Managing Shadow Printing in Older CorelDRAW Releases

By Steve Bain

One of the niftiest effect tools in CorelDRAW’s toolbox has got to be the Interactive Drop Shadow Tool. It enables you to instantly apply soft, beautiful shadow effects. CorelDRAW’s drop shadow effects are bitmap-based. But if you’ve ever wondered about your shadow’s color model and resolution properties you’re not along. The answer is often critical to print workflows and largely depends on which version you are using.

Faking Depth-of-Field Effects in Corel PHOTO-PAINT

By Steve Bain

Blurry or out-of-focus pictures aren’t usually very appealing in a layout. But strategically applying blur effects to an image can sometimes work to your advantage. Blurring specific areas of a picture enables you to clean up messy background clutter and focus in on the subject at hand. This technique is also great for exaggerating depth-of-field created naturally when using a wide camera lens aperture.

Create Quick Text Effects with Contours

By Steve Bain

CorelDRAW’s Interactive Contour Tool enables you to create one of the fastest text effects to dress up otherwise uninteresting characters. With just a simple-click drag action, you can apply contours to the inner areas of Artistic Text characters. Then, by adjusting the contour properties, you can manipulate the overall effect for some nifty results (as shown below).

CorelDRAW’s Snap and Guide Features Speed Your Design Work

By Steve Bain

Improved snapping functionality and Dynamic Guides first introduced in CorelDRAW version 12 make drawing accurate diagrams and objects a breeze. To see for yourself, follow along in this quick design project to see how simple a challenging logo design can be to create.

Here, a fictitious 3D-style, two-character logo represents the design. It involves an uppercase M and W drawn manually, shaped to fit three sides of a cube, and colored to suggest lighting. You’ll see how the new object Snap modes and Dynamic Guides make the process a walk in the park.