CorelDRAW insider

FontTesterPlus 1.3

claudep — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:55:00 GMT

I uploaded a new version of FontTesterPlus to my Gallery : http://coreldraw.com/media/g/claudep/default.aspx

- In the Miscellaneous docker, I changed the OpenTypeFeatures mode in such a way that it now list all the OpenType tables in the drop down next to the mode drop down.

- Selecting an item in that Drop down will render a visual representation of the rules (lookups) that are used to implement the selected feature.

- I did not implement all the lookup types yet but most of them are.

- Font users can, for example, use this tool to figure out what are the ligatures for a selected font.

- Font designer can use this tool to visualize their lookups.

How to find out which OpenType features your installed fonts have? (part 2)

claudep — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:27:00 GMT

My first post suggested 1 way to do this.

There is another alternative, again, with FontTesterPlus (http://coreldraw.com/media/g/claudep/default.aspx).

You can build a "database" of all installed fonts' OpenType features. Here is how :

1) Run the "Tool->Dump installed font info..." command.

2) Depending on how many fonts you have installed, this will take a while and there is no progress bar, not even an hourglass, the app will look and be reported as unresponsive : just wait a few minutes.

3) That will open a dialog that lists all opentype features supported by your fonts.

4) This dialog by itself is useless and too slow.

5) But it also create a file named otfeatures.txt (next to FontTesterPlus.exe).

6) Still useless because there is too much stuff in there.

7) This file however is a csv file which you can import in your favorite spreadsheet. Here I used Excel for this demo.

8) Once imported in Excel, you can turn on the Filter feature which will allow you, as in this example, to list only the fonts that support ss06, for example :

enjoy!

How to find out which OpenType features your installed fonts have?

claudep — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:10:00 GMT

Hello guys, one common problem that arise often is finding what fonts you might have installed on your system that an OpenType feature you might want to use.

For example, you might want to use the "fraction" feature but you don't know what fonts you might have that supports it.

We have not addressed this use case yet in CorelDRAW but FontTesterPlus allows you to do this. Here is how :

1) Install it from here http://coreldraw.com/media/g/claudep/default.aspx

2) Expand the "Filters" section and pick the OpenType feature you are interested in, in this example : frac

3) You can type some test string in the Sample Text window to see the effect that this feature will have on your string with the selected font :

In this example, "Palatino Linotype" is doing an awesome job at supporting every possibilities.

But if you try that with different fonts, you will quickly realize that the results can vary very much :

Minion Pro only support some standard fraction while Moonglow Ext supports even fewer standard fractions.

FontTesterPlus is an easy way to sort this out and allow you to quickly hand pick the best font for your project.

FontTesterPlus 1.2

claudep — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:16:00 GMT

I uploaded a new version of FontTesterPlus to my Gallery : http://coreldraw.com/media/g/claudep/default.aspx

- Added character names

- Added glyph window character name filter (lets you find characters by name based on a regular expression!)

FontTesterPlus 1.1

claudep — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:36:00 GMT

I uploaded a new version of FontTesterPlus to my Gallery : http://coreldraw.com/media/g/claudep/default.aspx

- Added Digit substitution support to the Uniscribe OpenType and Direct Write Window.

- Reworked my Language support. Now the language of your string is no longer defined by the OpenType Language field. Instead, it is defined by a new field in the "Font Selector->More Properties" section. That field applies to both USP and DW and is not limited by what OpenType Languages specific features are provided by your selected font.

- This version also fix the broken "ScriptItemizeOpenType" section.

FontTesterPlus

claudep — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:23:00 GMT

FontTesterPlus is a tool that allows you to browse and explore the fonts installed on your system. It also allows you to test your fonts with various typography technologies such as GDI, GDI+, OpenType, Uniscribe, DirectWrite and WPF Typography. At its roots, it is made by software developers for software developers but can also be used by font designers to test their fonts and end users to test and explore their fonts.

It has a lot of subtle but very powerful features and should be updated occasionally.

Yes, the user interface is atrocious, it is difficult to use, buggy and flaky but it can be very useful to get extended information about the fonts you have installed on your system.

It is provided to you by Corel free of charge but also without any support. In other words, you use it at your own risk. I will not run a virus scan on it, it is your responsability.

If you have questions about it, you can try asking here and I may reply if I have time but don't be offended if I do not : remember, it is not supported.

You can install it from here : http://coreldraw.com/media/p/155230.aspx

If after installing it you get error messages on launch, ensure you installed the "Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86)" (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555) first. This version will NOT work on Windows XP.

'Tis The Season - Making Snowflakes with CorelDRAW

Hendrik Wagenaar — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:31:00 GMT

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, it's getting cold, and for many, the snow has arrived, so I thought I'd share a technique to create snowflakes with Draw. First, lets take a look at some real snowflakes (public domain image by Wilson Bentley courtesy of Wikipedia):

The first thing you may notice is that all of the snowflakes have six points, and that each point is symmetric. This is called hexagonal symmetry, and because of this, I will not use the polygon tool to create the snowflakes (maybe one day I'll add this feature to the polygon tool). While it is possible to use the polygon tool, it would require me to manually keep two half edges symmetrical. That would make it difficult to quickly experiment with many shapes. Instead, I'll use clones. If you've read my articles on Escher patterns, you'll know that I really like clones.

