Blurb: In this article we will start our review of the new Corel X5 Graphics Suite.

Well well. It has been just over two years and our friends at Corel have finally followed up their flagship version of CorelDraw to a new version, Dubbed X5 the new version carries on with the previous naming conventions of the last two versions. So you can be sentimental and call the new version CorelDraw 15 or go with Corel and call it X5. What ever you want to do is fine.
I have had the new version for the last 3 months and must admit the movement from Beta to Released candidate was welcomed. The one thing you can always count on with beta software is that it is a work in progress. And when it comes to software “work in progress “ means a lot of crashes.
The purpose of this article is to do a general review of the new release. In future articles we will be dissecting the new version feature by feature. So let us get started and let us review this new version.
As with any previous versions of CorelDraw the new version has more than one program that is included in the release. In this version Corel has included the following programs.

- CorelDraw® X5: Is a vector illustration and page-layout application, which meets the demands of today’s busy graphics professionals and graphics non-professionals.
- Corel PhotoPaint X5: Is a professional image-editing application, which lets you quickly, and easily retouch and enhance photos.
- Corel® PowerTrace X5: Is a powerful utility that lets you quickly and accurately convert bitmaps into editable vector graphics.
- Corel Capture X5: This one-click screen capture utility lets you capture images from your computer screen.
- Corel® CONNECT: This full-screen browser lets you peruse the suite’s digital content and search your computer or local network to quickly find the perfect complement for a design. Fully integrated, it is also available as a docker in both CorelDraw and Corel PhotoPaint.

Supporting applications that are also included

- Barcode wizard: The Barcode wizard lets you generate bar codes in a wide range of industry standard formats.
- Duplexing wizard: The Duplexing wizard helps you optimize your work for printing two sided documents.
- Bitstream® Font Navigator®: The Bitstream Font Navigator is an award-winning font manager for the Windows® operating system. It lets you manage, find, install, and preview fonts.
- SWiSH miniMax: This utility lets you quickly and easily create stunning interactive animations, banners, and more
- PhotoZoom Pro: This plug-in let’s you enlarge digital images and export them from Corel PHOTO-PAINT X5.

DVD Content

- More than 2,000 vehicle templates, half of which are new
- More than 350 professionally designed templates
- More than 1,000 additional OpenType® fonts, including 75 Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4) fonts
- A collection of more than 10,000 high-quality clipart and digital images

Documentation

- The documentation has been completely redesigned. The Guidebook introduces each application’s workspace and includes tips and techniques for users of all skill levels, in-depth tutorials, and insights from various industry experts
- Quick-reference card
- Help files

Training

- More than 2 hours of training videos on the DVD

Minimum system requirements

- Microsoft® Windows® 7, Windows Vista®, or Windows® XP, with latest service packs installed (32-bit or 64-bit editions)
- Intel® Pentium® 4, AMD Athlon™ 64 or AMD Opteron™
- 512 MB of RAM (1 GB recommended)
- 750 MB of hard disk space (1 GB for typical installation without content)
- 1024 °— 768 or better monitor resolution (768 °— 1024 on a Tablet PC)
- DVD drive
- Mouse or tablet
- Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7 or higher

As I have done in previous reviews I will break the new features down and categorize them via those found in each program. For instance any feature that is new to CorelDraw I will list as a new feature in CorelDraw. Those that are found in other programs such as say PhotoPaint will be categorized in PhotoPaint.
There are also features found in the new program that are found in all programs. Those will be indentified also in this review.

Across All Programs

Import Filters

File format compatibility
CorelDraw (A number of these filters are in PhotoPaint) now supports the ability to access over 100 file formats, including
JPEG, PNG, TIFF, RIF, CGM, AutoCAD DXF™, PLT, EPS, PDF Visio®, DOC, DOCX, RTF. With DOC and DOCX, text from all languages and formatting are better supported. The TIFF import filter provides greater compatibility with a variety of standard file compression methods and multipage files. (Note: a lot of times TIFF files are compressed to save space. If the file is compress and the CorelDraw does not recognize the compression than the file is rejected). In addition, imported Corel® Painter™ (RIF) files now retain embedded color profiles.

Encapsulated PostScript® (EPS) support
The EPS filter has been upgraded to support files created with PostScript® 3. When a file is exported using the EPS filter, the color integrity of objects that use the RGB color space are now preserved. You’ll also find that EPS files will export and print with brighter and more vivid colors.

Adobe® product support
In CorelDraw Graphics Suite X5 provides enhanced support for the latest Adobe® Illustrator®, Adobe® Photoshop®, and Adobe® Acrobat® products (CS4). You can import and export PSD files using the Adobe Photoshop file format, and CorelDraw X5 preserves the appearance of adjustment layers and Masks palette effects.
In addition, you can import and export PDF files, with support for Acrobat® 9, heightened security encryption, and Bates Numbering — including headers and footers. When you export a PDF using the Acrobat 9 file format, you can embed color profiles and define page size by object.

Updated Educational Features

The new suite has included in a lot of new educational features. The suite provides many learning aids including an upgraded guidebook and new video tools.

Guidebook:
The new guidebook has a number of tips included in it. The guidebook introduces each application’s workspace, and includes tips and techniques for users of all skill levels. With the popular Insights from the Experts, you can learn from graphic design professionals who use the suite regularly in such industries as jewelry design, book illustration, vehicle wrapping, and product packaging.

Upgraded Video tutorials:

Video tutorials provide a fast and fun way to learn how to get the most out of the suite. CorelDraw Graphics Suite X5 provides a new utility for watching the videos. You can also install the tutorials to your hard drive, which lets you access the tutorials without using the DVD.

Upgraded Create a New Document/Image dialog boxes

CorelDraw X5 introduces a Create a New Document dialog box, which provides a selection of presets for page size, document resolution, preview mode, color mode, and color profiles. For new users, the Description area clarifies the function of the available controls and settings. With Corel PhotoPaint X5, the Create a New Image dialog box has been updated to match its
CorelDraw counterpart. It also provides color information, such as color mode and color profile.

Updated Tooltips

For new users, the formatting of tooltips has been enhanced to improve readability and provide more information about each tool’s purpose.

Corel has increased the Colour Ability of CorelDraw Suite

CorelDraw Graphics Suite X5 makes it easier than ever to achieve accurate color representation every step of the way. Whether you’re importing a client’s mock-up, working with previous designs, or sending a project to a print shop or manufacturing facility, you can be certain that your colors are true.

Document/Image palettes

With both CorelDraw X5 and Corel PhotoPaint X5, a custom color palette is automatically created on the fly for each design project. The palette is saved with the file, which gives you quick access to this project’s colors in the future. This makes you workflow a lot cleaner and repeat jobs where you need to modify a file are easily with all the existing colours at hand.

New! Default Color Management Settings dialog box

For CorelDraw Graphics Suite X5, the color management engine has been completely redesigned. The new Default Color Management Settings dialog box lets you set default color profiles, policies, and rendering intents for each application. This new approach helps you easily achieve accurate color representation while also providing greater control for more advanced users.

Trace Program

Corel PowerTrace X5

Many Engravers are often faced with the challenge of reusing poor-quality bitmap images from business cards, brochures, signs, or other promotional items. You can now convert bitmaps into editable vector graphics and achieve smoother curves and more accurate results. This version of Corel PowerTrace produces the best
Trace results yet.

CorelDraw New Features

Enhanced! Application of sampled color

When you sample color with the Eyedropper tool in CorelDraw X5, the Apply Color mode is automatically activated so that you can immediately apply the sampled color to another object. You can also drag a color directly from one object to another.

New & Updated Drawing tools

Corel has added a couple of new and enhanced drawing tools. These tools include a B-Spline tool, an Object Coordinates docker, scalable arrowheads, enhanced Connector and Dimension tools, and the new Segment Dimension tool.
The B-Spline tool allows you to create smooth curves with fewer nodes than you typically see with curves drawn by using freehand paths. For maximum precision, the Object Coordinates docker lets you specify both the size of a new object and its location on the page.

