Teach Yourself
CorelDRAW 8 in 24 Hours
No program provides more control over the look and shape of text than CorelDRAW. You can edit, format, resize, or reshape text in CorelDRAW 8.
CorelDRAW has two kinds of text: paragraph text and artistic text. Paragraph text is better for long blocks of text that need to be edited. Artistic text gives you more freedom to assign artistic effects to letters. Later in this book, you'll learn to stretch text, twist text, fit it to a curve, and do all kinds of other crazy things. All these effects can be applied to artistic text, but most cannot be applied to paragraph text.
In this hour, you explore artistic text. You will create, edit, and format artistic text, and you will learn to stretch, reshape, and resize text objects. And you'll experiment with symbols, images that are available from special sets of fonts.
When you create artistic text, you create a graphic image that can be edited like any other graphic in CorelDRAW 8. You can easily resize or reshape artistic text; you can easily edit the graphical aspects; and you can easily edit the text content and format.
Just A Minute: CorelDRAW 8 also enables you to work with text as paragraph text. When you lay out an article or a substantial amount of text, you'll find it easier to edit that text if you work with it as paragraph text. See Hour 15, "Designing with Paragraph Text," for more information.
Use artistic text for smaller blocks of text. Icons, web site banners, newsletter mastheads, and other text applications with few characters are ideal for artistic text. You can resize artistic text more easily than paragraph text.
When you click on the Text tool in the toolbox (see Figure 2.5), you have two options. You can simply click and start typing, or you can drag to draw a text frame and then start typing. For now, all you have to do is click and type. As you do, the Property bar becomes the Editing Text Property bar. Many of the tools in the Editing Text Property bar are more useful for paragraph text than for artistic text, but some are used with artistic text as well.
After you finish typing text, click on the Pick tool, the arrow at the top of the toolbox. When you click on the Pick tool, your new text will be surrounded with eight small, square black handles. These handles activate whenever you select any object with the Pick tool and change the size and shape of a selected object.
Just A Minute: Handles indicate that an object such as artistic text is selected. When a text object is selected, you can change attributes assigned to that object, such as size, color, shape, or location.
One way to change attributes for a selected object is using the Property bar. When you select Artistic Text, the Text Property bar becomes active, as shown in Figure 2.1.
The following table explains the Text Property bar tools and lists.
The Text Property bar is active.
| Tool | Name | What It Does |
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Position | Identifies (or changes) the position of the object relative to the lower-left corner of the Drawing page, based on the center of the selected object. X is the horizontal location; Y is the vertical location. |
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Size | Identifies or changes the exact size of the selected object. X represents the width of the object; Y represents the height of the object. |
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Scale Factor | Enables you to resize the height (Y) or width (X) of the selected object proportional to the current size. For example, changing the X setting to 200 doubles the size of the selected text object. |
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Nonproportional | When you select this button, Sizingsize changes made to the x-axis Scale Factor spin box do not affect the y-axis, and vice versa. |
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Rotation Angle | Identifies and lets you change the angle to which the text object rotates. Ninety degrees will rotate the text 90 degrees counterclockwise. |
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Mirror Buttons | The top Mirror button flips the selected text horizontally; the bottom Mirror button flips the selected text vertically. |
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Font List | This drop-down menu lets you select fonts to apply to the selected text. |
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Font Size List | Assigns font sizes to selected text. |
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Bold | Assigns (or turns off) boldface for the selected text. |
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Italic | Assigns (or turns off) italic style for selected text. |
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Underline | Underlines the text in a selected text object. |
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Format Text | Opens the Format Text dialog box. |
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Edit Text | Opens the Edit Text dialog box. |
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Convert Text | Converts selected text objects to Paragraph Text (or if they are already Paragraph Text, converts them back to Artistic Text). |
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Convert to Curves | When you convert text to curves, you can no longer edit it. However, you can edit the individual graphic objects separately. |
You can change text font for an entire selected text object, or you can format only certain characters in an artistic text object.
You can assign font size in the same way, by choosing a font size from the Font Size List drop-down menu. In Figure 2.3, I'm assigning a font size of 100 points to my selected text.