Step 1: Create an almost vertical line. This will become the template line that allows us to quickly define the shape of our snowflake.

Step 2: Clone it (Menu >> Edit >> Clone). Move it to the side and give it a different outline color so that we know which is the master and which is the clone.

Step 3: Duplicate the clone (ctrl+d), flip the duplicate horizontally and snap the top points together. This is how we keep each point of the snowflake symmetrical.

Step 4: Select both shapes, and group them, click the group a second time to enter "rotation" mode for the selection. Move the center point somewhere below the two clones. The location of the center is not important since we'll snap it all together later.

Step 5: Start rotating the group. While holding the left mouse button, click on the right mouse button once to enter duplicate mode (the mouse cursor will show a "+" next to it). Hold the control key to constrain the rotation to 15 degree increments and rotate until the property bar reports an angle of 60 degrees. Finish the rotation by letting go of the left mouse button.

Step 6: Press ctrl+d 4 times to duplicate the shape. You should now have 6 groups pointing in each of the 6 directions of the snowflake. With snapping turned on, snap each of the groups together. It is important that the curves are snapped together correctly so that the final shape can be easily closed.

Step 7: Now for the fun part, any changes you make to the master line (the black line) will be repeated in each of the snowflake points. You can do anything you like to the master line, but do not move the first or last point, doing so may make it difficult to close the final shape.

Switch to the shape tool and start editing!

The shape isn't fillable yet, so you can use the smart fill to create a closed shape (alternatively, you can use the join curves docker in X5). Once you have a closed shape, you can start adding your own vector stylings to it.

For those interested in how the above image is created, here's a breakup of the shapes used to create it:

Have fun!

Draw X5: A few features you may not know about!

Hendrik Wagenaar — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:30:00 GMT

Every version, there are a few features which don't make it to the back of the box, and because of this, you may never know they exist. I'll go through a few of the lesser known features here.

Node Size

These days, High DPI monitors are becoming more and more popular and as a result it may be harder to select nodes when using the shape tool (really, it's the monitor, not my eyes). Well, in X5 you can now increase the node size. In the menu, go to "Tools", "Options", navigate to the "Edit" page. There you'll find a control to select small, medium and large node sizes.

Freehand Tool

As you may know, the curves drawn by the freehand tool have been improved for X5. A few other improvements were added too:

Holding shift allows you to erase a portion of the curve, this has been improved over X4.
While drawing with the left mouse button down, you can hold the right mouse button to reposition the whole curve. This already worked for many tools, but didn't previously work for freehand.
There is a new control on the toolbar which makes the bounding box not show after a curve is drawn. I find this very handy.

You can also hit backspace now while drawing with the polyline tool to erase the last line or curve segment.

2-Point Line Tool

You're probably wondering why you need another way to make straight lines, after all, you can do it with 3 or 4 other tools already. The real power of the 2-point line tool is the tangent and perpendicular modes. When you select the 2-point line tool, you'll find three buttons on the toolbar that look like this:

The first mode is a regular line tool, the second mode allows you to draw perpendicular lines off of curves, and third mode allows you to draw tangents off of curves. Try this:

draw a circle
switch to the 2-point line tool and select the tangent mode
using the 2-point line tool, click and drag on the edge of the circle
now while still hold the left mouse button down, drag anywhere on the page

As you can see, the line keeps itself tangent to the circle. This can be useful to many types of drawing which require precision.

There are a couple of useful modifier keys:

Ctrl - this will constrain the line angle to the current angle
Shift - this will constrain the line angle to the initial angle

3-Point Curve Tool

The 3-point curve tool has learned a couple of new tricks:

Holding shift while placing the third point will keep the parabola symmetrical.
Holding ctrl while placing the third point will create a circular arc instead of a parabola

Great for making crescent moons.

1-Shot Eyedropper

Perhaps my favourite secret tool is the 1-shot eyedropper. Try this:

Draw any shape
Press ctrl+shift+e
Click anywhere (hopefully on a colour)

The shape is now filled with that colour and you're back to your last tool. The 1-shot eyedropper can be used in several places where it is sometimes difficult to eyedrop a colour, for example, you can use it when you have a colour node in the interactive gradient selected, or when you have a mesh node selected. If you prefer to access the tool as a button, you can find it on the mesh toolbar, which you can customize to other locations if you desire.

Segment Delete

While node editing a curve with the shape tool, you can now delete a line or Bezier segment of the curve by clicking on the segment and pressing the delete key (requries SP1).

Virtual Segment Delete

The VSD tool has been completely rewritten for X5-SP1. Many of the errors that you may have encountered in the past are gone and the tool is much more accurate. The tool also has a few new tricks:

Holding alt and dragging will draw a marquee curve. Any virtual segment which intersects that curve will be deleted.
Often after deleting segments, you may want to join nodes. Holding shift enters node welding mode. If you hover over two overlapping unjoined nodes, the cursor will change indicating that you can join those nodes by left clicking.
You can hold shift and drag a marquee rectangle over several overlapping nodes to join them all at the same time.

Customizable Drawing Scale Control

If you work with scale a lot, you may find the drawing scale control helpful. You can find it by searching for "Drawing scale" in customization.