Updated Mesh Fill tool
For many years the mesh tool has languished. In this new version the Mesh Fill tool now let us design multicolored filled objects with more fluid color transitions. With the new Smooth Mesh Color option on the property bar, you can achieve color transitions that retain color richness. The property bar now contains an eyedropper and a color picker that make it easier to select or sample color for the mesh that you are creating. Also, any colors added to the mesh nodes will now blend seamlessly with the rest of the object. The number of nodes per mesh object has also been greatly reduced to make the objects easier to manipulate. And, with the new Transparency Per Node option, you can now reveal objects behind individual nodes or patches in a mesh.

Updated Curve tools

When drawing with the curve tools, you can now show or hide the bounding box. This new update allows you to draw continuously without accidentally selecting the bounding box of a previously created object. In addition, you can specify the amount of space between joined curves. You also have multiple options for the type of join, including extending the curves to an intersection point, defining a radius to add between the segments, or defining a chamfer to add between the segments.

Color Palette Manager docker

The Color Palette Manager has been enhanced. It now makes it easier to create, organize, and show or hide both default and custom color palettes. You can create Web-specific RGB palettes or print-specific CMYK palettes. For optimal color consistency, you can also add third-party color palettes when working with multiple applications.

Round Corners

In previous version of CorelDraw you could create chamfered, scalloped, or round corners from the Rectangle property bar. Now in X5 when you stretch a rectangle, the rounded corners are preserved without distortion, and the original radius of a corner is maintained during scaling. Also in the rectangle tool, corners are now expressed in units of true radii, which make the rectangles easier to work with.

CorelDraw PhotoPaint X5 Tools

Objects docker:

In PhotoPaint Corel has updated the Objects docker. The Object docker helps you achieve greater workflow by being more efficient in organizing your design elements and by making commonly used features more accessible.
You are now able to use nested grouping when organizing a complex image, which facilitates round tripping between multiple applications.
Thumbnails of objects and masks have been improved and can be easily adjusted at any time.

Photo effects

In PhotoPaint you can experiment with exciting new photo effects included with Corel PhotoPaint X5. These new effects help you in modifying your photos. Tools such as the Vibrance effect re great for balancing color saturation. It can also add richness to colors with low saturation while maintaining colors with high saturation. The Grayscale effect is ideal for removing the saturation of an object, layer, or region of a photo. It also lets you choose the colors used in the grayscale conversion. The Photo Filter effect lets you simulate the result of having a camera lens filter installed when a picture was taken.

Convert to Grayscale dialog box

New to PhotoPaint is the Convert to Grayscale dialogue box. Corel PhotoPaint X5 now provides greater control when converting images to grayscale by letting you choose the range of colors used in the conversion. This eliminates results that appear washed out because of predominant blues or reds in the original photo. The new dialog box provides a preview window, which lets you adjust the colors to create a more realistic conversion.

Brushes and nibs

New to PhotoPaint is a new set of brushes and nibs. You can choose from a variety of new brushes and nibs that are included with Corel PhotoPaint X5

Lock Toolbars option

How many times have you accidently moved or deleted a toolbar? Toolbars are now locked in position by default so that you do not accidentally move them while selecting a tool. You can still choose to unlock them at any time and reposition them on the screen.

Windows® Touch support

Coming soon to a PC near you. If you purchase a new PC that recognizes gesture technology than CorelDraw will support this technology. You can navigate each application workspace by using finger gestures. Support for taskbar thumbnails lets you switch between open documents quickly.

Please note: I get asked a lot as to what is the difference between and upgrade version of CorelDraw and a Full version. The answer is nothing. The upgrade version is for those that have purchased a previous version of CorelDraw. The full version is for those that have not purchased the software before.
Here is the upgrade requirements from the Corel web site

To purchase the upgrade version, you must own a previous licensed version of:
• CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
• CorelDRAW (standalone)
• CorelDRAW Classic
• CorelDRAW Select
• CorelDRAW Graphics Suite – Special Edition
• Corel® PHOTO-PAINT™ (standalone)
• Corel DESIGNER®
• Corel® Painter™
• Micrografx Designer®
• Micrografx Graphics Suite®
• Micrografx® Picture Publisher® or Corel® Picture Publisher®
Note: Upgrade eligibility excludes academic, OEM and Not For Resale (NFR) versions. Corel products not listed above are not eligible for the upgrade version.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article was to give you a general overview of the new features that are found in the new release of Corel X5 Graphics Suite. As with previous versions Corel has tried to give each industry segment a couple of new features. As well you will see that each of the new programs CorelDraw and PhotoPaint have in total been given a number of new features. The new features in CorelDraw and PhotoPaint can be real time savers and can expand the way you create documents, edit photos and create or recreate artwork.
I must admit though that for me I do not see that one real compelling reason that they have managed to give us in previous versions. For example X4 gave us a better print merge function. X3 gave us trace and cutout lab. However X5 falls short in terms of features that I feel are geared to wards the awards and engraving industry. It is not to say that some of the new additions to the software are not features that can be beneficial to some users. The problem is that the features are not upgrades that can be used by all. Only by a few.

What the Font

CorelDraw X4 Review – WhatTheFont and the Search Function

You know one of the things I always do when I am eating is save the best for last. Thus I usually eat my vegetables first, starches second and meat last. The same can be said when I am doing reviews of software I will typically save the better parts to last. I will throw in some juicy parts but finish off with some real good ones. Although I still consider the improved print merge function in Corel X4 my favorite the last two items we will look at today can be pretty impressive.

In this article we will be reviewing two features that have been added to X4. The first is Corel’s support for the advanced search function in Vista. You can now assign meat data to your file and search for that data. The second is the integration of “What’s My Font” into CorelDraw. This utility try’s to identify your scanned font by measuring the font and given you a number of suggestions

Indentifying Fonts

One of the biggest problems that we face in our daily awards and marking lives is the constant crappy artwork that our customers insist on giving us. You know the ones “Yea I thought I would make your life easier so I downloaded the logo off our web site. You can use that right”? Ummm. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard that one.

If you have read some of my previous articles on redrawing logos you will know that the hardest thing to do when you have to redraw a logo is to match up the type style that was used in the font. Redrawing the so called “Non Text” part of a logo is usually easy. It is the text part that tends to be hard. It is always easier if you can type in the text rather than having to redraw it.

To make your graphic life easier X4 has introduced a link to “WhatTheFont”. This site was designed a while back to be able to make it easier for you to identify unknown text and figure out what font style was used to create it.

Now before we proceed with looking at this new feature and how you use it we need to first understand what are the requirements in regards to the type of image that needs to be passed to the “WhatTheFont” web site. The attached instructions were taken directly from the “WhatTheFont” web site.

“… WhatTheFont supports most common image formats, for example GIF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP. The maximum image size is around 360 x 275 pixels. The ideal letter height for the best search result is about 100 pixels. Try to get the text horizontal and make sure letters are not touching. WhatTheFont will only recognize uppercase and lowercase letters. For more tips and information, please see WhatTheFont Usage Notes. These are ideal scanned images for WhatTheFont. The characters are about 100 pixels in height and the baseline is horizontal. Click on an image to automatically upload it to WhatTheFont.

• The number of characters in your scanned image makes a significant difference in the accuracy of the search results.
  • Max components (characters): 50
  • If you are identifying a font that is very similar to others:
    • use as many characters as possible or a total of 25 and;
    • use characters that are unique to this font
• If possible, space the characters apart more than normal
• Max image size is 400,000 pixels (width x height)
  • ideal max. size of file containing NO descenders:
    1666 x 120 pixels
  • ideal max. size of file containing descenders:
    1250 x 160 pixels
• Scan images at 300 dpi

Best file format: Tiff, Grayscale, 300 dpi”

Now that we have a better understanding of what we need to make this technology work let us go to CorelDraw X4 and see how we do it.

