CorelDRAW.com

Article: Creating Patterns like Escher

Hendrik Wagenaar — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:11:00 GMT

Please check out Creating Patterns like Escher for a technique to create interesting interlocking patterns in CorelDRAW.

Preview of the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 packaging

Gerard Metrailler — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:23:00 GMT

We are a few days away from starting shipping the box to everyone who has pre-ordered it and I wanted to take a few minutes to actually show you the changes that we are doing with version X5 when it comes to the packaging and the printed documentation. The whole team who worked on the documentation / packaging wanted to make this a very useful and inspiring tool for you, while at the same time making sure that we minimize the ecological footprint. As you can see from the video below, we have reduced to the maximum the number of components, the size has been slightly reduced compared to the previous boxes (a lot more eco-friendly when it comes to shipping these) and we are also using paper from sustainable sources wherever possible.

For those who want to get a preview of the content itself printed in the book, you can look at the Guidebook in PDF format available from the Help menu in CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT (for some language, we were not able to get the whole PDF printed, this is the example of the English box). But enough typing, here is a little video (yes, I have fun creating overlays with VideoStudio):

And here is the same video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3J1ma4khf8

New Photo-Paint brushes are soon available on my web shop

Stefan Lindblad - Art and Illustration — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:46:00 GMT

As I am continously working with illustration assignments, I am at the same time working with my new web shop on my website. I have already made products available, for example recomended products from Unleashed Marketplace. I have started to work on brushes for Photo-Paint. I have already made a few available as a sneak peak on the shop, and soon more brushes for Photo-Paint will be added. And soon they will be available for purchase. I havent decided yet if I will sell one each or in a collection...(read more)

Create a Glass Bead

CorelDRAW! Tips & Tricks — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:24:24 GMT

By Steve Bain Creating virtually any kind of glass-like effect is by far a favorite of most Web graphic or interface designers. There’s nothing more satisfying than having the ability to create simulated lighting effects in a virtual, dust-free environment. Thanks to CorelDRAW’s interactive effects, many of the objects you need to achieve these effects can [...]...(read more)

This blog has moved

Graphics Unleashed — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:50:00 GMT

This blog is now located at http://graphics-unleashed.unleash.com/. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here . For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to http://graphics-unleashed.unleash.com/feeds/posts/default....(read more)

1000 Words: Resplendent Quetzal in Flight

Fleeting Glimpse Images Weblog — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:33:29 GMT

Sancho Text Docker for X5

Graphics Unleashed — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:00:00 GMT

I still wonder what Corel was thinking when they removed the Format Text dialog box in CorelDRAW X3 and replaced it with not one but two Dockers. Whenever I need to do some text formatting, I always have to make changes in both Dockers. This is an incredibly inefficient workflow. The good news is that the custom Docker technology allows third parties to rectify things like this since it could be years before Corel sees the err of their ways. The Sancho Text Docker for X5 does everything you can do...(read more)

Now in my shop - textures & background images among things

Stefan Lindblad - Art and Illustration — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:59:00 GMT

In my store on my website www.canvas.nu (select "Shop" in the menu) , there are already several seamless textures and background images. Good to have in many different kind of images and designs. And works with both Photo-Paint and Photoshop, and others such as Gimp. The shop is new and everything has not come up as of yet, but there is already a lot to surf around and watch. Do not hesitate to com back often, as I add new things continously. Stefan Lindblad Illustrator & artist...(read more)

Basketball Artwork

Graphics Unleashed — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Anyone that has read my books or followed this blog for any length of time probably knows that I am a huge fan of college basketball, specifically my Kansas Jayhawks. Later today, the field of the 2010 NCAA Tournament will be announced and the Jayhawks will be one of the favorites to win it all. I thought that I should find some clip art with a basketball theme so that you make your brackets look great for those inter-office pools. You'll even find a few other sports are represented in some of...(read more)

Creating web graphics for a star-rating control in CorelDRAW X5

Hendrik Wagenaar — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:51:00 GMT

I recently started creating a web page where I needed a rating control similar to the one you see at the top of this page. I found this great tutorial at KomodoMedia which demonstrates the html and css code behind this type of control. I decided to base my rating control on this, but I wanted to change the look of the stars a bit, enter CorelDRAW.