Antialiased Pattern Fills

In previous versions, Draw's pattern fills were not very useful because they didn't antialias. Now in X5, the pattern fills finally look good.

Nice!

That's it for now. Enjoy.

Creating Color Palettes

StephenM — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:31:00 GMT

Background

Color palettes in CorelDRAW are implemented using external files that hold all the color information for the palette. Prior to version X5 these files were stored in a proprietary binary format with a .cpl extension. In X5 they were changed to an XML format so that they are more readable and extensible. While you can create a palette entirely through the user interface of CorelDRAW or Corel PHOTO-PAINT, there are scenarios where you may want to create one from existing data from a spreadsheet such as a vendor color swatch book data, thread color data, etc. This article describes the new format and give some information how you can create one yourself.

Location

The color palette file is a completely standalone XML file. This allows it to be easily added to the appropriate folder to be use in both CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT without any other changes. The applications look in two main locations for their palettes: the installed subfolder called Color\Palettes and the user's My Palettes subfolder in their Documents folder.

Palettes from the install folder cannot be changed by the user from within the application and appear under the "Palette Libraries" section in the Color Palette Manager docker. If you wish to place your palette here, you need to have the appropriate rights to modify this folder.

User palettes from the My Palettes subfolder are modifiable by the user and show up in the "My Palettes" section in the Color Palette Manager docker. To help you get acquainted with the new file format, you may wish to browse through the installed palettes and see how they are structured. Double clicking on the XML file should open in the default application (like Internet Explorer) where you can view it.

The next section describes the new format in detail, if you want to get right to creating your own palette from existing data you can skip to the "Creating a Color Palette From Existing Data" section below.

XML Format

High Level Overview

The XML format has a root palette element under which is all the data. On the palette element are attributes that describe the palette itself like its name, unique GUID identifier, etc. Under this element there are three main sub elements: colors, colorspaces, and localization.

The colors node define the actual color swatches that appear in the palette. The colorspaces node define the various color space models that the colors can use. Supporting translated text names is done through the use of the localization node. The file snippet below gives an example of this structure.

<? version="1.0" ?>
<palette name="Example Custom Palette" guid="ec120aef-24cf-42dd-ad25-491ea640e171">
    <colors>
        ...
    </colors>

    <colorspaces>
        ...
    </colorspaces>

    <localization>
        ...
    </localization>
</palette>

Next we'll dive in for a more detailed description of each element.

Palette Element

The palette element can have the following attributes:

guid - global unique identifier for the palette [required]
name - visible name for the palette [optional]
resid - resource identifier used if localizing the palette names [optional]
prefix - common color prefix used in the search color dropdown [optional]
locked - 'true' meaning the palette is locked and prevents user edits [optional]

The guid attribute defines the globally unique identifier that identifies this palette. It must be different for each palette. You can create a GUID using a 3rd-party tool, or website like http://www.guidgenerator.com/.

As the name suggests, the name attribute is the display name for the palette. If you want to have this palette display a name in the application's localized language, then you can use the resid attribute instead. This takes a GUID for a value and uses it to lookup in the localization section for the actual text to display. This will be discussed more when we get to the localization section.

The prefix attribute is used if the color names all have a common prefix that you want to allow the user to not have to type in the search color dropdown in the color dialog. For example, if all colors begin with a company name, setting this as the prefix means the user won't need to type it each time they do a search.

Finally, the locked attribute indicates whether or not the palette is locked to user changes. If the palette is stored in the installed folder, then this attribute should be set to true since the palette cannot be changed anyways. If it is in the user folder, then it gives you the flexibility to enable/disable edits.

Here is an example palette element with its attributes.

<palette name="Example Custom Palette" guid="ec120aef-24cf-42dd-ad25-491ea640e171" prefix="ACME" locked="true">

Colors Element

The colors element is the main section that defines all the color swatches that are displayed on the palette. The layout of the colors in the file can be done in two different ways: place all colors in a single page element or group them into multiple page elements. The later would be used to correspond to actual vendor swatch book pages.

If all the colors are listed on one page element you may wish to assign a width which would break up the palette into rows accordingly when the palette is displayed in the color dialog. This can be done by setting the width attribute on the page element. The default width if it is not set is 8 swatches per row.

If the colors are broken up into several pages then each page is displayed as a row in the color dialog. The advantage of doing it this way is that individual pages can have different number of colors to match the same layout of a swatch book of colors.

The example below shows all the colors listed on a single page with default width of eight swatches per row in the color dialog.

<colors>
    <page>
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0,0,1" />
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0,0,0.9" />
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0,0,0.8" />
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0,0,0.7" />
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0.6,1,0" />
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0.4,0.2,0" />
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0.2,0.2,0.6" />
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0.2,0.2,0,0" />
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0.4,0.4,0,0" />
                    ...
    </page>
</colors>

Color Element Element

Within the page element is a list of color elements where each element represents a color swatch displayed in the palette. The attributes of the color element are as follows:

cs - color space of the color [required]
tints - comma separated tint values for each color channel in the range 0.0 to 1.0 [required]
name - visible name of the color [optional]
resid - resource ID for the localized color name [optional]

The cs attribute defines the color space for the color. This can be any of the predefined color spaces or can refer to a custom color space that is defined in the color spaces section in the file. The predefined color spaces supported are the following: CMYK, CMY, RGB, sRGB, AdobeRGB, HSB, HLS, YIQ, LAB, Gray, Hexachrome or Registration.

