Teach Yourself
CorelDRAW 8 in 24 Hours
CorelDRAW is an excellent tool for creating fine-looking illustrations and graphics, so why does Corel offer another program to deal with graphic images? PHOTO-PAINT works in a different realm. Unlike CorelDRAW, Corel PHOTO-PAINT is a tool that works exclusively and expertly with bitmap images. The world of bitmap images is the world of photographic quality images, and the best way to modify these images is to use PHOTO-PAINT 8.
PHOTO-PAINT 8 includes some new effects, tools, and techniques that make image manipulation easier. And anytime that a tool becomes easier to use, it inevitably enables you to be more productive and creative, and to have more fun.
PHOTO-PAINT's environment (Figure 20.1) is similar to the CorelDRAW environment. Some main differences exist, but they have to do mainly with functionality and the type of tools that are specific to PHOTO-PAINT.
By default, you see a tool box on the left, a color palette on the right, a status bar on the bottom, a standard toolbar on the top and, like Draw, a floating Property bar. Like CorelDRAW, you can customize the interface of PHOTO-PAINT to suit your needs. Each toolbar can detach to become a floating toolbar; conversely the toolbar can dock just about anywhere.
The PHOTO-PAINT interface.
Once you begin to work in PHOTO-PAINT, you see that desktop space becomes limited when the rollups, toolbars, and Docker windows start to appear. If you are like me, you want as much room on the screen as you can get. To maximize PHOTO-PAINT, press the square at the top-right of the PHOTO-PAINT window or double-click in the PHOTO-PAINT title bar located at the top of the window.
Just A Minute: You can make most customizations to the PHOTO-PAINT interface from one place. To customize the interface, select Tools | Options. Spend some time browsing the Tools | Options hierarchy to see the different custom-izable features.
To create a bitmap image in PHOTO-PAINT, simply click the New icon from the Standard toolbar at the top of the screen (located just below the menu items) or choose File | New. PHOTO-PAINT opens a dialog box asking for the type of bitmap image you want to create (see Figure 20.2).
Create a New Image dialog box.
The first thing that PHOTO-PAINT needs to know is the color mode for your new bitmap. To create an image that displays on the monitor, select the 24-bit RGB Color Mode.
Next select the paper color. This determines the color of the background of the image. Notice that the white paper color has an RGB value of 255,255,255; that is, all colors are turned on at full intensity to create white. You can also select the No Background check box to tell PHOTO-PAINT tha you want a transparent background.
Just A Minute: If you select No Background, the background displays a checkerboard pattern. The checkerboard pattern serves only as a visual cue when working with transparent objects and it does not print. You will learn about objects and their transparency later in this lesson.
The next section in the Create a New Image dialog box asks questions dealing with image size and resolution. The Image Size list box offers predefined sizes or you may select Custom and set a specific height and width for your new image.
In order to ensure that the image size reflects a real size that is not affected by the selected resolution, you need to select a measurement unit other than pixels. In this case, I choose inches in the Measurement Units list box and set the height and width boxes to 5 inches. This guarantees an image that is 5 inches square when it prints, no matter what the resolution setting. (In this case, the resolution determines the quality of the printout.) Remember that though this image will be 5 inches square when printed, the image will not necessarily be 5 inches square on your monitor. The size on the monitor depends on the zoom level. To let the resolution determine the size of the image, select a measurement unit of pixels for the height and width settings.
Finally, choose a resolution size. The image is destined for a monitor, so select 72dpi. Why 72dpi? To determine the optimal resolution for your new image, follow these guidelines:
Just A Minute: The Create a New Image dialog box contains two other important settings: Create a Partial File and Create a Movie.
Selecting the Create a Partial File option enables you to work on a part of an image at one time and selecting the Create a Movie option enables you to create an animation or a movie.
Choose OK and a new image window appears in the PHOTO-PAINT work area. The window contains a white area that represents the bitmap image surface. The name of the file (PHOTO-PAINT creates a name starting with "new" and ending in CPT for new images) and the current color mode of the image appear in the window title bar. The gray area around your white image (assuming you selected white for paper color) is not part of your final image (see Figure 20.3).
A new image file created.
Notice the name of the file, new-6.cpt, in the title bar of the new image window. In this example, you can tell that this is a new file and that it is the sixth image created since opening up PHOTO-PAINT. To change the name of the file, select File | Save As. Enter a new name in the File Name text box and press Save. The blank bitmap will be saved under the new name and the title bar will reflect the change.
Click the small square located in the top-right corner of the new image window to maximize the new image window to fit into the entire PHOTO-PAINT work area.