The KomodoMedia star control requires an image with 3 stars stacked on top of each other, similar to:

I need to make something similar to the above image, only snazzier . The first step is to create the right kind of document. For this task, the default web preset will work just fine. It sets all of the units to pixels, chooses RGB for colours and defaults the view mode to pixel mode. The width and height are not important to me since I'll only be exporting a portion of the page anyway. The DPI isn't really useful for web work, it is really only used when I want to use units other than pixels (e.g. 1"x1" rectangle). I won't be doing this so I'll leave this at the default 96 dpi.

This first thing you may notice after you create your document is that it isn't zoomed to page. This is due to the view mode being pixels and the default zoom being 100%.

When the view mode is set to pixels, a 100% zoom means that 1 pixel in your document represents 1 pixel of your final output. This can be useful. If you want to see what the final output will look like, you simply zoom to 100%. What you get is a pixel perfect vector WYSIWYG environment.

I've decided that I want each of my stars to fit within an 18x18 pixel box, so I'll begin by creating some layout rectangles. These will give me a visual indication of the bounds, and when I export I'll use them to define the padding around my stars, more on this later.

It doesn't matter where in the document I create the rectangle.

Since I need 3 stars on top of each other, I duplicated the rectangle (ctrl+d). To place the second rectangle, I grabbed the top-left corner of the duplicate and snapped it to the bottom-left corner of the original rectangle. Repeat this again for the third rectangle. I gave each of the three rectangles a different colour so that I could easily see where each star needs to go. Since I didn't want the rectangle colour to interfere with my design too much, I selected all three rectangles, held control and clicked the white swatch in the palette a few times to subdue the colour of the rectangles.

At this point, I grouped and locked the rectangles so that they wouldn't get in the way.

Now I start creating the stars. For the star creation, it may be easier to work in "Enhanced view mode", I'll switch back to pixel mode to do the final tweaking.

create the star
using node edit tool, expand the inside nodes a bit
rotate a bit
add a gradient fill - yellow to light orange
change outline colour
duplicate and shrink the star (I resize the original star, while I hold control+shift, then click right mouse to put it in duplicate state)
remove outline on smaller star and fill with white
use gradient transparency tool to make the bottom of the inner star transparent

I opted to simply make the hover star a larger copy of the normal star. The empty star is just the normal star without the fill and white highlight.

So how does this all look like in pixel mode? I flip pixel mode back on and check it out.

Not too bad, but I've clearly messed up on my centering. The top star has two padding pixels on each side, which is perfect, but the middle star has three padding pixels above it, and one below it. This is easy to solve, while in pixel mode and zoomed in to a point where the pixel grid is visible, nudging with the keyboard's up/down/left/right keys will nudge by half of a pixel. I select the middle star and it's highlight, and press the up key once.

Perfect!

I'm happy with my stars now, so I select the group of three rectangles, unlock them, and remove the fill by clicking the no-fill swatch in the palette. I want to keep the rectangles around because they will force the correct padding around my stars when I export. While still in pixel mode, I zoom to 100% now to see the size in actual pixels, this is how the stars will look when I export.

I select everything, click "Export" and select png.

And here's the final image:

And here's an image of how the final control would look on a web page:

Why do this with a vector app? Simple, because it is non-destructive. When I look at my final output, I may think that the stars are too orange, or the large star isn't big enough, or I need the whole control to be 25 pixels high instead of 18. Making these types of changes are trivial with vector graphics, and with pixel mode we can easily see exactly how the final output will look as we make the changes.

Alternative Choices for Font Management

Graphics Unleashed — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Last week I told you my choice for font management software was FontExpert 2009 . Several loyal readers have commented that they liked other products. I have not tested any of the other products suggested, but I thought I'd pass along links to these products so that you can check them out if you don't feel FontExpert is the right tool for you. MainType X-Fonter Font Pilot Printer's Apprentice Each of these products has its pros and cons. Personally, none of them measure up to FontExpert...(read more)

Quick update about the last few days

CorelDRAW.com administrator — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:15:00 GMT

Hello all,

we are sorry for the small availability problems we have experiences in the last few days. We are hard at work to correct the related problem and make sure that the community remains available for all of you to share and communicate.