It is actually quite easy to use the command in CorelDraw. To activate the command requires that we select it from the pull down list as per Figure 1

Figure 1

When you open up the command your cursor will turn into a circle. Once it has turned into a circle you can drag a selection box around the text that you want. Figure 2 shows that I have dragged a selection around some text that I typed in. Note: The text that I have created was originally artistic text that I converted to a black and white bitmap. The bitmap was saved at 300 DPI as per the instructions by WhatTheFont. The red box indicates that the box width is 534 pixels by 62 pixels. This is not ideal if we look at what is required for a good estimation. Ideally we need an image that is 166 by 120 pixels. This may not be an ideal bitmap but it will be a good test for us to try. It is important to review the measurement that comes up when we are creating our selection box.

Figure 2

Once have created the selection box the area you want will stay clear and the area around it will be grayed out. You can click in the box or press enter to accept the selection.

Figure 3

Once we have pressed enter or clicked inside the selection box the text image is automatically opened up in the WhatTheFont web site. Figure 3 shows the web page that comes up.

Figure 4

You will see from Figure 4 that each character is isolated into its own box. In this case the software algorithm has done a good job at estimating each character. The only character that has been missed is the” I” in the word “is”. What we have to do in this case is to fill in the “I” for the software. As your scans become worse you will find that you have to do this more often.

Once you have made sure that all the boxes are filled in you can you can click on the search button that is located at the bottom of the page. See Figure 5.

Figure 5

Once the button has been clicked the software will try and estimate the font that you are using. Figure 6 shows us final screen where our results are displayed. You can see that the software has provided us with the proper font. It has provided us with 5 possibilities that the font could be.

Figure 6

What about if we use a more obscure font? Figure 7 shows us a new font that we created in CorelDraw and converted to a 300 dpi black and white bitmap.

Figure 7

Next we can select our font and access the website. Figure 8 shows us that the WhatTheFont web site has made an estimated assumption on the text provided.

Figure 8

Figure 8 shows us that again TheWhatFont website has provided us with a good estimation of the font that we used.

As the last two examples have shown the WhatTheFont website has done a good job of estimating the font that we have used in our examples. The important point to make here is that we have used images that are of good quality and are clear. What about if our font is smaller in size in terms of the pixel size.

Figure 9 shows us a screen capture of the same arial font that we created earlier for our first example.  The one difference is that the capture is smaller in size.

Figure 9

Figure 10 shows us that that the web site has not done as good a job as it did on our first scan.

Figure 10

The one main conclusion that we can see is that your image has to be of proper size for the website to be effective at estimating your font. In CorelDraw if you want to make the image large just zoom in on the text. Figure 11 shows the same text that I used in Figure 9. The only difference with this image is that I zoomed in on the text and created a new selection (the text becomes bigger). Note: make sure that you do not zoom in too much as this will create an image that is too large.

Figure 11

It appears that the WhatTheFont software can do a good job for us at estimating those unknown fonts that come across our desk every day. The only problem I see is that a lot of us would use this tool is in trying to figure out fonts within logos. The problem with some text is that there are not enough characters in the scan. Or the text could have been modified. This modification can cause any job estimations to be less accurate.  The other problem is that the software wants 25 characters to make a proper estimation. Most logos do not come close to that number.

The examples I have used are perfect. Sometimes what happens in the real world is a little harsher in what it provides. A lot of logos we receive are of bad quality and do not provide adequate resolutions for us to maybe get a good estimation by the software on the web site.

Enhanced Windows Vista Integration

One of the new features that has been built into Windows Vista is the ability to search and categorize your hard drive. This search technology will read metatags that are saved with a file. For those that know me the one thing I always questioned Corel on was why they had included the ability to tag a file with user inputted text when you could not search for it. For example let us say that we save a file and that we did for the local High School called Local High School. It was a number of 7 by 9 plaques and they were used for the athletic awards.  When we save the file in CorelDraw we have the ability to type in some descriptive words that we can search later on. Figure 12 shows us this job for the local high School being saved.

Figure 12

Figure 12 shows us that there are two locations that I can place in searchable tags. The Red box indicates that I can place in a “Title”. The blue box indicates I can place in a “Subject” line. The green box allows me to rank the file.

Okay now that we have created some searchable tags let us see how Windows handles them. Open up Windows Explorer. Figure 13 shows us that I am searching for a file with a tag “Plaques” – see the green box. I purposely took out the word “plaque” in the file name. The red box shows the results of the search. The Blue box shows us the search area which is the directory “X4 Review”.

This is slick and will help when you are searching those couple of thousand files that you have on your hard drive. Just make sure that you get in the habit of placing in some “tags” that can be searched and give you a clue as to what is in the file.

Figure 13

Thumbnail Preview

One of the problems that we have had in previous versions of CorelDraw is the inability to be able to preview a Corel file within Windows Explorer. Many times I have gone to open a CorelDraw file from Explorer and had problems picking the proper file because I could not preview the contents of that file. With the new version of CorelDraw we can now preview the CorelDraw file from within Explorer. Figure 14 shows my CorelDraw files previewed within Windows Explorer.

Figure 14

One of the features from within Windows Explorer is the ability to change the size of the Thumbnail.  Figure 15 shows the drop down menu that allows me to change the size of the preview that I want to use.

Figure 15

The ability to see thumbnails of your files makes it a lot easier to find a file. There are so many times where I am testing and I have a number of files with similar names but I need one in particular. This file I can pick out a lot of times by just looking at the thumbnail.

The ability of CorelDraw to be able to supply searchable tags is a very welcome addition to the power of CorelDraw. If you create a lot of job files and want to make it easy to find those files later on than I would suggest that you place text within the job so that you can search it later on.

If you have been following my columns for the last number of years you know that I have preached the use of the print merge function. As far as I am concerned the one technique that most CorelDraw users fail to utilize is the print merge function. Personally I refuse to do an order for anyone unless they supply the names of everyone in a text file. Not only is it a pain in the butt when you have to type in each name, but you also have to spell check each one of those names. In some cases it takes longer to do the text input than it does to do the actual job.
One of the other big issues for a lot of us is that a lot of the people’s names are not names that we are use to spelling. Heck, even some of the standard names that we think of are spelled a number of different ways. This can create a couple of problems. One problem is we cannot rely on our knowledge of a name. My sister is a prime example. She spells her name Tiina not Tina. And trust me if you do not spell it right there can be grief bestowed on you very quickly. The last thing you want is an irate customer coming in at the last moment complaining that you spelled people’s names wrong. If you let your customer supply you with the names than any spelling error are their fault not yours.
Another reason that I like the print merge function is that it makes it easier to input a series of text. Traditionally in CorelDraw when we create a multiple we create a series of plates all with the same information duplicated across in a series of plates. We then have to go in and edit each plate changing the names in each plate individually. This is an acceptable way but introduces a lot of extra keystrokes. Extra keystrokes means more time which costs money. In this day and age labor has become one of our main costs in production. If we can save time ultimately this will save us money.

The print merge in CorelDraw was over hauled in Version 10 to be more of a wizard. This CorelDraw wizard took you through the steps of creating the print merge. The wizard has been tweaked a little over the last 3 versions. However a few nagging problems remained. The first was not knowing the data type of the merge field we were creating. Typically this field was text but Corel will also create a serial number for you and it is nice to know which field this is. Secondly and most importantly is once the merge is created we cannot alter any of the data in terms of position or condensing. It is the lack of condensing that has created a lot of issues for me when it comes to the merge function.
For example as we know the one main problem with CorelDraw is that it does not autocondense the same way a traditional engraving program does. This means that if we have a name that is a lot longer than our standard name it may print off the plate. This is not acceptable as any part of the name that falls outside the plate will not be engraved. This means that we will have a wasted plate. It would be nice to be able to condense these long names so that we would not have a wasted plate.

Print Merge in X4

Taking in these concerns that we expressed above Corel has made some good modifications to the print merge function in CorelDraw X4. Let us take you through a standard merge and see the changes that have been made.

Figure 1 shows a plate that I have created in CorelDraw. This plate is 1 by 3 in size and consists of two lines. These lines will appear in each plate that I create. The space that I have in the middle will be occupied by the merged line of text, which in this case will be a name.