In conjunction with the cs attribute is the tints attribute. This is a list of comma separated floating point values from 0.0 to 1.0 where each value represents the tint value for one of the channels in the color space. The number of tints required will vary depending on the color space used. CMYK, for example, needs four tints one for C, M, Y and K, whereas LAB only needs three. If the color space is a custom color space only one tint is required.

For example, the element below defines a CMYK color with tints C=0.2, M=0.4, Y=0.0, K=0.4.

<color cs="CMYK" tints="0.2,0.4,0,0.4"/>

Defining a color from the Gray color space only requires one tint, for example,

<color name="50% Black" cs="Gray" tints="0.50"/>

The next example shows how to define a color that uses a custom spot color space with the tint of that one channel set to 1.0.

<color cs="MySpotColor" tints="1.0"/>

Similar to the palette element, a color element can have a name attribute or resid attribute. The name attribute is the display name that is used for the color. If the resid attribute is defined it will lookup the appropriate name from the localization section for the current user language that the application is using. This will be discussed in more detail when we cover the localization section.

Color Spaces Element

As described above, colors defined in the palette each refer to a color space model that they are using. This can be one of the predefined color spaces (CMYK, CMY, RGB, sRGB, AdobeRGB, HSB, HLS, YIQ, LAB, Gray, Hexachrome or Registration) or a custom color space. If you want to define your own custom color space like a spot color for a particular ink or thread color then you can define it in the color spaces section of the palette. If all the colors in the palette can be described using one of the predefined color spaces then the color spaces element is not needed.

The colorspaces element has no attributes itself but is simply a collection of individual colour space elements. Each colour space element, cs, defines the color space using various predefined color space representations. The snippet below gives an example of a few of these color space elements.

<colorspaces>
    <cs name="MySpotColor1" fixedID="1">
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0,0.58,0"/>
        <color cs="LAB" tints="0.9227,0.480039215686275,0.714196078431373"/>
        <color cs="RGB" tints="0.968627450980392,0.92156862745098,0.490196078431373"/>
    </cs>
    <cs name="MySpotColor2" fixedID="2">
        <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0,0.7,0"/>
        <color cs="LAB" tints="0.9168,0.478470588235294,0.757450980392157"/>
        <color cs="RGB" tints="0.968627450980392,0.913725490196078,0.384313725490196"/>
    </cs>
        ....
</colorspaces>

Color Space Element

A color space element, identified by a unique name, is typically used for spot colors, though can be used for process colors if required. The definition holds all the various ways to describe the color using the predefined colour space like RGB, CMYK, LAB, etc. The color space element has attributes that describe the color space as follows:

name - name of the color space [required]
fixedID - color space numeric identifier [required]
process - true meaning the color space defines a process color; false (default) meaning the color space defines a spot color [optional]

The name attribute defines the unique name for this color space. This is not a translatable name since it identifies the color space. Typically it will be the unique spot color name from a particular vendor.

The fixedID is an integer that uniquely identifies this color in this palette. It is used when storing spot color in the CDR file format and is therefore required. Note, if colors are added later to the palette, it is important that the existing fixedIDs do not change as CDR files may still be referencing them.

By default if the process attribute is not set, the color space will be treated as a spot color space definition. If the attribute is set to true it treats it as a process color space.

Color Elements for a Color Space

Each color space will list one or more color definitions. These describe the color space under various color models. For example, the MySpotColor color space defined below is described using CMYK, LAB and RGB color models.

<cs name="MySpotColor" fixedID="1">
    <color cs="CMYK" tints="0,0,0.58,0"/>
    <color cs="LAB" tints="0.9227,0.480039215686275,0.714196078431373"/>
    <color cs="RGB" tints="0.968627450980392,0.92156862745098,0.490196078431373"/>
</cs>

These colors declare a color space model using the cs attribute. This color space must be from one of the predefined color spaces: CMYK, CMY, RGB, sRGB, AdobeRGB, HSB, HLS, YIQ, LAB, Gray, Hexachrome or Registration.

The other attribute for the color element is the tints attribute. As described earlier, this is a comma separated floating point series of 0.0 to 1.0 values representing all the channels for the particular color space. For example, if the color space is RGB, there will be three values one for R, G and B. If CMYK there will be four. The example above illustrates how to represent a spot color using three different color models: CMYK, LAB and RGB.

This may seem unnatural at first to set the channel values in a 0.0 to 1.0 range since we are used to seeing values in other ranges. This approach, however, simplifies all representations to a consistent range without losing any accuracy. We'll discuss this more later when we discuss how to convert your data into this format.

Localization Element

The last main section in the color palette file is the localization element. This element is optional but gives you the ability to localize all text in the file like the palette name and color names that are displayed in your palette. Instead of defining a name attribute for those elements, you define a resid attribute which stands for resource identifier. This is a GUID (globally unique identifier) that will uniquely define the resource text. Just like the palette GUID, you can create one using the http://www.guidgenerator.com/ website.

