Advanced color processing for vector shapes

wOxxOm Curve Channel Mixer offers advanced color processing for vector shapes.

Live Fillet for CorelDRAW X3/X4

This macro I conceived was built by Shelby, and allows for "live visual results" for Fillets.

Does working with text in CorelDRAW X4 seem slow?

You probably know that the new "live text" feature is slowing you down.

If you have a very powerful system less than 2 or 3 years old, Live Text might update or redraw at a reasonable rate for you.What about everyone else? Not every artist has a new computer, and neither do I.

Up until today, I'd reach for CorelDRAW X3 for all new projects. Why? On my system, working with text in X4 was agony for;

1. Moving it around the screen
2. Scaling it
3. Rotating it

The responsiveness I'd come to expect from CorelDRAW over the last 10 years was down the drain with Live Text on.

So, how do you disable? Very special thanks to Ariel for this...

Sorry, a disclaimer: Use the following at your own risk...

I've made 2 registry files for people nervous about entering the registry. Close CorelDRAW X4. Open the ZIP file at the bottom of this blog post. Double-click the one you want, and follow the very simple instructions. Then run CorelDRAW X4.

Or, manually:

1. Close CorelDRAW X4.

2. Go to: Start menu | Run

3. Type REGEDIT and press enter.

4. Find:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Corel\CorelDRAW\14.0\CorelDRAW\Application Preferences\TextTool

5. Change the LiveText key from 1 to 0

6. Close REGEDIT

7. Run CorelDRAW X4

8. Make some text, and enjoy the speed you might have missed from previous CorelDRAW versions!

BTW, drag-duplicating text works again, for being able to see the orig. text in place.

livetext.zip

Creating abstract vector backgrounds

Hopefully you can follow the steps.

Nifty macro for Corel Photo-PAINT

hi Folks,

I put together this macro for Corel Photo-PAINT. It contains several handy functions in one convenient interface.

A macro to copy elements across multiple pages

This free macro allows users to quickly duplicate element(s) across a range of pages in a document.

Macro for adding borders to shapes or bitmaps

This free macro allows you to create borders around bitmaps or the bounding boxes of other shapes.

Forcing vector elements to grayscale

You can use CorelDRAW's Find & Replace function to convert vector elements to grayscale.

click on the image below to see the steps.

You need to launch the function twice: once for fills, and again for outlines.

Export annoyance

CorelDRAW users often get caught with unexpected results when exporting to bitmaps.

How? In the diagram below, C has nothing to do with A or B.

But, if you change C, A and B will change on you.



What should you do if you want certain pixel dimensions AND a DPI value? Just set the DPI value FIRST.

Let's have a chat about DPI...

You ask, "Jeff, isn't DPI really, really important?"

I say: "It depends".

A . Scanning: YES. I always scan at the optical resolution of my scanners which are 600 DPI. This ensures you're getting your money's worth from your scanner. It gives you the most pixels to work with for cleaning up the scan.

Consider what you're scanning, though. If you're scanning film, you could go higher. Scanning newsprint at higher resolutions wouldn't make much sense, since the material you're scanning from is so rough in the first place.

The DPI chosen for scanning has nothing to do with the DPI value we saw above in the export dialog.

B. When you set the DPI value above, that value is put into the file if the format supports DPI. Having the value in there only does 2 things:

1. Provides details to a printing device how much to compress the pixels into a physical output area, such as 300 pixels per inch.
2. Gives CorelDRAW information on how to auto-scale an image imported into the document.
   

Summary: if for some reason you need a final DPI value for bitmap export, choose it first. Then change the pixel dimensions.

Never ever forget that "Pixels are the Gold", not a file's current DPI value.

Sometimes I ask students: "What's a better file to use?"

image A: 1200px X 1200px @ 72 DPI
image B: 1200px X 1200px @ 300 DPI
image C: 1200px X 1200px @ 600 DPI

They're the same.... Pixels are the Gold.

Note that the GIF format doesn't support an embedded DPI value in the file.

Batch Processing in Photo-PAINT

One of the most common things that people should do, but don't is down-sample images from their cameras before these:

1. emailing to family or friends

2. uploading them to a web site

This free video shows you how to do it, and below the video are free scripts for both Photo-PAINT X3 and X4. Ensure you use the script applicable to your version (both are in the single ZIP file).

I like to apply 50% adaptive unsharp to images after downsampling, so I put this in the script.

NOTE: You can edit the scripts in Notepad to change the default value of 700 pixels wide to something else if you like.

If you don't have photo-PAINT, you could use Irfanview. The process is quite different, but the goal is the same & achievable.