Figure 1

To initiate a merge in CorelDraw we need to go to FILE | PRINT MERGE | CREATE/LOAD MERGE FIELD as per figure 2.

Figure 2

Figure 3 shows that we are presented with the opening screen of our merge wizard. We will first review a merge that we create. If we are creating our own merge text than we need to leave the wizard as it is in Figure 3 and click the “Next” button.

Figure 3

Figure 4 shows us the next window that we are presented with. In this window we need to create the fields that will hold the data that we create. In the case of this example we are creating one merge field so we need to create one field. I like to use a descriptive name when I am creating the field.  In this example I have used the word “Name” because I am creating a merge field of names. If it was a company position that I was creating such as “Salesperson” than I probably call it “Position”. First we need to type in the word “Name” into the “Text Field” as per the blue box in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Once the name has been typed in we need to click on the “Add” button as per figure 4. This will populate the middle window of our window as per the blue box in Figure 5. As you can see we can add a number of merge fields if we want to our merge wizard. Figure 5 also indicates that the Field Type is “Text”. Click the “Next” button to proceed to our next window.

Figure 5

Figure 6 shows that I can type in whatever data that I want in each field.  After you are finished typing in your data into each field press the “Enter” button to create a new record. Figure 6 shows us that I have created 8 records in my “Name” field.

Figure 6

Once you are done you can lick the “Next” button and then the “Finished” button. This will end the print merge wizard in terms of our data input. Figure 7 shows us that we have new tool bar that presents itself in CorelDraw. To insert a “Merge” field into CorelDraw requires that all we click on the “Insert” button as per the blue box in Figure 7. What is different in X4 versus previous versions of CorelDraw is that when you click on the “insert” button the field is automatically inserted and you do not have to deactivate the insert button.

FIgure 7

Figure 8 shows the field inserted into CorelDraw. You will notice that the field is called “Name” as that was the identifier that we used when we created the field.

Figure 8

Once the field has been inserted we can than change the font, text size and color as we see fit. Figure 9 shows that I have increased the font size and changed the font to Times Roman.

Figure 9

Once you have created your setup you can click on the “Print” button – green box in Figure 7. This will activate the print dialogue box. From this dialogue box we can then select the “Layout” Tab. From within this menu we can create out multiple plates via the imposition command.  To access this command click on the “edit” button located at the bottom right hand corner of the command window – see the red box in figure 10.

Figure 10

Within the imposition command we can tell the printer driver how many plates to place on the multiple. In this example we have used 8 by 12 –see the red box in Figure 11. For a more detailed discussion see my previous article on the imposition command.

Figure 11

Using the Merge to New Document

The one new important change in the print merge function is the “Merge to New Document”. This command is found in the merge toolbar as per the red box in Figure 7. As I mentioned in my introduction the problem with using the print merge is controlling the individual jobs after you have created the merge. Traditionally once the merge was done any “tweaking” of the job could not be done. Well X4 has solved this problem for us. Create the template job in Corel as you normally would. Next create your text as you would by using the print merge wizard.

Insert your print merge field as we did in Figure 9. Change the text, height and whatever attributes that you want. Once this is done you can click on the “Merge to new document” as per the red box in figure 7. Figure 12 shows us that CorelDraw will create a different page for each name that we import.

Figure 12

You will notice from Figure 12 that Page one has my name listed. If you go back and check out figure 6 you will notice that my name is also listed first. Figure 13 shows page 4. Check out figure 6 you will notice that the name is the same.

Figure 13

With all of the multiple plates on their own pages we can go in and resize the text, condense our text or whatever we want. Figure 14 shows our text increased in size and condensed. Slick!

Figure 14

To create our multiple plates all we need to do is to go to the print menu under FILE and use the imposition command. Note: I have typically used the label program in conjunction with the print merge function. This is fine and is still the way I do multiples when I am working with standard sizes of material.
Note: Although I have yet to reach this limit the limit for the number of pages that can be created in CorelDraw is 999. Thus if your multiple is going to be bigger than 999 names you will need to break up your job.

For years I have used the print merge function to create multiple plates and work with customer supplied text. It has saved me so much time. However when it came to people with long names it required me to do them as a separate job. This was done so that I could condense their names. Condensing these names allowed for their names to fit on the plate and allowed me to create the plate properly. The changes in X4 have eliminated the need to do these longer names in a separate job.  Mind you if Corel could condense …………..

The print merge function is a very powerful tool that is at your disposal. I have talked about this tool before and cannot stress the need to utilize this tool. It makes inputting a string of names into a job a lot easier. Also you can take a customer supplied list of names and have that list come in automatically and populate your job. This technique can save you so much time. The revised X4 print merge function has added a couple of important “tweaks” to the print merge wizard. The ability to condense individual lines on plates is an important feature and one that should convince you to maybe upgrade your Corel to X4

Now that we have defined what a centerline trace is used for let us review the tool by going through some samples. So get out your computer and fire up your new version of X4.

The quality of any vector conversion software can only be measured by comparing an original vector object to the traced image of that same object (we would take the vector object and convert it to a bitmap). Figure 1 shows us a logo that I downloaded off the web. This logo is a good quality vector image. The vectors are “clean”. You cannot draw this logo any better.

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows the logo in figure 1 converted to a black and white bitmap image. I have converted it to 300 dpi via the “convert to black and white” command that is found in CorelDraw under the BITMAP section. This image in figure 2 represents the best image that you could scan as long as the scanned artwork is of good quality.

FIgure 2

Figure 3 shows the traced logo (figure 1) on top of the original trace. As hopefully you can see in figure 3 the two traces match up perfectly. There is a few small minor “blemishes” but these are minor and not noticeable on most material.

Figure 3

X3 gave us the perfect outline trace tool that always provides a perfect and exact copy of our original scan. So what did X4 offer us? Well it offered us “center line” trace. Why is center line trace good for us? Well for rotary engravers it is somewhat considered the holy grail of scanning.  Typically rotary engravers would rather work with “stick” style images. Remember our discussion on fonts last month. Outlines are not always good and typically rely on  us having to place a fill inside the outline. Figure 4 shows us a zoomed in look of a vectored scan. This trace creates an outline trace. The problem here is that we cannot control the width of the engraving because it is an outline trace. A centerline trace would create a single line and thus allow us to vary the width of the engraved line by varying the width of our tool.

Figure 4

Working with the Centerline function

How about if we want to run our cutter so that it creates one line instead of a so called “outline object” of our image. Creating this so called center line trace allows us to vary the line thickness by the cutter that we care going to use. For comparison sake I will re use the simple image that was used in Figure 4.

Creating a center line trace is the same as creating an outline trace. It is best to start with a black and white bitmap image. Figure 5 shows us the image that I want to start with. The status bar indicates that I have a monochrome (black and white) bitmap.

Figure 5

To do a centerline trace select the bitmap as it has been done in Figure 5. Next select the “Trace” function that is listed in the property bar at the top of our CorelDraw workspace. As per figure 6 once the fly out is opened move your mouse so that we have the “Line Drawing” command highlighted. Select it.

Figure 6

You are presented with a menu command as per figure 7. As I mentioned when I reviewed the Trace function in my CorelDraw X3 review, I like my view to be set to wireframe overlay. This view maximizes the image size and shows me the trace on top of the original image. This helps me review the Trace as best I can. For the most part I just use the defaults that come up in the Trace function (red box) in figure 7.

Figure 7

As you can see from Figure 7 the centerline trace is pretty exact when it comes to the actual trace. The only real issue is at the “peak” of the image where the trace is rounded and at the ends where the line ends to early. Figure 8 shows 3 different images of the top of our Harley logo. The top object is the original image. The red line is the object created when we did the contour offset. As you can see this image is an exact duplicate of the original object. The blue line is the center line traced object. Again it is close to the contour offset but lacks a little in the middle where the peak is more “rounded”.