The example below shows the palette element with the resid attribute defined:

<palette guid="cccd19cb-4675-4a5e-8bda-d0bbbaab8af0" resid="38ab6302-92be-4839-85fa-ca2cff330fa4">

The next example shows how to define the resid attribute for a color element.

<color cs="CMYK" tints="0.2,0.4,0,0.4" resid="d886df8f-3914-46ad-8d99-e03fc2cc8a93" />

The localization element, then declares an entry for each of these resources identified by their matching id attribute. For example, the palette name and color name referenced above are defined below in different languages are supported.

<localization>
    <resource id="38ab6302-92be-4839-85fa-ca2cff330fa4">
        <EN>CMYK palette</EN>
        <BR>Paleta CMYK padrão</BR>
        <CS>默认 CMYK 调色板</CS>
        <CT>預設 CMYK 色盤</CT>
        <CZ>Výchozí paleta CMYK</CZ>
        <DE>Standard-CMYK-Palette</DE>
        <ES>Paleta CMYK predeterminada</ES>
        <FR>Palette CMJN par défaut</FR>
        <IT>Tavolozza CMYK predefinita<IT>
        <JP>デフォルト CMYK パレット</JP>
        <KR>기본 CMYK 팔레트</KR>
        <MA>Alapértelmezett CMYK paletta</MA>
        <NL>Standaard-CMYK-palet</NL>
        <PL>Domyślna paleta CMYK</PL>
        <RU>Палитра CMYK по умолчанию</RU>
        <SU>CMYK-oletuspaletti</SU>
        <SV>Förvald CMYK-palett</SV>
        <TR>Varsayılan CMYK Paleti</TR>
    </resource>

    <resource id="d886df8f-3914-46ad-8d99-e03fc2cc8a93">
        <EN>Grape</EN>
        <BR>Uva</BR>
        <CS>葡萄紫</CS>
        <CT>葡萄色</CT>
        <CZ>Tmavě modrá červeň</CZ>
        <DE>Traube</DE>
        <ES>Uva</ES>
        <FR>Raisin</FR>
        <IT>Vinaccia</IT>
        <JP>グレープ</JP>
        <KR>포도색</KR>
        <MA>Otellókék</MA>
        <NL>Druif</NL>
        <PL>Jagodowy</PL>
        <RU>Виноградный</RU>
        <SU>Rypäleensininen</SU>
        <SV>Blåviolett</SV>
        <TR>Üzüm</TR>
    </resource>
</localization>

The languages use a two letter language code as follows:

EN - English
BR - Brazilian
CS - Chinese Simplified
CT - Chinese Traditional
CZ - Czechoslovakian
DE - German
ES - Spanish
FR - French
IT - Italian
JP - Japanese
KR - Korean
MA - Hungarian
NL - Dutch
PL - Polish
RU - Russian
SU - Swedish
SV - Finnish
TR - Turkish

That's it for the XML format descirption. Attached to this article is an XML schema file that describes the file format which you can use to validate your palette using an XML validate. Note: the file has a .txt added so that the blog would accept the file. Just remove this before using.

Next we'll describe how to create one of these palettes from a spreadsheet of existing color data.

Creating a Color Palette From Existing Data

If you have existing color data stored in a spreadsheet, it is relatively easy to use this to generate the color palette using the attached perl script. This script expects the data to be in a particular layout which you will need to do within the spreadsheet program. Then just export the spreadsheet as a tab-separated text file and run the perl script on it to create the XML color palette.

The snippet below shows example color data lined up in the columns expected. Note, this example has been padded with spaces to visually line up for ease of reading, but the perl script expects only one tab per column which is what you will get when exporting a spreadsheet of column data as a tab-separated text file.

Example Custom Palette
ACME
ec120aef-24cf-42dd-ad25-491ea640e171
Spot
Header info

Page IndexOnPage ColorSpaceID ColorSpaceName DescriptiveName   L*    a*     b*   R    G   B C M Y   K
1         1             1         ACME 111     Light Yellow 92.27 -5.59 54.12 247 235 125 0 0 58 0
1         2             2         ACME 112     Medium Yellow 91.68 -5.99 65.15 247 233 98 0 0 70 0
1         3             3         ACME 113     Yellow        90.63 -6.18 91.38 249 230   0 0 0 95 0
1         4             4         ACME 114     Dark Yellow   89.36 -4.46 98.02 249 225   0 0 1 100 0
1         5             5         ACME 115     Tan           73.26 -1.01 81.58 203 179   0 5 10 100 15
1         6             6         ACME 116     Medium Tan    65.16 -0.51 73.05 179 157   0 7 13 100 28

Step 1 - Get the Data in the Correct Layout for the Script to Understand

The first few lines correspond to the attributes of the palette element in the XML file as described earlier.

Line 1 - PaletteName
Line 2 - Color prefix name
Line 3 - Palette GUID

Line 4 - Spot or Process
The colors in a palette can be defined as spot or process colors. If this line reads Spot they will all be treated as spot colors. If it reads Process they will all be treated as process. Once the palette is created, individual colors can be changed from spot to process and visa-versa by adding/removing an attribute on the colorspace definition.

Line 5-6 Extra header lines
Any extra custom data can be placed here. The perl script ignores these lines and they will not be shown in the application.