You can also resize and reshape selected text objects by dragging the handles. When you drag a handle in toward the center of the object, you make it smaller. When you drag out, away from the center, you make the object larger. This technique works with all selected objects in CorelDRAW and works with artistic text as well.
If you drag a corner handle, as in Figure 2.4, you maintain the proportion between height and width as you resize your object.
Assigning the Desdemona font.
Assigning a font size of 100 points.
If you drag on a side or top handle, you will change not only the size but also the shape (or proportions) of the text, as shown in Figure 2.5.
You can add (or remove) boldface, italics, or underlining to text using the Bold, Underline, and Italic buttons in the Text Property bar. These attributes are not available for all fonts because some fonts are designed to be specifically boldface or to have a light face.
Resizing text using handles, keeping proportions unchanged.
Changing text shape and size. Notice how the letters are getting wider?
The Format Text dialog box offers more detailed text formatting features. With your text object selected, click on the Format Text tool in the Property bar or choose Text | Format Text from the menu bar. The Format Text dialog box has three tabs. The Font tab allows you to assign fonts and font sizes, as well as other font attributes such as Strikethrough, Overscore, Uppercase (including small caps), and superscript or subscript (available in the Position drop-down list). In Figure 2.6, I'm assigning small caps and a thin line overscore to my selected text.
Adding text formatting in the Format Text dialog box.
There are two other tabs in the Format Text dialog box. The Align tab provides the same options as the alignment buttons in the dialog box toolbar: None, Left, Center, Right, Full Justify (both margins, if you have enough text to look good stretched margin to margin), and Forced Justify. The Space tab enables you to define spacing between characters (letters), words, and lines in your text. You will often use these tabs to tweak paragraph text where you have many lines of text.
As you experiment with text formatting, you will see the font previewed in the small window at the bottom of the dialog box. When you are satisfied with the appearance of your text, click on the OK button.
You can edit text by clicking on the Text tool and then clicking in a text object. The vertical bar cursor represents the insertion point. You can press Delete or Backspace to delete text, or you can type new text at the insertion point. In Figure 2.7, I placed my insertion point before the word "Zoo," pressed Backspace three times to delete the word "New," and am typing the word "The."
For more heavy-duty text editing, you'll find the Edit Text dialog box more helpful. Open this dialog box for a selected text object by clicking on the Edit Text button in the Property bar, or by selecting Text | Edit Text from the CorelDRAW 8 menu bar. Us old-timers still use Ctrl+Shift+T to open this dialog box.
The Edit Text dialog box is a miniword processor in a window. You can insert or delete text here. And like many of the latest word processors, the Edit Text dialog box will underline words not found in the dictionary with a wavy red line, as shown in Figure 2.8.
Just as with the fanciest word processors, you right-click on a potentially misspelled word to see a list of possible correct spellings. In Figure 2.9, I'm getting some spelling help replacing "NEWW" with "NEW."
So far, you have learned to apply formatting (including size) to entire text objects. You can also apply formatting to selected characters within a selected text object. An easy place to make these changes is the Edit Text dialog box.
Adding text formatting in the Format Text dialog box.
Editing in the Edit Text dialog box.
To apply formatting to selected characters within a text object, select those characters in the Edit Text dialog box, and then apply formatting. In Figure 2.10, I am changing the font size for selected characters only.
Just A Minute: The Edit Text dialog box is not fully WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). You have to click OK and view the results in the CorelDRAW window to see the exact effect of font attributes assigned to selected text.
Fixing spelling in the Edit Text dialog box.
Selected text characters can be formatted in the Edit Text dialog box--my favorite shortcut to get there is Ctrl+Shift+T.
If you want more power to assign detailed formatting to selected text, click on the Format Text button in the Edit Text dialog box. Font attributes assigned in this way will apply only to the selected text. When you have edited and assigned formatting to any text, click on OK in the Edit Text dialog box. The results will be visible in the CorelDRAW window.
Earlier in this lesson, you learned to size text by dragging object handles. That works. You can also move a selected object by dragging the X that appears in the middle of a selected object. In Figure 2.11, I'm dragging the selected text up the page. The cross-shaped cursor indicates the new location for the object.
