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© 2000 by Ruth Huking. All Rights Reserved.
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I had so much fun with the Still Life card that I couldn't wait to do a Christmas Card. In this tutorial, I will show you how to make some custom Image Sprayers. We will start in CorelDRAW and then work in PHOTO-PAINT.
First get the Hemera Photo Objects. Put Christmas into the Hemera search. Most of the things we will use will come up there. Start with the Christmas tree and get the Green Spruce on Disk 3. I brought the image at right in at the size listed and then made it a little smaller. Remember to make a Folder in which to keep these objects. I think it works better to make a special Folder for each project. If they are all in one Folder, they can get mixed up and hard to find. You can delete the Folder later if you are short on hard drive space. These files tend to be a little heavy on the megabytes.
Import your Spruce into CorelDRAW. Click on it and under Bitmaps click on Edit Bitmap. That will bring it up in PHOTO-PAINT. Open up a new page in PHOTO-PAINT and make it 5" high and 4" wide. Under Window, Dockers have Objects and Brush Settings checked. Copy and Paste the Spruce as a new object in the new file. Save that file as Christmas Tree. You can close the bitmap file and drop the Christmas Tree file down on your Task Bar.
Next get the Christmas balls and size them to 1 inch. The balls I got are shown at right. Import the Christmas balls into CorelDRAW one at a time and under Bitmaps, Click on Edit Bitmap. This time when the ball comes up in PHOTO-PAINT, you will click on the Image Sprayer Tool, which is on the Brush Flyout on the Tool Bar as shown at left. You may need to maximize your screen to see it. The Image Sprayer will come up on your Property Bar. At the end of the Property Bar is a little spray can, which is the Sprayer Options Icon. Click on it and then click on Save Options as Image Lists. For this lesson, say No to save a directional image list, which comes up next. Here again I suggest that you make another folder for Sprayer Images. If you don't, you will have problems keeping your Christmas balls separated from your Sprayer Images.
Let's do a little test now to see if you have done it right. Bring up the PHOTO-PAINT file of the Christmas tree. Click on the Christmas tree to make it active. There will be a red line around it on the Object Docker. Click on the Image Sprayer tool on your Tool Bar. Up on your Property Bar, click on the little yellow Folder at the left end of the Image Sprayer Property Bar. Find your Christmas ball Sprayer Image folder, click on the ball and click on Open. Your cursor will change to a little paintbrush. You will see that the size of the nib is huge. Change that number to about 50. That number will vary as to how you want the Christmas balls to look on your tree. Now might be a good time to go to Edit and click on Checkpoint. Position your brush over the Christmas tree and click once. Move a little bit and click again. Scatter some more of the Christmas balls over your Christmas tree but remember you have four more balls to do. Neat trick, right? If you get too many or it doesn't look just right go to Edit and Restore to Checkpoint. I found it easier to do one click at a time. Try holding down your mouse button and see what happens. You will get a string of balls. If you have the default Undos, 10, you can undo that string of balls with one undo.
Next, go back and make Image Sprayers out of the other four Christmas balls and put them on the Christmas tree.
Now go to your Hemera Photo Objects and get the star and make it 1" also. Follow the same instructions for making the Christmas ball, but this time make the star size about 30. Have your background active and fill it with a Dark Navy. I used RGB 0,0,64. Scatter the stars as you did the Christmas balls. Now make your tree active and change the size of the star to 75 and put one star at the top of your tree. Remember to do some Saves as you go along!
Let's add some light bulbs next. Theoretically you should put lights on a Christmas tree before the balls but I don't think you can tell the difference in this picture. The lights are also available under "Christmas" in the Hemera program. The lights that I picked are shown at right. The yellow one is separate from the others a little further down in the list. Add them to your Folder and then Import them into CorelDRAW. Using the Artistic Media tool and the sixth line from the top, draw a line of 0.03 width similar to the line below left. Fill the line with a medium gray and take off the outline. Arrange the bulbs along the line as shown below. Group the arrangement. Next convert this group to Bitmap and Edit the bitmap. Follow the same instructions for making the balls and star to make an Image Sprayer. With the tree active, carefully add some lights to your picture. Set the size to about 200 and then go up or down from there until they look right for the tree. Just click once and then move your cursor and click again. A little practice and they will go across the tree.
