Here is one of the test files that I will be working on. The file was originally given to me as a jpeg file. The size of the original photo was about 1.1 meg. It was in a JPEG format. Now I am not going to spend a lot of time on JPEGs we can save that for another lesson, but what you need to know is that a JPEG is a file format that compresses a file. Thus it is known a lossey file format. This means that it is throwing information away to make the file smaller. A file format such as TIf is a lossless format as it is keeping all the information in the file. Thus lossey file formats are smaller than lossless.
What you need to understand here is that when you compress an image you throw away a certain amount of information that is in the file. With JPEGS you can establish the amount of compression that you want to use either in the camera that you are using or in the program that you are exporting the file out of. You can do this when you export as a JPEG out of a program such as CorelDraw. It is this compression that can cause us to get a bad photo.

If I export an image out of CorelDraw I am presented with a dialog box as per the above. Note: most Jpeg export filters have similar settings. Our Colour mode has to be RGB (1). The Quality setting by default is 80% (which is the default (2)) Note: the default setting is not 100 % it is 80%. This means that when I export out the photo it is not only compressed but it is compressed by a further 20% by default. The quality setting can be set to what ever we want in terms of a percentage. As I lower the quality my file size becomes smaller. The problem is that as the file size becomes smaller the quality of the image goes down. The lower the quality the more compressed ("blurry") our image becomes. Make sure that anti aliased it turned off. This should only be on for images that you are going to display on a monitor (3). To keep the file size down uncheck the "Embed Colour Profile" (4). If you fool around with this tool and change the quality setting you can see in real time the file size. If you lower the quality the file size goes down (5).
So the lesson here is that a Raw format file or one that has not been compressed is the best (such as a tif or bmp format – saved from the raw format). The problem with these files though is that they are big and not easily transported. JPG’s are smaller and can be easily emailed between people. For the most part all Digital cameras output JPGs that have some amount of compression done on them. Plus they are at 72 DPI which than means that they have to be made smaller by almost 50% to get a half decent quality image to engrave. Let us look at some examples of compressed photos. Note: Make sure that your customer does not take a JPEG and save it as a TIF or a BMP because they are thinking it is making the file better. It is not.

Here is a good test. I have 3 images to show you. The first is the raw photo that was given to me. The file size was pretty hefty at 120 meg I resampled it down to (20meg) but it had no compression. You can see that the digital image has little degradation in the file. Mind you the photo does have some artificing from the digital camera’s sensor. But the that is another story.

Here is the image done on black anodized aluminum. You hopefully can see from this image that the quality is excellent. Personally the problem here is that the photo does not give justice to the final engraved image. This photo was probably one of the best photos I have ever engraved. PS and it was done in CorelDraw in 30 seconds two clicks

Here is the same photo as the original. This time I have exported it as a JPEG but with the least amount of compression that I can. I have used the 100% quality setting. The file size was 770K. Quite the drop in size.

Here is the jpeg image engraved on the same black anodized aluminum. This photo comes close to the previous image. So because of smaller file size this is a good alternative.

Here is the same image that has been exported as a JPEG image. I have used the 70% quality setting. The file size was 100K

Even through when we zoomed in on the image above and you saw how bad it looked the final product that came out on the anodized aluminum was not bad. I can see a certain amount of degradation in the photo but again it is possible. Most customers would be ecstatic with this.
The thing that I am trying to show you here is that the better the quality of photo that you get the better the chances of you getting a good representation on your final product. Although getting a photo that is the same quality that I had for this exercise is hard it is still good practice to at least ask. Sometimes you may be getting a copy of the original file. If you are it is best to ask for the jpg to be saved with least amount of compression or the best quality. Thus you should be asking for a TIF or a BMP and not one that the JPG has been exported to.

In this photo there is a lot of compression that has been applied to the photo. Look at the cards there is almost a "heat wave" around the cards. The face is very blurry and will cause me issues when I go to make my adjustments. This is because the more blurry the image is the harder it is for the adjustments I make to take effect. The best adjustments are those that are made on an image that has clear pixels not blurry undefined pixels.

This is actually two laser jobs laid side by side of the same image. Each one was processed the same the image on the left had a more dramatic adjustment made on it. You can see in the each photo that the engraving was not good. There is a lot of banding on the forehead (1 and 5). That cards are showing the compression around the outside (2 and 4). While the collar in each image (3 and 6) show the blowout of the image. It took a large adjustment to get this photo to engrave at least half decently. The harsher the adjustment that I make here the better the image is. This is important to remember because this works the same with bad material. The worse the material the harsher our image had to be. Regardless though you can see that this image because the photo is of bad quality is going to cause me problems when I laser engrave it.

Here is the above image lasered onto anodized aluminum. I used a couple of different settings. As you can see the image looks better but still has issues. The image at the top is a grayscale image and the one at the bottom is an image converted using an error diffusion algorithm. Which one is better is a matter of discussion – the old beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The image at the top shows more detail which I like. Note: If in doubt a about a photo laser engrave it on to a piece of anodized aluminum you will see any imperfections in the image. If it does not engrave right on the anodized aluminum than it will not probably laser on anything else.

