Jeff Harrison's Daily Diversion

Fun with drawing a stickman

2012-01-17T21:29:00.001-07:00

Maybe you've seen this... or maybe not. It's kinda fun...

http://www.drawastickman.com/

Fun with CorelDRAW's Artistic Media Part 2

2012-01-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

Hi Reader,

Here's a video where I show how to create repeating chain links, using CorelDRAW's Artistic Media Brush.

Jeff

Fun with CorelDRAW's Artistic Media Part 3

2012-01-11T00:25:00.002-07:00

Hi Reader,

Here's a video where I show how to create repeating barbed wire, using CorelDRAW's Artistic Media Brush.

Jeff

Fun with CorelDRAW's Artistic Media Part 1

2012-01-09T00:20:00.002-07:00

Hi Reader,

Here's a video where I show how to create snowflakes, using CorelDRAW's Artistic Media sprayer.

Jeff

Setting custom icons to launch macros

2011-10-08T15:09:00.001-06:00

Many of you know about the power of macros, combined with CorelDRAW.

Assigning custom icons are a much faster way to launch them. That's why we almost always include them with our products.

Here's a quick video showing how I do it.

Alexander Penkin's LED 4 updated to version 5

2011-09-25T15:06:00.001-06:00

Hard to believe, but we're now at version 5 of this macro... :-)

Here's more info. The video shows version 4 for the moment, but most things in 5 work the same as version 4.

A few updates from version 4 are:

• code has been optimized = faster results.
• New LED Editor allows you to create many custom sizes for different LED's.
• It's now possible to save the "Count" result as a CSV file.

Update policy:
Version 5 is a FREE Upgrade for all Version 4 users. Access the installer through your Order History. After installing, you must enter your version 4 key into it again. Always keep your keys, treat them like money! Also, you need to re-assign an icon to run it, as LED 5 doesn't directly over-write version 4.

Version 5 is a Paid Upgrade for all Version 3 users.

Alexander Penkin's Cadtool 4 has been updated

2011-09-23T19:20:00.000-06:00

NEW! Sept 2011: Create trapezoids and parallelograms numerically...

More product info is here.

GDG Randomize-A-Tron is released

2011-09-11T16:49:00.001-06:00

Here's a macro that's lots of fun, and which makes complex changes easily for numerous items. Notice the wide variety of parameters that can be randomized...

GDG Quick Size is Released

2011-06-27T23:42:00.002-06:00

With this macro, you can replace your transformation docker and speed up your workflow.

It also includes many useful additional features:

no need to ever check a proportional box. Just enter a value where you need it, and press tab or enter.
hold shift to adjust shape size live with spin buttons.
SE (Size each buttons) - Sizes every item in selection in a batch.
2 convenient modes for copying shape size.
option to auto run macro at start-up of CorelDraw.
macro remembers form position on the screen.
modifiable value for increase / decrease spin buttons.
ability to round values to any decimal place.
quick change document unit.
World scale / Document scale view mode. View all sizes at once.

Compatibility Notes: Designed and tested in CorelDraw X5, but was tested by Jeff in CorelDraw X4. Tested in the English version of CorelDraw; it may of may not work in other language versions where commas are used instead of decimals.

Product page is here.

Publish Post

GDG Text Helper is released

2011-06-26T23:34:00.000-06:00

GDG Text Helper allows you to do some very creative things with text.

There are 2 main modules. You can change the optical alignment of text strings in one module. In the other module, change the fonts, colors, rotation etc per character, or per word.

Product page is here.

GDG Selection Buddy has been updated to version 1.3

2011-06-26T00:58:00.000-06:00

This macro has had various updates.

Select items throughout a page based on a selected item. The drop-down boxes allow for challenging selections.

Adding dimension and preserving interior appearance

2011-06-08T00:13:00.000-06:00

A challenge posed to me:

How does one add dimension to text or other shapes and yet preserve the appearance of the interior?

Here's one way :

Custom Icons with strange background colors

2011-04-25T18:42:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I've seen Custom Icons with intentionally strange background colors. Watch the animation for the easy way to make those area transparent in CorelDRAW.

GDG Decal Duplicates Plus is released

2011-03-27T16:34:00.000-06:00

This macro is intended for those who print decals, labels, or other items in quantity.

The first feature can duplicate a selection as many times as needed to fit it within a desired media space. It can rotate it to fit more as to prevent a large amount of wasted media. The macro performs this function very fast, even with very complex designs.

The second feature is for cost calculation. Set a price for an amount of media, and the macro will tell you know how many items fit in that area as well as calculate the cost each.

There's more info on the product page.

Here's a video showing it in action...