Figure 8

Center Tracing a Signature

When I talked to Corel in a few of the meetings that we had they always said that centerline trace had first been created to help in creating single line signatures. Considering this was the main reason for creating the center line trace you would hope that when it comes to tracing signatures than it would be flawless. Figure 9 shows my signature on a piece of paper. Note: it is always advisable to create your signature in black ink on white paper. Make sure that when you scan it in that it is scanned in as a black and white image.

Figure 9

Figure 10 shows the centerline trace window opened with my signature displayed. You can see that the quality of the trace is pretty close. Again adjusting the trace controls did not create a better image than the default settings.

Figure 10

Figure 11 shows the two signatures separated. The black signature is our original while the red signature is our traced image. Engraving this signature (the red one) will create an image quite similar to the original. You can now use either a scratch diamond or a rotating cutter to create a “wider” signature.

I have center line traced a number of signatures over the past while testing this feature and found that the center line trace was quite accurate in recreating any of the signatures.

Figure 11

Tracing Text

One of the main reasons that I wanted to use the center line trace was to trace text – especially text in logos and cad drawings.  One of the main problems with tracing logos is that the logo may come alright but the text is an outline (see figure 12). As I mentioned earlier when we trace a black and white image we get an outline of the image that we are tracing. Basically we have a traced line that travels all around the outside of the image. Figure 12 shows us what I mean. You can see that any fill has been removed that was in the middle of the image. If I was to run this job on my rotary engraver then I will have what we call an “outline” image.  If I was to use a rotary cutter on the figure 12 text than our text will not be engraved properly as our cut lines will start to run into each other. Typically when it comes to creating a logo like this I would trace the logo, delete the text and place in a proper engraving font. Some have touted that centerline text would be great to recreate text. So can text be properly centerline traced?

Figure 12

Figure 13 shows some text that I created in CorelDraw to trace. I have shown the initial outline of the text. The text is Arial and has been bolded. I will black fill it.

Figure 13

Figure 14 shows us the original image that we are going to center trace. I have taken the text and converted it to a black and white bitmap. Converting the image into black and white makes it like a scanned image.

Figure 14

Select the image in figure 14. Select the center line trace function (“LINE DRAWING”) from the pull down menu. You can just use the default settings. Figure 15 shows the traced text outlined in red. As you can see the center line trace has done not a bad job but it is not something that I want to reproduce for a customer.

Figure 15

Logo

If you are scratch engraving one way to speed up your logo creation would be to create a centerline recreation of your logo. A centerline trace would speed up your engraving job as it would reduce the length and in some cases number of objects that are needed to recreate the logo. We can recreate our Royal Canadian Airforce logo that is seen in figure 12. Figure 16 shows the center line recreation of the logo.

As is hopefully apparent in figure 16 this is not a logo that I want to use. Parts of the logo are fine but when compared to the outline traced image in figure 12 than there no comparisons. The outline logo wins out. Thus, if we want to create “engraving” style text than we will need to remove the text and retype our engraving text into the logo. The centerline trace is not a good alternative when it comes to logos and text.

Figure 16

Although the centerline trace is not as good at creating a good centerline trace as the outline trace it does excel at some other type of images or logs. Figure 17 shows a picture of Texas that I download off the net (this image was a .gif file. I converted it to black and white in CorelDraw and resampled the resolution up to 300 DPI).

Figure 17

If I was to do an outline trace of this image I would get an inside and an outside line. If I was rotary engraving this image it would not look as good as a single line representation of the map. The center line trace of the map will create the ideal logo. Figure 18 shows the centerline trace of the logo. As you can see the trace does an excellent job. How about if you want to cut this image out on your laser? You have a perfect cut line.

Figure 18

We have spent this month’s topic discussing the centerline function that has been added to the Trace function in CorelDraw X4. To me centerline tracing is somewhat like that Holy Grail in that you always hope for knowing full well that it will never be fully mastered. Not because Corel and others cannot create software to do it. Certainly Corel has proved with the outline trace function that they can create good vectoring software. However certain images work better in center line and other in outline. The same can be said for outline traces. Corel touts the centerline trace function for scanned line drawings. Well this works only for certain objects in the drawing such as circles and lines (a filled circle does not work). Introduce filled arrows and text and your drawing will not benefit from the centerline trace. My verdict on this tool is mixed. Yes it does not do a good job on every type of image but on certain types of images it is excellent. If you want to trace line drawings like the map of Texas this tool is excellent. However complicated logos like the air force logo need to be done with the outline tool.

What is in the Box?

Included with the new version is the following

Applications

CorelDraw X4: CorelDraw the flagship program of the suite is a vector / raster illustration and page layout application. It is designed for design professionals as well as the occasional graphics user. For most of use CorelDraw is the only program that we use to create graphics, run our laser or run our sublimation printer.

• Corel Photo-Paint X4: The so called silent sibling of CorelDraw, Corel Photo-Paint is a very powerful image editing program. This program, although not as full featured as Photo Shop, it is still a very powerful program for editing images or creating graphics and special effects.
• Corel PowerTrace X4: Corel redesigned its Trace program when it introduced X3 to the market. It took a relatively poor program and made it very powerful. Corel PowerTrace is a powerful program than converts’ raster images into vector images.
• Corel Capture X4: Corel capture is CorelDraw’s screen capture program for collecting pictures of your existing screen and saving it to a file.

Supporting Applications

• Barcode Wizard: The barcode allows users to create barcodes very fast. There are a wide range of industry standard formats that are available.
• Service Bureau Profiler: The service bureau profiler helps users prepare their work for professional output.
• Duplexing  Wizard: The Duplexing wizard helps users who want to optimize their work for printing 2 sided documents.
• REALVIZ  Stitcher Express 2.5: This program aids in helping to automatically assemble a group of photos into a panorama up to 360 degree.
• Bitstream Font Navigator: One of my favourite programs. This program will keep a record of all fonts on your computer. You can use this program to load and unload fonts as quick as you can. No need to try and fumble around with the font install in Windows.

Media Content

• There are collection of more than 10,000 high-quality clipart and digital images. There are now 4,000 new images all of which have been selected to meet the needs of even the highest graphic user.
• 1000 new professional high-resolution digital photos
• 1000 OpenType fonts, including 75 Windows Glyph fonts and 10 single line engraving fonts
• 80 professionally designed templates

Documentation

• User Guide
• CorelDraw Handbook – Insight from the Experts
• Digital content guide
• Quick-reference card
• Help Files

Training

• 2 hours of training videos on DVD

Minimum System Requirements

• Windows XP (with Service Pack 2 or later) or Windows Vista (32 or 64 bit)
• 512 MB of Ram 275 MB of hard disk space
• Pentium 3, 800 MHz
• 1024 by 768 or better monitor resolution
• DVD Drive
• Mouse or Tablet

New and Enhanced Features in the CorelDraw X4 Suite

New Modernized user Interface: One of the things that has been lacking in previous editions of CorelDraw is a very drab interface. What I mean here is that the look of the program has seemed rather old.  Corel has added new icons, menus and controls that give the program a new and more intuitive working environment. Figure 1 shows the look of a new document in CorelDraw.

Figure 1

Windows Color System Support

CorelDraw Graphics Suite X4 now supports the new Windows Color System which allows users to match color closer when it comes to Corel and other Windows applications in Vista.

Adobe® Color Management Color Module

CorelDraw Graphics Suite now supports the Adobe Color Management Module (CMM) which now like the Windows system supports consistent color transformation by using industry-standard International Color Consortium (ICC) color profiles. This now allows the user to match closer the colors between Corel and other Adobe applications.

Customizable Workspace

Corel has always allowed you to customize your workspace. Not only can you customize your workspace but if you are use to use to using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator or Microsoft Office you can customize your workspace so that it matches these programs. CorelDraw Graphic Suite X4 now has updated user spaces that follow the newer versions of the above programs.

Microsoft Visual Basic
Corel now supports the new Microsoft Visual Basic 6.4. The visual basic addition allows you to automate a lot of your repetitive tasks.

