Teach Yourself
CorelDRAW 8 in 24 Hours
CorelDRAW can be all things to all folks. Laying out a tabloid newspaper? A magazine? A fan-fold brochure? A business card? Or a web page? The Page area can be all these things and more. CorelDRAW predefines many popular page sizes, and you can easily assign them to your project. You can custom define others.
After you have defined your page, other layout tools help you work on it. Grids, guidelines, and the ability to snap objects to grids or guidelines are very handy features for laying out your design. In this lesson, you learn how to define different sizes of page layout. You also learn to use guidelines, grids, and alignment features to place objects on your page. And you learn to work more quickly by using less-detailed views when possible.
The easiest way to define your page size is to click on a blank part of the Drawing area. When you do, the Page Layout Property bar becomes active. You can use this Property bar to define the size and orientation of your page, as well as many other attributes.
Defining an Envelope page.
You can manually define custom page sizes using the Paper Width and Height spin boxes in the Property bar.
If you plan to use a custom page size quite a bit, you can define that page and include it in the list of predefined page sizes. Because I create many web graphic images, I often define a custom page size fitted to a 640 x 480 pixel monitor screen.
Defining a custom page size.
Just A Minute: Another popular monitor resolution is 800 x 600. You can also create a predefined page size for that screen resolution.
Naming a custom page definition.
In Figure 5.4, I'm selecting a custom-defined page size from the Paper Type/Size drop- down list.
Applying a custom page size.
The Portrait and Landscape buttons in the Property bar enable you transform many page layouts from portrait (pages that are taller than they are wide) to landscape (pages that are wider than they are tall).
You can also select any unit of measurement for your page by pulling down the Drawing Units list (see Figure 5.5).
Selecting pixels as the unit of measurement.
The Nudge Offset box defines how far a selected object moves when you "nudge" it by pressing the right, left, up, or down arrows on your keyboard. If you set the distance to 1", for example, you can choose any object with the Pick tool, press the down arrow on your keyboard, and that object moves one inch down. Exactly. Custom-defined nudge offsets can be a big time-saver. One scenario is that you have four rectangles sitting on top of each other and you want to space them one inch apart. A custom-defined nudge value makes this as easy as pressing the right arrow one, two, three, or four times.
The Duplicate Distance value boxes define how much offset will be applied to a selected object when you duplicate it by pressing Ctrl+D, or by choosing Edit | Duplicate from the menu bar.
Grids and guidelines work like invisible magnets on your screen and allow you to easily locate a selected object to a horizontal or vertical location, or both.
When you select View | Grid from the menu bar, dots appear on your screen. They won't print; they're only there as location points. When you click on the Snap to Grid button in the Page Property bar, the grid coordinates act like magnets that attract the object you are moving. If you want to move an object to a location not on a grid coordinate, you'll find that difficult with Snap to Grid turned on.
Snap to Objects works in a similar way, but instead of grid coordinates, it is other objects that act like magnets. When you click on the Snap to Objects button in the Page Property bar, objects on your page attract the object you are moving.
Finally, you can place custom-defined guidelines on your page and use them as snap-to objects. To place a horizontal guideline, drag on the ruler on the top of the screen, and drag down to a location on your page. In Figure 5.6, I am dragging the top ruler to the 10.5 inch mark on the vertical ruler to create a guideline there.
Vertical guidelines are created pretty much the same way horizontal ones are, except that you drag from the vertical ruler on the left side of the Drawing window to create them.
You can remove guidelines from the Drawing area by selecting them with the Pick tool and pressing the Delete button.
Defining a horizontal guideline.
You can zoom in and out in CorelDRAW, and you can use the Pan tool to drag parts of your drawing into the viewable window. The Zoom tool works as an interactive magnifying (or telescoping lens) enabling you to focus on a small part of your page or zoom out to see the entire Drawing area.
You can also control how you see and work with your page by selecting from five different view quality options. CorelDRAW objects take quite a bit of system resources, and when you fill a screen with them, editing can slow to a crawl. Lower quality views can speed up that process. View quality settings from lowest to highest are: Simple Wireframe, Wireframe, Draft view, Normal view, and Enhanced view.
You can select different zoom magnifications from the Zoom Levels drop-down list in the Standard toolbar. Or you can zoom in and out interactively by clicking on the Zoom tool in the toolbox and then clicking on a portion of your drawing that you want to magnify. You can zoom back out by pressing the F3 function key on your keyboard.
You can also define zoom level by choosing the Zoom tool and right-clicking on the Drawing area. The shortcut menu that appears provides a list of zoom options. In Figure 5.7, I am using the Zoom tool to zero in on my lion and camera.
Zooming in.
The Zoom tool is a flyout, and when you click on it and hold down the mouse button, you can choose between the Zoom tool and the Pan tool.
The Pan tool enables you to click on a section of an image and drag that section of the image into view. The Pan and Zoom tools have no effect on the actual appearance of your finished image; they simply enable you to view your image from different perspectives.
In Figure 5.8, I'm using the Pan tool to drag the bear into the center of my screen.
The View menu provides commands for changing five levels of the view quality. The lowest level, Simple Wireframe view, provides the fastest redrawing of your screen. I like Simple Wireframe view because you can easily select objects in a crowded design. Simple Wireframe view won't display fills or outline color or style, so you see just the bare bones of objects. But Simple Wireframe view works fine for defining size, rotation angle, and location of objects.
The Wireframe view is very similar to the Simple Wireframe view. The Wireframe view displays object outlines but not fills or outline attributes.
Figure 5.9 shows a page in Wireframe view. If you don't need to see fills and effects, Wireframe view is a fast environment in which to edit your objects.
Using the Pan tool to drag a bear.