Create a new image where the values are identical to the previous example but where the resolution is 144dpi (see Figure 20.4). The first thing to notice is that the image area (the white area) is much larger than 5 inches square (see Figure 20.5). This is due to the resolution difference between the image and the resolution of the monitor. Remember that the image's resolution is 144dpi and the monitor's resolution is approximately 72dpi.
Dialog box settings for 144dpi image.
In the Standard toolbar, locate the Zoom Level drop-down list box. Here, by default, you see your image zoomed in at 100% (see Figure 20.6). Zooming does not affect the image, but it is akin to moving closer and farther away from the surface of the image. When an image is viewed at 100%, it will match, in size, a pixel from the image to a pixel on the monitor. Because your image has twice the density of pixels than the monitor, it grows to about twice its actual size.
To view the image at actual size, select 1 to 1 in the Zoom Level list box, or choose the Zoom tool from the toolbox and select 1 to 1 from the Property bar. The background white area now appears at actual size, 5 inches square. To display the Document Info dialog box, choose File | Document Info. Notice that this file has a resolution of 144dpi and is 5 inches square. To set the ruler to inches, choose Tools | Options; then select Document | Ruler and change the units for the ruler to inches. Select the image window and type Control+R, the keyboard shortcut to display the ruler.
New image area created at 144dpi.
Zoom level setting.
Just A Minute: You can open more than one image at the same time. For example, open as many images as you want to view at one time and then choose Window | Tile Vertically. All the images appear tiled vertically in the work area. To make an image the current image, click on its title bar. To close an image, press the X on the top-right corner of its window's title bar. To maximize an image to fill the work area, double-click on its title bar.
You may have already noticed three color swatches on the status bar: Paint, Paper, and Fill (see Figure 20.7).
Paint, Paper, and Fill color swatches on status bar.
Each of these swatches represents the currently selected Paint color, Paper color, and Fill color. The Paint color affects tools such as the Paintbrush and Text tools. The fill color affects the fill of objects created using the Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Polygon, and Fill tools. Setting the Paper color only affects the color of the paper when creating new images.
In PHOTO-PAINT, you need to choose the Paint and/or Fill colors before painting on the image. You cannot change the color of the paint after you apply it to the image. You can change it later by selecting the area to change and then painting over it or replacing the pixel colors, but you cannot change its color as you can in CorelDRAW where you select the object and simply change the fill color. The same is true of painting shapes; you need to choose the fill color prior to drawing the shape.
To change the currently selected paint color, left-click a color in the palette; to modify the currently selected fill color, right-click a color in the palette. To load a new type of palette, choose View | Color Palette and select the type of palette to use.
Just as in CorelDRAW, PHOTO-PAINT has the capability to create complex fills such as the fountain, pattern, bitmap, and texture fill. Because the concept of PHOTO-PAINT fills is very similar to CorelDRAW fills, see Hour 7, "Mixing Up Fills," for general information regarding the types of fills and their general options. But because PHOTO-PAINT is a bitmap tool, some PHOTO-PAINT specific options have been added to the fills that need explanation. These options are Tolerance and Antialiasing. You can access these options on the Property bar or by double-clicking on a particular tool to display the Tool Settings rollup.
Unlike CorelDRAW, which has artistic text and paragraph text, PHOTO-PAINT text comes only in one flavor: the text flavor. To create text, choose the Text tool. The mouse cursor changes from the object picker arrow to an I-beam cursor. Position the I-beam cursor on the image surface and left-click. A vertical line starts to flash on your image surface. This is the text cursor that represents the size and starting position of the text that you are about to type. Go ahead; type some text. To use a font, style, format, and size other than what appears in your image, modify the options on the Property bar (font, size, character/line spacing, character style, and alignment) as you would in CorelDRAW (see Figure 20.8).
Using the Text tool.
To access options for the Text tool, use the Property bar, or double-click the Text tool in the toolbox to display the Tool Settings rollup. This rollup is sensitive to the currently selected tool and displays options appropriate to the tool.
Just A Minute: If you want to create an image that contains only text, it is best to use CorelDRAW. CorelDRAW has many built-in editing features that PHOTO-PAINT does not have.
Antialiasing gets rid of those dreaded jaggies. To see the difference between antialiased text and regular text, try the following: On the Standard toolbox, choose 100% for a zoom level. Then select the Text tool, deselect the Antialiasing check box, set your font to Arial size 48, and type some text. You can zoom into the text using the Zoom tool (the magnifying glass on the toolbox) by clicking on the text until you can see the jaggies clearly. Notice the jagged edges around the letters (see Figure 20.9). Letters that contain diagonal lines are more susceptible to the jaggies, so make sure you type something with angled lines, a "w" or "y," for example.
Text with jaggies, zoomed at 100%.