Welcome Screen

The new welcome screen that comes up when you open up one of the Corel applications has now been expanded to be a lot more valuable and helpful to users. From the new welcome screen – figure 2, you have access to new content, tips and tricks, product registration, and the latest product updates.

Figure 2

Figure 3 shows that the new welcome screen also now provides a larger preview of an existing job that is in your “open recent” dialogue box.

Figure 3

Vista Integration

CorelDraw graphics suite X4 now takes advantage of the latest innovations that are available to the Windows Vista operating system. You can now search for files by author, subject, file type, date, keywords or other file properties from within the operating system dialogue box (such as the open, save or import dialogue box). You can now easily add keywords or other notes to saving files. This is something that I have wanted for a long time.

File Format Support

CorelDraw Graphics Suite X4 has upgraded its support for new versions of Adobe CS3 products – PhotoShop and Illustrator. The suite now supports Acrobat 8. As far as AutoCAD goes there should be seamless compatibility with DXF and DWG formats relating to versions R2.5 to 2007.

Thumbnail Preview

CorelDraw now provides quality thumbnail previews which make it easier to find and organize CorelDraw and PhotoPaint files. Figure 4 shows that within the explorer dialogue box you can now view a good thumbnail view of the saved file.

Figure 4

Meta Search

Figure 5 shows screen shot of the new. As I mentioned earlier CorelDraw now allows us to embed “text strings” so that when we are searching for files we can search by the words that are in these strings. As figure 5 shows I have placed in some text strings that are highlighted by the red box.

Figure 5

CorelDraw Upgrades

Now that we have reviewed some of the main upgrades within the suite let us look at what has been added to CorelDraw.

Interactive Tables

When it comes to text layout the use of tables is always an important technique that is at the disposal of those that use a word processor program such as Word or Word Perfect. However when it came to CorelDraw there was no way to lay text out within a table. Tables are nice because it makes formatting text such as justification in columns a lot easier. In X4 Corel has made it easy to create a table. Corel has also allowed us to convert delimited text into a table.

Engraving Fonts

That is right. CorelDraw has now added 12 (at the time of this article that was the count) engraving fonts. This will make it easier now when you are creating logos for your rotary machine. You can now add text in CorelDraw as opposed to creating the logo importing it into your engraving program and then adding the text to the logo. If you want to output directly to your engraver from CorelDraw you now have the ability to do this.

Independent Page Layers

In X4 users can now control and edit layers independently for each page in the document. This is so nice. No longer do we have to deal with lots of “extra” guidelines that are cluttering up our workspace. You can create page guidelines now as well as master guidelines. You can take a page and duplicate it along with the objects within that page. Figure 6 gives you a shot of the new Object Manager.

Figure 6

Live Text Formatting

One of the nicer features in Word 2007 is the ability to see your text change in real time as you change a font or its size. CorelDraw has added the same functionality to X4. If you have some typed text on the screen and move through the text box your on the screen view will reflect the font you have moved over with your mouse. Figure 7 shows the text “Font Test” has changed to Arial Rounded MT Bold to reflect what I have moved over in the font pull down.

Figure 7

New Font Identification

CorelDraw X4 now incorporates “WhatTheFont” within the program. “WhatTheFont” is an online service from MyFonts.com that helps in identifying a font that is used in existing designs or artwork received from clients.

Enhanced Print Merge

One of the more important features that I stress users that they need to understand and use is the print merge function. Corel understands that the print merge is an import tool to its user so it has updated this tool to make it easier for users to use. Figure 8 shows the new interface that you will see. You can now add fields based on whether they are text or numeric.

Figure 8

Center Line Trace

The new centerline trace feature found in the PowerTrace module allows you to take an image such as line drawings or signatures and create a single line trace as opposed to the more traditional outline trace. Corel has improved the smoothing and corner control to help optimize traced results.

To control which colors get traced you can now edit merge or delete colors on the color palette. Figure 9 shows some text converted to center line.

Figure 9

Corel PhotoPaint

New Camera Raw File Support

Corel PhotoPaint now supports the raw camera file format for over 300 different types of cameras. This support lets users import raw camera files directly from their cameras. With interactive controls the new filter provides file properties, camera settings, the ability to adjust image color and tone, and to also improve image quality.

Straighten Your Image

In Corel PhotoPaint users can now easily straighten an image that has a rotation to it. The tool comes with vertical and horizontal guidelines and an integrated histogram that provide real time results to fix those cockeyed photos. No longer will you have to “eyeball” those rotated scanned images or photos.

Histogram Feed Back

The new histogram feedback provides more features and effects that now provide histogram feed back in real time. This allows the ability to edit images more efficiently by previewing changes and comparing results as they adjust.

Enhanced Tonal Curve

One of the more powerful tools in color correction is the Tonal Curve tool. In PhotoPaint X4 this tool has been enhanced to help users adjust their images so that they can have more precision in correcting those images. The tool comes with an integrated histogram and now provides real time feed back to the user of the changes that they are looking at implementing.

There is a new eyedropper tool that allows the user to pick specific locations on the tone curve of their image.

Overall

Well that is a quick overview of the new CorelDraw Graphic Suite X4. As is usual Corel has made a substantial effort in providing a number of new features. Some of the more notable features such as the enhanced meta search, center line trace, engraving fonts and print merge update are features that can be used in our industry. Some others are features that are designed are for other industries.

If you are interested in reviewing what is new in X4 or for that matter any versions you can go to the help menu and select  “Highlight What’s New” as per figure 10. This will highlight all the new features that are available.

Figure 10

The big question for me and something that I am going to be asked more times than I will be able to count is “Should I upgrade to X4”. As I said when I did my X3 review if you are on any version such as 12, 11 or 9 than you should upgrade. Just make sure that if you are going to upgrade that you are running XP or Vista.

The Good

When it comes to upgrading I tend to always want the latest version. The one big reason I want to keep current with a program such as CorelDraw is because I get so many different requests from so many people that need files converted or worked on. For this reason I need to make sure that I have the latest version of filters for AutoCAD, Adobe reader and Illustrator. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to import a file and have it not work due to the incompatibility of your import filters witht the file you are trying to bring in.

Are there other notable features? I like the new redesigned print merge function that has been enhanced. Also, for years I have wanted to be able to assign meta tag information to files so that I could search those files when I need them. For example, if you do a lot of jobs for a company you can include this information in the file so that when you search for the company’s name those files come up. The new font identification feature will be very helpful as long as it works. I have not had a lot of time to check it out but I will in a future article. One of the other excellent upgrades is the ability of the object manager to support different guidelines on each page. I like to do multiple page files and it has always been a real hassle when I would use guidelines as the guidelines from other pages would be visible on the page I was working.

The new table feature will help out when it comes to positioning groups of text. I have wanted this feature for a while. Also the center line trace feature is nice and has potential. The addition of engraving fonts – as long as they are good – will help people creating logos for rotary engravers. It will also be very helpful when you are doing very small letters with the engraver (sometimes it is better to engrave in vectors than raster.

The Bad

Okay as usual with any upgrade there are items that have been missed. Again Corel has missed the boat when it comes to the Holy Grail for the marking industry and that is the ability to auto condense text. I have asked for this feature but to not avail. Another feature is to have a proper multiple plate feature that so many of us take for granted when we are using our rotary software. The other problem with Corel has been the lack of “cleanliness” of the fonts in Corel. One character at .5 inches is different than another font that is at .5 inches. This is very frustrating because there are so many fonts. I could go on but we need not get to negative.

Hopefully this review has given you some basic information into what you can count on when evaluating whether you want to upgrade to X4. I will upgrade when the new version comes because I always do. Remember that if you want you can load the new version and still have your old version on the same computer. If you are afraid that you may not be able to do something in the new version like you can in the old version than this is a safe way of having the new version available. If you need to go back to your old version you can. It is my wish that everyone upgrades so that we are all on the same page. It makes it a lot easier to support people.

