This is something I've been seeing intermittently for at least 7 years. I told myself I'd finally post it and see if anyone else has seen this. With each new version of Draw, I always think maybe they've fixed this bug. Or maybe it's just not seen that often. But it still exists in X4, as I just discovered.

The ads I do require a lot of powerclips and a lot of drop shadows. That's just "the look" we want. So sometimes a drop shadow of a text object placed on top of a powerclip comes out distorted whenever the text is resized. Since it's hard to explain, I'll just post a screen shot. I'm just wondering how many others have come across this problem. I've found re-creating it an elusive task.

For those of you who have seen it, the only way I've found to fix it is to move the text off of the powerclip, resize it, then move it back.

After this long, it's not really an issue for me. It's an easy fix. I'm mainly curiuos how many people have seen it, because I've seen it for so long, and a couple of artists who used to work for me also used to encounter it.

Anyone?

The example below was encountered today using X4. Everything is in a powerclip except the white text.

Hi,

This is a known bug. Simple work around is to cut the text from your page and paste it back in. That has always worked for me. Hope it helps you too!

Paul

Hi A.,

If you love dropshadows, take a look at this product. It solves a variety of problems, including the one you mentioned.

Accroya:

This is something I've been seeing intermittently for at least 7 years. I told myself I'd finally post it and see if anyone else has seen this. With each new version of Draw, I always think maybe they've fixed this bug. Or maybe it's just not seen that often. But it still exists in X4, as I just discovered.

 I started getting this bug in X3 and like sector6 said, the quickest way I found around it is to cut the dropshadow group and repaste.  Problem fixed.  Only thing is, sometimes it still prints with the "blocky dropshadow" look.  So, as soon as I am happy with how the dropshadow look, I break-apart the dropshadow group and convert the dropshadow to a bitmap. 

 I just upgraded to X4 and I haven't had too much of a problem with it, but in v 12 we discovered we could just group the drop shadow with the control object and could resize without any problems. Just because the status bar says "drop shadow group" it's not a true group. Hope this helps.

I had never tried that, but I will give it a shot.

I have noticed that, while the problem still exists in X4, it seems to occur far less often for me than it used to.

I was quite surprised to see that it had not been addressed since V12 :S

Its probably easier to go for Jeff's Macro fix and end up with nicer shadows.  May buy that myself at some point.

hi Froot,

Well - I just heard today about some near future updates to it. It now has ADD merge mode added. No pun intended. Ahhh... now one can make glows fast & easily.

Frootloop:

Its probably easier to go for Jeff's Macro fix and end up with nicer shadows.  May buy that myself at some point.

Sounds very useful, I do use the drop shadow feature in Corel quite a bit, so that may prove very helpful :)

Jeff Harrison:

hi Froot,

Well - I just heard today about some near future updates to it. It now has ADD merge mode added. No pun intended. Ahhh... now one can make glows fast & easily.

Frootloop:

Its probably easier to go for Jeff's Macro fix and end up with nicer shadows.  May buy that myself at some point.

I proposed a powerful new feature today:

since you can now extract settings from existing rendered bitmap shadow (not sure how he did it), imagine this: user creates a project with a bunch of shadows that were made with a preset. User decides that all the shadows are too dark... wrong offset, whatever. So, user selects one of those shadows on page.

presses small button in UI to open brand new "find and replace" dialog in macro

user could then:

1. replace all shadows made with the parameters of selected shadow with settings from an existing preset

perhaps 50 shadows update! beautiful...

(note: Sancho shadows, unlike Corels, use predictable parameters for offset, feathering etc. between shapes of different sizes)

OR

2. have choice to replace all sancho shadows on page - even if they have mixed settings -  to the new settings from an existing preset

We'll see if this can be added...

Frootloop:

Sounds very useful, I do use the drop shadow feature in Corel quite a bit, so that may prove very helpful :)

 Just a question as I seek enlightenment, how are these ads output?

The find and replace feature would be fantastic, certainly would save some time

Jeff Harrison:

I proposed a powerful new feature today:

since you can now extract settings from existing rendered bitmap shadow (not sure how he did it), imagine this: user creates a project with a bunch of shadows that were made with a preset. User decides that all the shadows are too dark... wrong offset, whatever. So, user selects one of those shadows on page.

presses small button in UI to open brand new "find and replace" dialog in macro

user could then:

1. replace all shadows made with the parameters of selected shadow with settings from an existing preset

perhaps 50 shadows update! beautiful...

(note: Sancho shadows, unlike Corels, use predictable parameters for offset, feathering etc. between shapes of different sizes)

OR

2. have choice to replace all sancho shadows on page - even if they have mixed settings -  to the new settings from an existing preset

We'll see if this can be added...

 

Frootloop:

Sounds very useful, I do use the drop shadow feature in Corel quite a bit, so that may prove very helpful :)

 

Definitely been an issue for a while. I think it's worse in X4, not just powerclip, but ontop of bitmaps as well. Breaking apart has always fixed, just another step though. I was zipping through this post... confused Jeff - are these features being added in Corel or the macro? 

The macro. I suspect no changes will be made to Corel's native shadows until X5, if any changes are made at all.

stodare:

Definitely been an issue for a while. I think it's worse in X4, not just powerclip, but ontop of bitmaps as well. Breaking apart has always fixed, just another step though. I was zipping through this post... confused Jeff - are these features being added in Corel or the macro?