Filling a shape with other shapes

2011-03-21T23:19:00.000-06:00

Usually when people think of the term "nesting", they think about

birds
the production term when aligning objects in a practical fashion for output

While e-cut has an amazing powerful and affordable algorithm for doing the latter in CorelDRAW, I saw an interesting design challenge where I'd thought it might work.

The design challenge: fill a shape or some text with other bones, but they can't touch.

So... here are the results;: 2 of the critical features I'd requested make this possible:

nesting many shapes inside another shape
forcing the algorithm to nest, but never rotate shapes (Like you'd normally want for other situations)

Rebuilding a simple shape

2011-03-18T19:51:00.000-06:00

Here's how I'd rebuild a shape:

Deleting segments of curves using the Shaping tool in CorelDRAW X5

2011-03-18T00:50:00.000-06:00

In CorelDRAW X5, I learned the following from Hendrik, Corel Employee:

"X5 allows you to delete curve segments (click on the segment while using shape edit tool (F10), hit the delete key). The shape must be a curve though."

Forcing something to print from CorelDRAW

2011-03-13T12:16:00.002-06:00

Printing from CorelDRAW usually works out the way you hope. However, depending on the complexity of your artwork, and the stability (and type) of printer driver you're using, the final results may not be what you hoped for. I've found using devices with Postscript print drivers to be more reliable than PCL.

There's an option that's been in CorelDRAW for a long time - the ability to rasterize the ouput before sending into the print stream.

This basically flattens the whole job into a single bitmap per page and sends it down the line to your print driver.

The resolution you choose will determine the fidelity and details preserved in your artwork.

So, if your printer is hanging, freezing and a job simply won't print the way you expect... give it a try.

Pillow Embossing

2011-03-06T15:25:00.001-07:00

Here's some steps to make this as comfortable as a real pillow. :-)

Download the PDF file from here and follow along. Look for the green arrow on the page.

Note: for the different example below, I wrote on new layer (photo-PAINT calls them objects) before making the mask and merging that layer to background.

The Bevel Effect was last effect I had ran before recording movie. So, I pressed CTRL+F to run it again, and after inverting the mask, pressing CTRL+F run yet again.

Learn hotkeys, people!

Alexander Penkin's Cadtool 4 Updated

2011-03-02T11:48:00.001-07:00

For those who've dreamed of having numerous powerful CAD-like features in CorelDRAW, CADTool4 is a huge toolbox. It's amazingly affordable for the amount of functionality you get.

Several interesting improvements you might not have seen yet...

Alexander Penkin's Symmetrical 2 is released

2011-03-01T21:41:00.003-07:00

Here's an update to this innovative macro, which allows you to create various patterns using CorelDRAW.

Note: for CorelDRAW X4 or X5

Extract embedded images from MS Word files

2011-02-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's very handy to get images out of Word files at the original quality an proportions.

Seena wrote in the CNEWS Group:

Here's a way to extract any embedded images from any MS Word .DOC file. You'll need to have Open Office installed to do this (freeware).

Steps:

1. Open Open Office
2. Open the word doc
3. Save it as Open Office doc (It carries .ODT extension as opposed to .DOC)
4. Close it and close Open Office
5. Go the folder where you have saved it.
6. Rename the ODT extension to ZIP extension
7. You will be warned that the file will unusable. Ignore the warning and proceed.
8. Now you unzip it.
9. You will have all the files of the images in a sub folder named "Pictures".

Setting the stage

2011-01-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

If you're nervous about starting a new project (or feel "designer's block"), one of the ways to kill the fear is to at least get the information and images inside CorelDRAW. Such as:

When that's done, you can then make a background, scale and color text, and provide further treatments. A common requirement will be to knock out backgrounds of bitmaps using Photo-Paint.

Here's my result for this fictional poster:

Satin Finish

2010-11-15T19:56:00.007-07:00

A user in the public forums had an interesting question about how to create a satin/silk look.

Look for a video I had made early in the thread. Brian had an interesting idea that I also explored (the gold example).

Enabling the Old Export Dialogs for CorelDRAW X5

2010-11-14T19:52:00.002-07:00

For those that prefer the old-style export dialogs in both CorelDRAW and PHOTO-PAINT X5, here are the steps:

Close all Corel programs
Navigate to the folder shown below
Add an x to these file names

Then you can have fast and familiar access to parameters you need for your exports.
To revert to the new way, rename and remove the x's.

I like the idea of the new export dialog, but for X5 there are too many problems with it that slow down my work. Maybe X6 will address these concerns.

One downside of either way is that Draw X5 doesn't remember the last unit of export. In my case, I always want pixels, and need to explicitly keep setting that for every single export. Very impractical. It's one reason why I don't use X5 for real work yet.