Line 7 - Column Headers
The perl script looks for these headers to know which columns have which data. Supported data for each color include:

Page
The swatch book page where the color is found. This is used to match vendors actual swatch books. If it is not needed, then all colors can be placed on page 1.

IndexOnPage
The color's index on the page. Again this corresponds to the swatch book page. If there is only one page then each color just needs to have a unique index.

ColorSpaceID
Unique integer representing the color space ID. This is a reference number used to look up the color in the palette. Once set, this number cannot be changed from version to version.

ColorSpaceName
Name of the unique color space. This is typically a vendor's product code representing the unique color. If no descriptive name is given, this is used as the visible name for the color.

DescriptiveName
Name of the color as it appears in the application in the status bar and tooltips.

L* a* b*
Three sequential columns of the L*a*b* definition for the color space.
L* [0..100]
a* [-128..127]
bb* [-128..127]

R G B
Three sequential columns of the RGB definition for the color space.
R [0..255]
G [0..255]
B [0..255]

C M Y K
Four sequential columns of the CMYK definition for the color space.
C [0..100]
M [0..100]
Y [0..100]
K [0..100]

sR-255 sG-255 sB-255
Three sequential columns of the sRGB definition for the color space.
R [0..255]
G [0..255]
B [0..255]

aR-255 aG-255 aB-255
Three sequential columns of the Adobe RGB definition for the color space.
R [0..255]
G [0..255]
B [0..255]

Note: not all color models per color need to be defined, but if they are it will add them to the color space definition. When creating the color space definitions it will convert values from these ranges to the 0.0 to 1.0 range. This is typically done by dividing by the upper range value. For Lab values a and b, it also offsets the value since these can be negative. You can have a look in the perl script to see how it is done.

Step 2 - Generate the XML Palette File

The palette xml file is generated using the attached perl script that parses the given palette text file to produce the XML file. Note: the attached file has .txt added to the name so that the blog would accept the file in the post. Just remove this from the name before using. A perl interpreter needs to be installed on the machine in order to use the script. One interpreter that is available on the web is called ActivePerl and can be found at http://www.activestate.com/activeperl.

From the command line run:

perl CreatePaletteXmlFromTxt.pl CustomPalette.txt CustomPalette.xml

This will convert the input text file CustomPalette.txt to the XML palette file CustomPalette.xml.

Step 3 - Placing the File

For the new palette to be part of the installed application, it can be placed anywhere under following folder:

<<Install Folder>>\Color\Palettes

Under this folder you can organize the palettes into subfolders as needed and this organization will be reflected in the user interface. Once placed, the palette will be available through the Color Palette Browser docker in both CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Alternatively, if placed under the user's My Palettes folder in their Documents folder it will appear as a user palette in the applications.

Step 4 - Palette Lists (Optional)

There are several places where a short-list of commonly used palettes is displayed. For example, the Window-->Palettes menu, the interactive fill tool property bar with uniform fill selected, and the convert to paletted dialog. This list is predefined based on the region from which that the user is running. The list is found in the XML file:

<<Install Folder>>\Config\ColorPalettes.xml

The new palette can be added to this list by adding a new palette entry in the appropriate region with the GUID identifier used in the palette XML file. The palette name will be retrieved from the palette itself.

That's it! You should now be able to generate your own color palettes from existing data.

Article: Creating Patterns like Escher: Part 2

Hendrik Wagenaar — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:30:00 GMT

Creating Patterns like Escher: Part 2 builds on Creating Patterns like Escher. This time we demonstrate how to set up several square grid configurations including the one Escher used to create the following pattern:

Article: Creating Patterns like Escher

Hendrik Wagenaar — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:11:00 GMT

Please check out Creating Patterns like Escher for a technique to create interesting interlocking patterns in CorelDRAW.

Creating web graphics for a star-rating control in CorelDRAW X5

Hendrik Wagenaar — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:51:00 GMT

I recently started creating a web page where I needed a rating control similar to the one you see at the top of this page. I found this great tutorial at KomodoMedia which demonstrates the html and css code behind this type of control. I decided to base my rating control on this, but I wanted to change the look of the stars a bit, enter CorelDRAW.

The KomodoMedia star control requires an image with 3 stars stacked on top of each other, similar to:

I need to make something similar to the above image, only snazzier . The first step is to create the right kind of document. For this task, the default web preset will work just fine. It sets all of the units to pixels, chooses RGB for colours and defaults the view mode to pixel mode. The width and height are not important to me since I'll only be exporting a portion of the page anyway. The DPI isn't really useful for web work, it is really only used when I want to use units other than pixels (e.g. 1"x1" rectangle). I won't be doing this so I'll leave this at the default 96 dpi.

This first thing you may notice after you create your document is that it isn't zoomed to page. This is due to the view mode being pixels and the default zoom being 100%.

When the view mode is set to pixels, a 100% zoom means that 1 pixel in your document represents 1 pixel of your final output. This can be useful. If you want to see what the final output will look like, you simply zoom to 100%. What you get is a pixel perfect vector WYSIWYG environment.

I've decided that I want each of my stars to fit within an 18x18 pixel box, so I'll begin by creating some layout rectangles. These will give me a visual indication of the bounds, and when I export I'll use them to define the padding around my stars, more on this later.

It doesn't matter where in the document I create the rectangle.