Now choose the Text tool and click on your text. Turn antialiasing on by choosing Antialiasing in the Tool Settings rollup or press the Antialiasing button on the Property toolbar. Nothing happens, right? No problem, PHOTO-PAINT does not antialias until you choose a different tool or click your text cursor to another position away from your currently typed text. This is a time-saving feature so that PHOTO-PAINT does not antialias your image until you are satisfied with its size, position, format, and so on. Choose the Pick tool (the arrow) and PHOTO-PAINT antialiases the edges of your text (see Figure 20.10). See the difference? Most of the time you will want antialiasing enabled. You may find it useful to turn antialiasing off for text such as when your text size is very small (under 8 points). At such a small size, the text characters are so small that it takes only a few pixels to draw them and the antialiasing just smudges so that they become illegible (although at 6 points or less they cease to be legible anyway).
Antialiased text.
If the Text tool is still selected, you can type more text in a different position in the image by left-clicking in the image at the new position. At this point, the original text that you typed becomes a PHOTO-PAINT object. The same occurs when you finish typing your original object and choose another tool, for example, the Pick tool.
Just A Minute: After your text becomes a PHOTO-PAINT object, it works the same way and has the same properties as other objects. You can select it, drag it, and so on just as you can with any other objects.
The only time that these objects are affected is when the objects are combined with the background or when you save your file as a file format other than native PHOTO-PAINT format.
Once text becomes an object--that is, once you no longer have the I-beam text cursor in the text and the object handles have appeared--you cannot modify the font, color, style, or format of the text like you can in CorelDRAW. You cannot select the object and pick a new fill color. If you try, nothing apparent happens.
To modify a text's properties, reselect the Text tool and select the text object again. Any object transformations that have been applied to the text object (rotation, for example) is discarded and the text cursor (the I-beam) appears in the text. Moreover, if you changed the paint color since the creation of the text, PHOTO-PAINT applies the new paint color to the text.
It is possible to change the size of the text by dragging the object handles (drag the corners to keep the aspect ratio and use the other handles to stretch or shrink the text horizontally or vertically), but this is not as effective in keeping the quality of the text.
Just A Minute: When manipulating objects in PHOTO-PAINT so that they change shape or size, PHOTO-PAINT does not commit the change until you tell it to commit the change by double-clicking on the object or right-clicking anywhere and choosing Apply. To abandon the change, right-click the object and choose Reset. This enables you to undo your change before it changes the bitmap that represents the floating object.
To delete a text object, select the object and press the Delete Key or choose Object | Delete. You can also duplicate a text object (and any PHOTO-PAINT object) by pressing Control+D or choosing Object | Duplicate.
Select a PHOTO-PAINT object consecutively, and you notice that the object handles change from scaling handles to rotation/skew handles, distort handles, and perspective handles (see Figure 20.11). This is similar to CorelDRAW objects.
Selecting an object more than once displays different object handles for different transformations.
A useful window is the Objects Docker window. It can be opened by choosing View | Dockers | Objects (see Figure 20.12).
Object docker as a floating window.
The Objects Docker window contains a list of all the objects in the current image. Each object is represented by a name and a thumbnail image that represents the object. By default, PHOTO-PAINT names each object with an Object prefix and a number. A red line bounding the thumbnail indicates that the object is the current object.
To rename an object, double-click the currently selected object name or thumbnail. An Object Properties dialog box appears, and you can change the name by typing a new name in the Name box.
The eye next to the thumbnail in the Objects Docker indicates if the object is currently visible. Any text that you type appears as individual objects. Selecting the eye toggles the visibility of the object. Curiously, the current version of PHOTO-PAINT 8 doesn't permit you to toggle the visibility mode of the currently selected object. Instead all other objects, including the background, become invisible. To make the current object invisible, choose another object (or the background) and then click the eye of the previously selected object.
In this hour, you've covered a lot of ground. You learned how to customize PHOTO-PAINT 8, work with zoom levels, colors, fills, and text objects. And you created your first PHOTO-PAINT image.
Because we've covered so much in so few pages, you may still have questions about such things as aliasing, resolution, and color modes. If so, be sure to check out the companion web site at http://www.ppinet.com/TYCD824.htm for more information.
Let's put some of what you have learned to practice by creating an image that has a resolution of 72dpi and that contains a couple copies of a text object layered on top of each other to create a simple, but nice, effect.
Two text objects.
If you like the effect, remember to save your image by choosing File | Save As. Save the image as a PHOTO-PAINT 8 file to maintain the object information. This enables you to make editing changes later. This image will not be used in further workshops so it is not necessary to save the image.
© Copyright, Macmillan Computer Publishing. All rights reserved.
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