Engraving Fonts

To try and address our industry needs Corel decided to place 10 engraving fonts within the CorelDraw X4 Graphics Suite that was supposed to be designed for our industry. I was quite intrigued with this addition to the CorelDraw arsenal and was excited that I was going to be able to use some of these so called “stick fonts” that were typically only available to rotary engraving programs. What is a “stick” font you might ask? A “stick” font is a font that is made up of lines as opposed to outlines and bitmap fills.  Figure 1 shows us a couple of “stick” fonts that are available within my rotary engraving software.  The top line is a 3 line Helvetica while the bottom line is a single line Helvetica. They are both the same fonts except that one font has 3 lines while the other has 1 line. If we use the same size cutter on each one of the fonts we will have a “thicker” font with the 3 line than we will have with the 1 line. Stick font output to our rotary machine is not the only type of font that we can use it is the best.

Figure 1

When it comes to the laser machine we can also use these so called “stick fonts”. If we send one of these “stick” fonts to the laser machine than the font will engrave in a vector format. This type of output allows us to create very fine line text because it has no raster fill. These fine lines fonts look nice on plaques but more importantly for me is that when I am doing very small text where lasering quality of our letters suffer because of when I raster engrave these fonts do not engrave well than the vector format will look better. Figure 2 shows a font lasered from my rotary engraving software on my laser. You can see that the font is very thin. It has to be because it is so small. I have placed a dime in the picture so that you can get a feeling for the scale of the text height. I could use a raster font but the engraving would not be as good as it is so small. It is for this reason that when I have very small engraving I will consider using vector fonts as opposed to raster fonts. It may take a bit more time but because the font is so small that a couple of extra second’s means that it is of less consideration than if the font was big.

Figure 2

The above example is as good example as I can come up with for why we should use vector fonts on our laser machines. Now why would engraving fonts be good for a rotary engraver? I can think of one reason very quickly. That is adding text to logos that we created in CorelDraw. For years I like a look of other people have had to generate logos for my old rotary machines in CorelDraw. Creating the logos in CorelDraw and getting them into my rotary engraving software was easy. However if  needed to use an engraving font with the logo than it meant bringing the logo into my engraving software placing in the font which was not always easy and then re exporting the logo and text to a new logo file. The idea of being able to add an engraving font to the logo right in CorelDraw sounded like a very easy way to speed up this process.

Secondly, one of the things that we can do with a number of the new rotary engravers is they are able to engrave directly from CorelDraw directly to the engraver. This means that we do not have to go through our engraving software. This is appealing to a lot of those people that are more conversant in CorelDraw than their engraving software.

So lets us take a look at the fonts and see how they stack up to our needs.

Loading the fonts into Windows

When you install Corel X4 you are presented with figure 3. To install the software you need to select the “install CorelDraw graphic suite X4” see figure 3. When you want to install the engraving fonts select the “Install Extras” as per the blue box in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Figure 4 shows the window of the install extra screen. Expand the font directory and select the “Fonts” folder and then the “Engraving Fonts” as per the red box in Figure 4.

Figure 4

The problem with this installation is that the fonts will not install. I tried this install a couple of times to no avail. Note: At the time of this writing Corel knows about this problem but has not verified a solution.

Okay we cannot install the fonts the way that CorelDraw says so how about if we use Font Navigator? Again I tried this and it did not install all the fonts. It failed to install two fonts. The only way I could install the fonts was to use Windows standard font install procedure that is found in the “Fonts” directory located in the control panel.  To install a font in Windows requires that I go to the “FONTS” folder in Windows. I need to select the “Control Panel” (I am using Windows Vista) selection as per Figure 5.

Figure 5

This will open up a window with a number of icons listed in it. Double click on the “FONTS” icon to open up the “FONTS” folder. Figure 6 shows us the “FONTS” icon as it is listed in the “CONTROL PANEL” folder.

Figure 6

Once the “FONTS” icon has been clicked on you will be presented with another folder. This folder lists all the fonts that are installed on your computer system. Figure 7 shows my font folder which lists all my fonts.

Figure 7

When you want to install a font into your Windows system under Windows Vista you need to right click in an empty part of the folder. You will have a pull down menu come up as per figure 7. Select the “Install New Font” on the pull down menu. Note: Under Windows XP the font install option is located in the “FILE” pull down menu.

Once you have selected the “Install New Font” option you will be presented with a new “Add Fonts” window as per figure 8. This is the window where we install any fonts that we want into Windows. The first thing that you have to do is to select the location where the fonts are located. In this case I have loaded all my Corel fonts into my “E” drive. So I need to select my “Drives” as “E Drive” as per figure 8 (red box). This is telling Windows to look on the E drive. The “Folders” listing (blue box) indicates that I have drilled down to the “TRUETYPE” folder. If you want you could load in your CorelDraw DVD and locate the “Fonts” directory. On the CorelDraw DVD you will find the engraving fonts in CORELDRAW GRAPHICS SUITE | EXTRAS | FONTS | TRUETYPE – ENGRAVING. When you select the “Fonts” folder Windows will list all the fonts that are located in that folder. The “List of Fonts” (green box) lists all the fonts that are in that directory. You will notice that all the engraving fonts start with G and are either a “1L” or a “4L”.

To install all the fonts click on the “Select All” button and then click on the “Install” button.

Figure 8

Once you have clicked on the “install” button the fonts that you have selected will be installed into Windows and be accessible to CorelDraw or any other program.  Installing fonts this way is not the most efficient way of installing fonts and most of the time I use will always use font navigator. I have had to use this method as for some reason the fonts will not install properly any other way. I have made CorelDraw aware of this problem and hopefully we will see a fix. Figure 9 shows the fonts installed in the Windows directory.

Figure 9

Once you have clicked on the “install” button the fonts that you have selected will be installed into Windows and be accessible to CorelDraw or any other program.  Installing fonts this way is not the most efficient way of installing fonts and most of the time I use will always use font navigator. I have had to use this method as for some reason the fonts will not install properly any other way. I have made CorelDraw aware of this problem and hopefully we will see a fix. Figure 9 shows the fonts installed in the Windows directory.

Figure 10

Now that we have installed our engraving fonts we can go back to CorelDraw and start using them. Note: I tend to like to shut CorelDraw down when I am installing fonts. On some systems and versions keeping the program open has caused issues. Figure 10 shows a screen shot of our font pull down menu in CorelDraw. You can see that the fonts that I installed are now available to use within the program. I installed 10 fonts and figure 10 shows that they all are now available. Selecting a font is the same as any other font. Select your engraving font and start typing as you would for any other font.

Figure 11

If you want to see exactly the way the font is going to look in a rotary engraving program than go to VIEW | WIREFRAME and you will view the font in vectors only. This is the way your rotary engraver will process the font. Note: if you want to send the font as a vector to your laser than you need to select the font and give the font a hairline outline. Figure 12 shows a partial screen shot of an engraving font in wireframe mode.

Figure 12

Personally I was excited when I heard that Corel was including engraving fonts with their latest release.  For years I and a lot of others have struggled with using CorelDraw for both rotary machines and some laser applications. For example my rotary engraving machine will take output directly from CorelDraw and send it to the laser machine. However how can I run an engraving job that uses outline fonts such as the outline font that is in figure 13?

Figure 13

Outline fonts are fine for laser machine because you can place a fill inside the white area. However for rotary engraving machines where we use tools these fonts are not ideal unless we are able to generate a fill routine to fill in the white areas. Although CorelDraw does have a tool called the “Contour” command that will fill our letters it is far from proper to do plastic engraving with as per figure 14.

Figure 14

Proper engraving fonts like those that are pictured in figure 1 are the bastion of any rotary engraving job. Fonts like this need to be made with precision and for a rotary machine.

Figure 15 shows all the fonts laser engraved on a piece of laser brass

Figure 15

When it comes to the laser machine so called stroke fonts are not as important. However figure 2 showed us a job that required small text. This job would not look as good or may not even be able to completed unless I used a single stoke stick font like the font on line 2 of figure 1. Note: the font size for the font in figure 2 is .05 inches in height.

