junior school bakesale flyer - 200 copies. Nobody dies. But it still sucks.

B. Missing "i's" in a major City's newspaper ad - 300,000 copies. Someone's head will roll. Critical deadline for annual promotion missed... ad cost was enormous. Reputation of pre-press tech becomes lower than a snake's belt buckle.

Embedding ICC Profiles in Exported Jpegs Creates Large Files

When exporting a JPEG from Draw, you may have noticed that the image size seems very large compared to when exporting from other programs.

Compare the images below They were exported from Draw with the same compression settings, DPI, and pixel dimensions. Both were pasted into Photo-PAINT from the desktop.

Why was one file 8 times larger than the other one? The "small" one 12% of the size of the equivalent?

Embedded ICC profiles. See the pic below to stop the madness...

Download speed will increase for your web JPEG's, archival space for your files will decrease.

Sounds like a Win–Win to me. :-D

Note: When exporting JPEG's from DRAW, in many cases you'll want to apply the ICC profile. This is much different than embedding into the file itself. just check the box in the JPEG export dialog for this.

Click on image for a clear view.

The potential of the human mind

Is it possible to redraw a city from memory?

It's possible if you're autistic. Prepare to be amazed...

Watch the video