Wired into Wireframe view.
Draft view displays regular color fills and many effects. Some effects appear in a simplified view. Normal view shows all fills. Enhanced view is like Normal view, except that it also displays Postscript style fills. (You investigated fills in Hour 4.)
You learned to control many properties of a selected object: size, fill, outline, location, rotation, and more. Now it's time to learn to control the attributes of more than one object at a time.
With CorelDRAW, you can select and edit many objects at once. You can temporarily bind objects together as a Group and edit them collectively. CorelDRAW also makes it easy to define the relationships between objects; they can be aligned with each other in a variety of ways.
The first step in editing many objects at once is to select more than one object. In Lesson 1, you learned to select a single object by choosing the Pick tool from the toolbox and clicking on an object you want to select.
To select more than one object, you can click on the Pick tool and then draw a marquee around a number of objects you want to select. Or you can hold down Shift while you click on more than one object. In Figure 5.10, I am selecting four of the animal symbols and the background rectangles behind them.
Selecting several objects with the Pick tool.
You can move, cut, copy, paste, and resize selected objects the same way you edit a single selected object. You can also select noncontiguous objects--objects that aren't touching each other. By selecting the Pick tool and holding down Shift, you can select any number of objects. In Figure 5.11, I selected the two 12 stars in my illustration and I'm dragging them out of the Drawing page.
Moving two noncontiguous stars.
You can edit grouped objects the same way you edit groups of selected objects. But the advantage of grouping is that the objects appear as one, and you don't need to select them each time you want to edit them as a group.
To group objects first select them. Then choose Arrange | Group from the menu bar. You can ungroup objects by clicking on the grouped objects with the Pick tool and choosing Arrange | Ungroup.
Figure 5.12 shows two objects grouped, combined, and welded.
Combining objects is a whole different thing than grouping them, even though the terms sound similar. Grouping lets you work with several objects at once. But the simple act of grouping objects does not change them. That's not true when you combine objects.
Combining objects, actually transforms the objects that are combined, as you can see in Figure 5.12. You combine objects by selecting them with the Pick tool and choosing Arrange | Combine from the menu bar. Combined objects can be broken back apart (Arrange | Break Apart). However, the objects do not revert to their original shape and fill but retain changes made when they were combined. Use combining for effect but not to temporarily join objects.
Welding is the most drastic way to join objects. The welded objects take on the outline and fill of the object that was selected last. Welded objects can revert to their original individual objects only by using the Undo button (or selecting Edit Undo).
Grouping versus combining versus welding.
Just A Minute: Grouped objects can be rotated, resized, and moved as a single object. Earlier in this hour, you examined the Mirror buttons in the Standard toolbar that are available to any selected object(s). You can also flip objects vertically and horizontally by dragging a side or top handle past the opposite side. This is easier to show than explain. In Figure 5.13, I dragged the left side handle of the middle grouped object to the right, past the right edge of the object. The result, displayed as a dotted line while I drag, is an object that is not only resized but horizontally flipped.
CorelDRAW 8 offers an almost unlimited array of alignment options for selected objects. Want to align the tops of objects, space them evenly, and place the whole collection in the center of your page? It can be done. How about aligning objects on their centers? No problem, as you can see in Figure 5.14.
Let's take those two examples--evenly spaced objects aligned by their tops and center-aligned objects--and walk through them.
To align objects to their centers, select all the objects with the Pick tool, and then choose Arrange | Align and Distribute from the menu bar. In the Align and Distribute dialog box, choose both Center check boxes, as shown in Figure 5.15.
Flipping while resizing grouped objects.
Aligned centers.
Centering horizontally and vertically.
Click OK in the Align and Distribute dialog box to apply the alignment to your selected objects.
To align objects by their tops, space them evenly, and place them in the center of your page, follow these steps:
Defining Distribute settings.
Figure 5.17 shows the objects centered on the page, stretching from one edge of the page to the other and evenly spaced.
The last aspect of defining the CorelDRAW environment that you examine in this chapter is setting default fill, and line and text colors. Don't worry--this is easy. Simply click on a color in the color palette without any objects selected, and the Uniform Fill dialog box appears. This is where you define default color fills assigned to graphics, artistic text, or paragraph text--in any combination.
Pick the objects you want affected by the default fill color by clicking on check boxes in the Uniform Fill dialog box. In Figure 5.18, I'm assigning my default color to all three.
Centering horizontally and distributing across the page.
Assigning a default fill color.
You can define default outline colors the same way except that you right-click on a color in the palette with no object selected. Use the check boxes in the Uniform Fill dialog box to assign the selected color to Graphic, Artistic Text, and/or Paragraph Text.
The CorelDRAW 8 environment can be somewhat overwhelming. There are at least three ways to apply many effects to objects: the menu bar, the toolbar, and the Property bar. And you can apply many features using rollups and toolbox tools as well. As you experiment with CorelDRAW, you settle on ways you like to assign properties to objects. You'll find the Property bar is a useful jack-of-all-trades that enables you to define the properties you use most frequently to objects.
CorelDRAW can be any kind of environment you want it to be. You can define measurement units in anything from pixels to meters. You can also select from dozens of predefined page sizes or define your own custom page sizes.
Properties you learned to apply to one object in Lesson 1, such as size, fill color, and line color, can be applied to many selected objects or to grouped objects.
In this workshop, you open the magazine cover you have been working on in previous lessons. You zoom in on, and edit, different objects within the illustration.
Centering the camera, the circles, and the lion.
Just A Minute: Your illustration might be different, but find several objects in it to align on their centers.
Editing grouped objects.
You just practiced viewing your drawing using both Wireframe and Draft views, and you used Align tools to arrange objects on your page.
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