Next put "sled" into the Hemera search. I used Sled 4 and made it 1 inch. Import the sled into CorelDRAW and under Bitmaps click Edit bitmap. When it comes up in PHOTO-PAINT, copy and paste it into your picture as a new object. You may have to size the sled when you put it in the picture. Be sure to double click the sled if you do size it. Check your Status Bar where it will tell you if you need to do that.
Go back to "Christmas" in the Hemera search and get some Christmas presents. At right are the ones I used. Doing one at a time, put them into your picture as you did the sled. By putting the sled in first, you should be able to put two of the presents on the sled. We have been building this picture up layer by layer.
I couldn't find anything plain enough to look like snow so I drew some snow in CorelDRAW. Using guidelines, I made a 4" x 5" area, drew the snow and filled it with a Textured Fill called Surfaces under Styles. I made the top white and the bottom light gray. It gets converted to a Bitmap and Edited in CorelDRAW. When you copy and paste it as a new object, it is going to come in on top of everything else. With your mouse, drag the snow down to below the tree. Save the guideline setup that you just made, as we will use that for our card. Don't have your sled and presents too close to the bottom of the picture, as we will add a frame in CorelDRAW.
At left is how my Object List looks. When you double click on an Object, you can name that Object.
Now let's make a card from this picture. Import your picture from PHOTO-PAINT into CorelDRAW. Activate the Snap to Guidelines and it should snap into the 4" x 5" guidelines. With the Snap to Guidelines still active, draw a rectangle around your picture. Under the Pen Docker make the outline 15.120 and click Apply. Then go to Arrange, click on Convert line to Object. Now you have an object you can fill. Under your Texture Fill, go to Samples 7 and Neon Spandex. Click on the samples until you find one you like. I tried putting the number that I used but I didn't get the same color. One other thing you can do is put these numbers in under chart on the right side but even these numbers, which are the ones I used, will not look exactly like the frame on my picture. Click on the color box and then other and put in these RGB values:
Lower Sky 41-10-134
Upper Sky 138-214-150
Atmosphere 18-33-145
Lower Cloud 196-230-97
Upper Cloud 161-28-82
You would think that you could get the same fill another time by putting in the numbers but it doesn't happen. What you can do is save a fill that you like. Click on the frame and open the Texture Fill Dialog.
Click on the plus (+) at the top of the box and name your fill. I named mine Neon Spandex Ruth. Then it will be there for you to use again.
Group your picture and then copy it. Under Layout, Page Setup, click on Layout and click the down arrow and select Side Fold Card. (If you were working in Landscape mode, you would have to change the paper under Size before Layout. Just for future reference.) Click OK and you will have the card format, which looks much like your regular full size page. Paste your picture and size it so it fits the page. Under Arrange you will find the Align and Distribute box where you can center your picture (or just press the P key on your keyboard). Check your Print Preview to be sure that the whole picture is in the printable area as the picture will be in the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Most printers have a larger margin on the bottom of the Portrait page. You can print it now or if you want to add something inside the card you can click on the plus sign to get three more pages. At right is a Print Preview of my card. If you'd like to use this card, feel free to use it!
Hemera Photo Objects Christmas Card · Still Life with Hemera Photo Objects · Draw to Paint in the Style of Seurat · Flowers in a Pitcher · Flowers for Foster · Symbols from CorelDRAW to Corel PHOTO-PAINT · Camping in the Woods · Quick Christmas Ornaments with CorelDRAW · In The Blink of an Eye · Creating Needlepoint and Cross Stitch Patterns with CorelDRAW · Old MacHughking Had a Farm · Dancing in the Dark in the Park: A Fantasy with Symbols · Creating Stacking Boxes in CorelDRAW · Creating a Basket Weave Fill in CorelDRAW
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