The problem with the engraving fonts in CorelDraw is that although they call them engraving fonts they are not like a number of the traditional fonts that we use in the rotary engraving applications. These fonts to me are more decorator type fonts. The engraving fonts in Corel are more ideal for jobs that require you to use so called “fine” fonts. I like using fine fonts when I am working with higher end awards or when I am working with really small fonts that require condensing such as when I am making small engraving plates for trophies or resins. Most importantly though is that the engraving fonts are still outline fonts and not single line fonts as per the font in figure 1.

Well I spent this month’s entire article on the new engraving fonts that CorelDraw has included in X4. I know that a lot of people will be intrigued with using these fonts so I felt that it was important to review these fonts. The problem as we have seen is that there is a flaw in the install program and the fonts do not seem to install properly on my system. Note: I had 4 other people that had the same problem. All of us were running Windows Vista. I do not think that Vista is a problem but you never know. As I mentioned earlier I have made Corel aware of this problem but I have had no resolution as to a solution. Mind you if it is an install problem than this will not be corrected.

One of the issues I have had with Corel over the years is their lack of representation into the awards, engraving and sublimation industry. So although I always like to accentuate the positive I will have to start off with a negative. This negative goes along with this lack of discussion with us. By default now CorelDraw’s line width is .007. This creates a headache for people like me because my phone and my email are going to be inundated with people who are going to draw a line and find that their machine is going to raster the line and not vector cut it. There is an easy fix for this but alas I really wonder why we have to go through this.

To fix the issue requires us to go to our default settings in CorelDraw. Your default settings are found at TOOLS | OPTIONS. Figure 1 shows the options dialogue box that is displayed.

Figure 1

Next we need to change our Default Graphic option so that anytime we draw a graphic its default line width will be .001 or .003 (hairline). Make sure that the “outline” section is selected as per the red box in figure 1. Next select the “edit” button as per the blue box in figure 1. Figure 2 shows you the box that appears when you click on the edit button. You will notice that the “Width” by default is .007. We need to change this to “hairline”. To do this we need to click on the pull down menu as per figure 2 and select the “hairline” setting. Once you have changed the line width you can then click on the “OK” button.

Figure 2

Once we have changed the line width we need to save this setting as a default. To do this requires that we select the document branch as per figure 3. Click the “Save options as defaults for new documents” check box as per figure 3. Seeing we only want to save a “style” setting than we need to uncheck all the check boxes except the “styles” box. I like to do this because if we have changed something else and forget about it those settings may be saved also. In this case we are only saving the line width and nothing else.

Figure 3

You will now be able to draw a graphic such as a box and the line width will be a Hairline. The hairline will than become a cut line to the laser machine.

Tables

One of the features that a word processor possesses is the ability to easily create tables. Tables are an excellent way to organize data easily into predefined cells.  In CorelDraw X4 tables have become a standard feature. This is a feature that I have wanted for a while. CorelDraw defines tables as

… “A table provides a structured layout that lets you present text or images within a drawing. You can draw a table, or you can create a table from paragraph text. You can easily change the look of a table by modifying the table properties and formatting. In addition, because tables are objects, you can manipulate them in various ways. You can also import existing tables from a text file or a spreadsheet.”

Creating tables in CorelDraw is quite easy. The table command can be found in the TABLE menu. Figure 4 shows you the location and the commands that are available to making tables.

Figure 4

To create a new table all you need to do is to click on the “Create New table” command as per Figure 4. Figure 5 shows the command window that comes up. In the window you have the ability to tell the wizard how many rows and columns that you want. You can also give the actual size of the overall table/ Figure 5 shows that I want to create a table that has 3 rows, 4 columns. The table is to be 4 inches in height and 3 inches in width.

Figure 5

Figure 6 shows the table that is created when we click on the “Ok” button in figure 5.

Figure 6

The one thing that hopefully is apparent is that we can use this command to create a grid cutout for a badge layout. For example if we want to create a number of 1 by 3 plates that fill up a 12 by 24 plate we can use the Table command to create the gird cutout if we wanted to cut the badges out. Figure7 shows the information that I have to placed in the “Create New Table” command. I have created a 24 by 12 with grid cutout.

Figure 7

Figure 7 shows us that we can quickly create a series of cut lines for our group of 1 by 3 plate.  Now this is not something new as we were able to do this in previous commands. However the command is now in one command window not scattered around.

Okay lets us get back to tables. Once we have created the table we than start entering in our text or graphics into each table. To start entering text into each cell all you need to do is to select the Text tool – click on the “A” in our toolbox – then go over and when you are inside the cell click on it. Figure 8 shows that when I click in the cell I get a paragraph text box that forms to the cell (dotted box in figure 8). You will also notice in the figure 8 that the cursor is located at the top left and is ready for typing.

Figure 8

Once you start typing the text will form into the cell (again this is nothing really new from X3) as per figure 9

Figure 9

As with any word processing program that has tables you can select either separate cells or a row or column of cells. The problem with selecting cells is you cannot do it with the standard pick tool. To select a cell you need to either double click on the table or select the table tool in the tool box – see figure 10.

FIgure 10

Note: make sure that the table is selected with the pick tool. With the table command active we can now select a cell. When we approach a line in one of the cells our mouse image on the screen will turn into a black arrow as per figure 11.

Figure 11

If you click on the line, which in this case is on the left side of the table, you will select the entire row of cells. If you click on the top or bottom cells you will select the column. You may also right click on the line and you have all the commands that you need to work with a column or a row. Figure 12 shows us the right click menu that is available (you can also select these commands by going to the TABLE menu).

Figure 12

Figure 13 shows the entire row selected. You will notice that the selected cells are highlighted with a series of blue lines at a 45 degree angle.

Figure 13

When you select a row or column of cells you now have the ability to either insert more cells or delete those selected cells. You can either right click on the selected cells or go to the TABLE menu located in the main file menu. Figure 14 shows the commands. The fact that the commands are in black as opposed to gray means they are active.

Figure 14

If you just want to select one cell you can click on the Table tool in the toolbox and then right click on the cell that you want to work on. You can than go to SELECT | CELL as per figure 15.

Figure 15

With cells selected I have the ability to change the attributes of either one or a group of cells. Figure 16 shows that once I have a cell selected I can change the attributes of that cell. As with many commands the property bar  (located at the top of the page with the menus) will display only commands that are available to the table tool – red box in figure 16.

Figure 16

You will notice in Figure 16 that I have changed the fill in the cell to the color of pink, the line type to red and with a line thickness of .016.

There are some other features that are available to tables. You can split tables into a number of smaller rows or columns. You can also merge cells together so that you can make bigger cells.

One of the commands that you can do is place an image inside a cell. Placing this image in the cell will keep it in the middle of the cell. To place an image in a cell we need to import the logo into CorelDraw. Do not worry about resizing it we can do it later. To place an image in a cell you need to click on the image with your right mouse. Now while holding down the right mouse button you can drag the image over the table. As you go over individual cells you will notice that that each one turns light blue. Figure 17 shows the image over the cell. When the cell is blue if you let go of the mouse button the image will drop into that cell.

Figure 17

Once you are over the cell that you want you can let go of the mouse and you will be presented with a menu as per Figure 18. Select the “Place Inside Cell” command that is highlighted in red as per figure 18.

Figure 18

Figure 19 shows the image placed inside the cell. You will notice that it is bigger than the cell. We can resize the image to fit the cell.

Figure 19

Figure 20 shows us the resized image in the cell. To resize the image all you need to do is selected the image as you would any other objects and then scale it down or up.

Figure 20

Figure 21 shows the finished plate. I have added colors into the cells so that you can see each cell. As you can see the table tool can help in controlling layout areas that you are working in.

Figure 21

Working with the table tool now adds some added control over your layouts. You can now create certain layouts such as plaque layouts easier with the table command in CorelDraw.

The other important point about the table command is that we can bring in table information from other programs such as Microsoft word or Word Perfect. This is important when a customer has already done all the setup for us. Why recreate the wheel when they have already done it for us. The idea is to make less work. I have always had issues in regards to working with customer supplied tables and getting them into CorelDraw. We could never do it before but we can do it now.