The CorelDRAW.com team

Talvez Assim

Graphics Unleashed — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Today's continues the theme of grunge fonts that I started last week. Talvez Assim not only has an interesting name, but a variety of textures within the characters of the font. From a distance, some of the characters seem to have a bit of a brick wall in them. Others have big dots or even small dots. Check out the font for yourself and tell me what you see in the characters....(read more)

Poster BigEye 3 illustrations for the book Weird Creatures

Stefan Lindblad - Art and Illustration — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:21:00 GMT

If you like weird creatures and if you have read the book "Weird Creatures", the Trailblazer series published by Ransom Publishing in the UK and written by David Orme, then you might have seen the weird creature Bigeye. The fish that became a spider like creature eating itself all up. I made those illustrations and if you are looking for a poster of any of these images in the book, then look no further - I sell them via my own web shop. The poster I call Bigeye 3 is now available here,...(read more)

Poster BigEye 1 illustrations for the book Weird Creatures

Stefan Lindblad - Art and Illustration — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:10:00 GMT

Poster BigEye 2 illustrations for the book Weird Creatures

Stefan Lindblad - Art and Illustration — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:03:00 GMT

Double Outlines With Contour

Graphics Unleashed — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:00:00 GMT

CorelDRAW only allows a single outline to be applied to an object. Yet there is a way to get more than one outline quite easily using the contour effect. Let's say that you want a double outline on some text with the middle of the two outlines being white. Basically you want a gap between the text and the outline. Apply a two-step contour to the outside of the object. Select Arrange | Break Apart ( Ctrl + K ) so separate the contour group from the original object. Ctrl + click on the inside object...(read more)

New Macro: GDG Save 'em

Jeff Harrison's Daily Diversion — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:46:00 GMT

GDG Save 'em allows you to save elements inside CorelDRAW out of CorelDRAW as CorelDRAW files with various settings. The filter section offers many conditional options to help define elements before saving them....(read more)

Asus Eee PC Seashell 1005PE

Graphics Unleashed — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:00 GMT

I've made sure to have both a good laptop and desktop for the past fifteen years. The laptop is the computer I use when teaching CorelDRAW Unleashed Training Boot Camps and other remote training projects. In the office, I always use my desktop . While I have yet to take the leap and get a netbook, it is something I'm seriously considering in the near future. Why a netbook? There are trips when I'd like to be able to check my e-mail and surf the Web. Yet I don't want to have to carry...(read more)

CorelDRAW Unleashed X4 DVD ebook about Coreldraw by Foster D. Coburn

Stefan Lindblad - Art and Illustration — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:36:00 GMT

CorelDRAW Unleashed X4 by Foster D. Coburn 932 page multimedia ebook with 11.5 hours of tutorial movies for getting the most from CorelDRAW X4! Also available is the Premium Bonus Content Edition with Powertips, a Corel PHOTO-PAINT book and three additional hours of tutorial movies. Foster D. Coburn III is in my view an absolutely excellent instructor from whom I have learned a lot since 1997, when I started using CorelDRAW & Corel PHOTO-PAINT professionally, on various online forums, newsgroups...(read more)

Resources Docker for CorelDRAW X4 and X5

Graphics Unleashed — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Many times there are projects going on behind the scenes at Graphics Unleashed. One such project began life nearly six months ago during an e-mail exchange. Thanks to the ability of CorelDRAW X4 and X5 to have custom Dockers and the programming skills of Shelby Moore, I'm proud to announce the availability of the Resources Docker . First, I'll make it clear that it is completely free and it works in both CorelDRAW X4 and X5. We tried to make it so that the Graphics Unleashed resources that...(read more)

The Damage Caused By Ad Blocking

Graphics Unleashed — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:00:00 GMT

I came across a quote today that I wanted to share with you. I'll include some comments after the quote. "There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue. Because...(read more)

Brian Davies Layers for X4 and X5

Graphics Unleashed — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:45:00 GMT

If you regularly use Layers in CorelDRAW X4 or X5, you'll want to get a copy of the free Brian Davies Layers for X4 and X5 . Corel made numerous changes to how layers work from previous versions and some of the other tasks are harder to complete without this macro. Not only will you have those old abilities, you'll have other layer-related functionality....(read more)

My Shop is officially Open

Stefan Lindblad - Art and Illustration — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:28:00 GMT

I have now officially open my shop on my website. You can reach it very easy via my own website www.stefanlindblad.com . I have started very humble with a small selection of items, all surrounding my own work in illustration & art. I will add tutorials on how to work as an illustrator & artist and graphic designer. Both traditionally and digitally. All digital tutorials will of course be about using CorelDRAW and Corel Photo-Paint. Some of my content, PDFs tutorials, will be free but which...(read more)

But Is It Really That Blue?

Fleeting Glimpse Images Weblog — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:23:56 GMT

I don’t blame most of the world for having become more skeptical of the appearance of photographs. During the past decade the acceptance and explosion of digital photography coupled with the proliferation of image editing programs has given, I think, too many tools into the hands of too irresponsible, as an aggregate, a user base. [...]...(read more)