Since I need 3 stars on top of each other, I duplicated the rectangle (ctrl+d). To place the second rectangle, I grabbed the top-left corner of the duplicate and snapped it to the bottom-left corner of the original rectangle. Repeat this again for the third rectangle. I gave each of the three rectangles a different colour so that I could easily see where each star needs to go. Since I didn't want the rectangle colour to interfere with my design too much, I selected all three rectangles, held control and clicked the white swatch in the palette a few times to subdue the colour of the rectangles.

At this point, I grouped and locked the rectangles so that they wouldn't get in the way.

Now I start creating the stars. For the star creation, it may be easier to work in "Enhanced view mode", I'll switch back to pixel mode to do the final tweaking.

create the star
using node edit tool, expand the inside nodes a bit
rotate a bit
add a gradient fill - yellow to light orange
change outline colour
duplicate and shrink the star (I resize the original star, while I hold control+shift, then click right mouse to put it in duplicate state)
remove outline on smaller star and fill with white
use gradient transparency tool to make the bottom of the inner star transparent

I opted to simply make the hover star a larger copy of the normal star. The empty star is just the normal star without the fill and white highlight.

So how does this all look like in pixel mode? I flip pixel mode back on and check it out.

Not too bad, but I've clearly messed up on my centering. The top star has two padding pixels on each side, which is perfect, but the middle star has three padding pixels above it, and one below it. This is easy to solve, while in pixel mode and zoomed in to a point where the pixel grid is visible, nudging with the keyboard's up/down/left/right keys will nudge by half of a pixel. I select the middle star and it's highlight, and press the up key once.

Perfect!

I'm happy with my stars now, so I select the group of three rectangles, unlock them, and remove the fill by clicking the no-fill swatch in the palette. I want to keep the rectangles around because they will force the correct padding around my stars when I export. While still in pixel mode, I zoom to 100% now to see the size in actual pixels, this is how the stars will look when I export.

I select everything, click "Export" and select png.

And here's the final image:

And here's an image of how the final control would look on a web page:

Why do this with a vector app? Simple, because it is non-destructive. When I look at my final output, I may think that the stars are too orange, or the large star isn't big enough, or I need the whole control to be 25 pixels high instead of 18. Making these types of changes are trivial with vector graphics, and with pixel mode we can easily see exactly how the final output will look as we make the changes.

Custom add-ons and dockers in CorelDRAW - What has changed in X5?

Hendrik Wagenaar — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:48:00 GMT

Here's some updated information to help port dockers from X4 to X5 or create new dockers in X5:

http://coreldraw.com/blogs/insider/pages/x5-custom-add-ons-and-dockers-in-coreldraw-what-has-changed.aspx

How to create custom Outline Enhanced Pattern styles in Corel DESIGNER

claudep — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:29:00 GMT

This article describes how to do it, step by step:

Custom Outline Enhanced Pattern styles

Have fun!

How to Match Adobe and Draw/Paint color on Display and Output

Matt Don — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:27:00 GMT

The first step is to choose what profiles you want to use for you RGB and CMYK working color spaces, and the profiles for your peripherals (monitor, printer, etc). Make sure these are available in a known location on your hard-drive or better yet, copy them to the OS's color folder so that all applications can see them.

If you are not sure what color profiles to use, Adobe RGB is a good all around profile to use for the RGB working space as it is well suited for both printed output and photo editing. For a CMYK working space it is probably best to stick with one of the industry standard CMYK spaces for your region. In Europe this may be the standard ISO_Coated or ISO_Uncoated profile... for North America you might use one of the SWOP based profiles like US Web Coated (SWOP) v2 or US Sheetfed Coated. For the purposes of this tutorial I’ll use Adobe RGB for the RGB working space and US Web Coated (SWOP) v2 for the CMYK working space.

Color profiles are usually stored in the OS locations listed below:

Windows XP / Vista -> Windows/System32/spool/drivers/Color
Mac OS (ColorSync 2.6 or later) - > System Folder: ColorSync Profiles folder

**On the Mac, you may need to copy monitor profiles into a separate "Display" folder if there is one.

** Note ** If PhotoShop is on the same system, use the identical monitor profile in both Draw and Shop. If you are using the two apps on separate computers (or have different video cards, or monitors), you will need to create custom monitor profiles for each system in order to get the on-screen displays to match... even if the monitors are the same make and model the phosphors could be slightly different.

Matching Display
PhotoShop Color Setup (Illustrator is similar):

1. Set your monitor profile (PhotoShop uses the OS's device profiles).
PC version- Control Panel -> Display -> Settings tab -> click the Advanced button -> Color Management tab
-- Click the Add button so you can browse to where your desired Monitor profile is stored. If there is no profile selected, you will need to add one in order to match with Draw.
-- Click the Set as Default button
-- Click OK

Mac version - System Preferences -> Displays -> Color
-- If you have copied your profile to the correct folder you should be able to select it from this list

2. Set PhotoShop's color settings.
PhotoShop PC - Edit -> Color Settings
PhotoShop Mac - PhotoShop -> Color Settings
3. Enable the Advanced Mode checkbox. Newer versions will have a button called More Options instead of Advanced Mode.