To rotate text, choose the Pick tool (the one at the top of the Toolbox) and click on an object twice. As you do, the handles change from small black squares to curved arrows, as shown in Figure 2.12.
Drag the rotation handles in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction to rotate the selected object.
Moving text.
Are you ready to rotate?
You can also precisely define the size, location, and rotation using the Property bar. To flip text to the left, enter 90 in the Rotation Angle box in the Property bar. The results are illustrated in Figure 2.13.
Rotated 90 degrees.
Just A Minute: You can edit or reformat rotated text. It can get a little tricky to edit rotated text in the Drawing window because the text editing cursor does not rotate with the text. You might find it easier to edit rotated text in the Format Text or Edit Text dialog boxes.
To precisely locate or size a text object, you can enter coordinates or dimensions in the Position or Size boxes in the Property bar. In Figure 2.14, I have assigned a size of exactly 1" by 9" and located the text object 1" from the left side of the page and 5.5" from the bottom. The location coordinates are defined from the center of the object.
Time Saver: For quick, rough sizing and locating, use your mouse. For extremely precise sizing and location, use the Property bar.
CorelDRAW 8 comes with an vast assortment of available fonts. These fonts are on the CorelDRAW CD-ROM and can be added to your system using a utility provided by Corel called the Font Manager.
To add a font from the CorelDRAW 8 CD-ROM to your system, run the Bitstream Font Navigator program. You can find this program in the Productivity Tools group under the CorelDRAW 8 group.
Precisely sized, rotated, and located text.
Place the CorelDRAW 8 CD-ROM that contains fonts in your CD-ROM drive, and in the Font Navigator window, navigate to the drive with your CD-ROM. Select the Fonts folder and then the Ttf (True Type fonts) folder. The Ttf folder has a series of folders named with the letters that begin the fonts they contain. So, for instance, if you want the Eras Bk BT font, open the "E" folder (see Figure 2.15).
Finding fonts on the CorelDRAW 8 CD-ROM.
The Font Manager has an Installed Fonts window that shows how many fonts you currently have installed on your system. You can add fonts by dragging them from the Contents window (on the left) to the Installed Fonts window on the right.
Just A Minute: To preview what a font looks like, simply open the Font Navigator dialog box and in the Contents window, click on the name of the font you want to preview. The preview appears in the Font Sample window.
In Figure 2.16, I'm adding the Eras Bk BT font to my system.
Adding fonts.
After you install additional fonts to your system, you can close the Font Navigator window.
CAUTION: If you add over 400 fonts to your system, the Font Navigator will warn you that this can affect system performance. I have over 400 fonts on my system, and I haven't noticed any ill effects. But if you find that your system runs more slowly after you add fonts, you can remove fonts in the Font Navigator by dragging them from the Installed Fonts area back into the Contents area (on the left side of the window).
Fonts aren't just good for words. Many fonts come with a nice selection of symbols that you can use as quick and easy clip art.
Dragging a symbol onto the Drawing page.
CAUTION: The Close buttons in docking windows are a bit different in appearance than conventional windows Close buttons. Why? Just to be unique! But they are the small X in the upper right-hand corner of the window.
As you have seen so far, artistic text can be sized, formatted, edited, and rotated. You can add fonts from CorelDRAW's large collection and use text characters as symbols.
Next, you will see what can be done when artistic text is combined with shapes.
Artistic text is easy to enter and can be edited at any time. Shapes can be created using the Rectangle, Ellipse, and Polygon tools. Any object can have many of its attributes edited using the associated Property bar. Property bars can be used to edit the size, location, rotation, and other features of an object.
With this workshop, you'll begin re-creating the magazine cover that Paul Mikulecky designed for us. To begin, open a new document and enter some text such as that in Figure 2.18. Locate the text at the bottom of the magazine cover.
Enter, size, and locate text.
Be sure to save your file when you finish. You'll need it again in Hour 3, "Working with Shapes."
Rotate text.
Rotate text.
Add a symbol.
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