4. Next you need to choose your RGB working space profile. Click on the RGB profile selection combo-box, scroll to the top of the list and select Load RGB. Now point to the location of your desired Internal RGB Profile (in this example I will use Adobe RGB since its installed into the OS color folder by default with Shop).

5. Next you need to choose your CMYK working space profile. Click on the CMYK profile selection combo-box, scroll to the top of the list and select Load CMYK. Now point to the location the CMYK printer Profile that you will be using for output (in this example I will use US Web Coated (SWOP) v2 profile).

6. For now, turn off the Color management policies for RGB and CMYK. This way the color won't be converted from any embedded profiles when the file is opened and cause the colors to appear different. If there is interest I’ll get into embedded profiles in a later tutorial as that subject can get a little complicated since the methods are quite different between Draw and Shop for the "Use Embedded profile" scenario.

7. Select the Adobe Color Engine.

8. Change the Rendering Intent to Perceptual.

9. Disable "Use Black Point Compensation" and "Use Dither" options, then click OK.

Draw/Paint Color Setup:
1. Start a new document.

2. Tools, Color Management, change the Color mode for effects to RGB.

3. Double click on the internal RGB icon (the RGB circles) and change the Rendering Intent to Perceptual.

Note -> It is recommended that you use the same color engine in both apps when possible. The only CMM that is common between Shop and Corel is ICM (Microsoft's CMM), or the Adobe CMM if you install it separately (free download from www.adobe.com). But even if you use the Adobe CMM in Shop and Kodak in Draw, you will see only a negligible difference and the printed output color values are extremely close... definitely acceptable.

4. Click on the profile selection combo-box for Internal RGB (under the RGB circles) and select the same profile used in PhotoShop (Adobe RGB in my example). If it's not in the list already, use the Get Profile from disk feature to browse to the profile location and install it.

5. Click on the profile selection combo-box for Separations Printer profile (under the left printer icon) and select the same profile we used for the CMYK working space in PhotoShop US Web Coated (SWOP) v2.

6. Click on the profile selection combo-box for Monitor profile (under the monitor icon) and select the same profile used in the OS Display settings (set in Step 1 of the PhotoShop color setup steps).

7. Enable the arrows from the Internal RGB icon to the Monitor icon. This will turn on monitor compensation. Adobe products are setup to do monitor compensation using the color profile set in the OS Display settings... so this is an unnecessary step in Shop.

8. Click the + button at the top of the dialogue to save the style.

9. Click OK.

You’re done! Both apps should now have matching display of RGB and CMYK colors on screen.

Matching display of Printer Simulation

If you want to see a simulation or "soft proof" of what your printed output is going to look like from Shop and Draw, there are a few more steps that you need to do.

PhotoShop Setup

1. View -> Proof Setup, select Custom.

2. For Device to simulate, choose the color profile for your printer that you wish to simulate. You should be able to find the color profiles on the driver disk that came with the printer. If not, contact the manufacturer.

3. Choose "Relative Colormetric" for the rendering intent and check the "Simulate Paper color" option, then click OK.

4. View -> Enable Proof colors.

If you want to turn printer simulation off, just click on View -> Proof colors once again.

Draw/Paint Setup

1. Tools, Color Management

2. Click on the profile selection combo-box for Composite printer profile (under the printer icon) and select the same profile used for proofing in Step 2 of the PhotoShop setup.

3. Turn on the arrow from the Internal RGB icon -> Composite Printer icon -> Monitor icon. This turns on printer simulation or "soft proofing".

4. Click OK.

If you want to turn printer simulation off, just turn on the arrow from Internal RGB to the Monitor icon again.

Matching Printed Output

Driver - based color management for printing

When printing, you will need to decide if you are going to let the printer handle color management or take control yourself and do the color management on the application side. If you are printing to non-postscript or GDI printers it might be easier to just let the printer handle the color management. For this "driver based" color management method, just make sure that you disable color management when printing from PhotoShop or Draw so that no double conversions take place that could degrade your colors.

In PhotoShop in the color management section of the Print dialogue just select the "Printer handles colors" option before you print.

In Draw or Paint, click on the Misc tab in the Print engine and uncheck the "Apply ICC profile" option before you print.

Note-> Each printer driver handles colors differently and may have different color management policies pre-set so it may be difficult to get the same output on different printers.

Application based color management

I prefer the control and predictability of application based color management on output. If you choose this route, make sure that you go the the Printer’s driver settings and disable any color management settings in there so no double conversion takes place. Each printer driver uses different terminology and settings so you may need to dig a bit before you find it. For example, for some Canon printer drivers you would to go to the driver settings, choose Advanced settings -> Color Settings -> Matching and select OFF.

When you print in PhotoShop select the "PhotoShop handles colors" option, and choose the correct color profile for your printer (if its not there you will need to find one and install it). Select the Perceptual rendering intent and disable Black Point compensation since Draw does not have this option. Note -> Draw should already be setup with the perceptual rendering intent from the Display matching exercise above... the main thing is that the same rendering intent is used in PhotoShop and Draw.

Choose the same printer profile in Draw's color management dialogue from the Composite printer profile selection combo-box. In Draw's print dialogue you should be able to see the printer profile being used when you go to the "Misc" tab. Ensure the Apply ICC profile option is checked before printing.

I hope you find this guide helpful!

Matt