Well it is not to say the the Baby is bad but what we have here is a photo that has a huge red cast. Along with the fact that it is blurry and is very compressed. That nice purple blob is not very appealing either.

Again not very appealing and certainly not a good image to be working with to have it laser engraved. There is not a lot of detail that I can pull out of this image.

Here is the image laser engraved onto a piece of anodized aluminum. As you can see the image is not very good. Note: this was an image given to me by one of my customers. The quality is just no good and can explain the issues that they where having with the image.

Even with a good dose of Contrast Enhancement this photos suffers because it just was not a good photo to begin with. The eyes are really hard to see. Thus this photo is really not going to turn out very good even on anodized aluminum as it suffers from to many quality issues. If we make the customer aware of this in the beginning than we will be better off in the long run.

Here is the image lasered onto black anodized aluminum. Again the adjustment can not make up for the quality issues that this photo lacks.

The problem with this file is not that it is bad quality but it has a lot of other items in the photo that really do not need to be there. These are distracting and take our focus away from our what we are suppose to be looking at – the guy on the tractor. For example doing a quick crop will get rid of the fire truck and some of the other trucks. This file is differently a candidate for the cutout command in PhotoPaint. It is important to see that you need to clarify what can be taken out of the photo and what cannot be taken out with the customer. This is best handled when you are talking to the customer.
As hopefully you can see in this article there is a lot of issues that we need to deal with when we are reproducing customer supplied photos. Compressions, blurry image, colour casts, background objects, out of focus and a number of other factors contribute to how the photo is going to appear on our material. This is why I stress that buying a so called one click program is not the way to go because it makes you complacent and you do not consider these issues. If you consider these issues I will show you how in CorelDraw within 60 seconds you can have a photo that will engrave with the best quality you can get. Look at the wedding photo. That photo is perfect because I had the proper photo to work with.

First click on the Microsoft Orb and than click on ALL Programs (1).

Click on Adobe Reader 9 to start up the program

Go to File | OPEN (1)

In Adobe Acrobat you can not see an AI file so we need to change our “Files of Type” to “All Files”. This allows us to see all our files.

You can now see our AI file that is the Ontario Provincial Police_OPP (1). Click Open (2). Notice with file selected the file is an AI file and the size is 186K (3).

Adobe Acrobat is showing the logo.

Click FILE(1) | SAVE A COPY (2)

Do not worry about the warning just click OK

Notice that it wants to save the file as an AI file. Delete the .ai extension(1). It will now be saved as a PDF extension (2)

Now I can save the file as the .ai is deleted

Go to FILE (1) | IMPORT (2)

Select the PDF filter (this is what makes this work) (1). Select the File (2). Click on Import.

When you open or import an EPS or PDF or AI CorelDraw will ask you if you should “Import your text as curves or text. I usually use Curves unless I need to edit the text the as long as the text information has been saved with the file (1).

Our file can now be opened in CorelDraw

Now that we have removed the background it is time to adjust out image. We are back in CorelDraw and our image has a transparent background thanks to use using the cutout lab in Corel PhotoPaint

When you are in the contrast enhancement command you need to make sure that some settings are set. First of all make sure that the preview window is selected so we can see the before and after images (1). The original window is on the left (2). The preview window is on the right (3). Select the Lock button (4) to engage the preview. Click reset so that any presets we used before are cleared (5). The histogram (6) indicates our spatial concentration of pixels in our image. The dark pixels are on the left and the white pixels are on the right. Our adjustment sliders are the triangles above the histogram. The left slider (7) creates more darker contrast. The right slider (8) creates more contrast to the white. The gamma adjustment (9) shifts the entire image either lighter or darker.

I adjust the two sliders inwards to increase the contrast of the image. It is very important usually on any photo to increase the contrast as this increases the chances of creating a good looking photo. What I am looking to do typically is to create some white in the traditional areas of the photo that are blown out by a flash or any light. These are highlighted by the red circles in the original image. The preview image is on the right. Note: because we are doing this photo on glass (or black granite) the image needs to be inverted. Because of this what is white becomes black and black becomes white. Typically for 99% of the photos I do I need to lighten the image up. Thus because I have to invert the photo the image has to be darker when I adjust. This is so important to remember. In this case I am doing the exact opposite if I was doing the image on wood. But remember you still need to create more contrast. I have done this in the photo. There are good white areas and good dark areas. Typically on a wood image I would not do much adjustment to the dark area of the photo.

Go to BITMAP | SHARPEN (1) | UNSHARP MASK (2)

Typically I use a Percentage of 500 (1) when I am doing glass or wood or granite. The Radius will number in this case is 4 (2) but you need to adjust this one according to the photo that you are using.

The next step is to select BITMAP (1) | MODE (2) | BLACK AND WHITE (3).

Select one of the 3 error diffusion settings. Jarvis, Stucki or Floyd Steinburg. All three are fine.

I have chosen Floyd Steinburg. The only other adjustment is the intensity slider. You can choose this to change the spacing of the dots.

Here is my finished image. Now all we have to do is invert it. Did not take a lot of time and now I see exactly what I want and it costs me nothing.

To Invert the image select EFFECTS (1) | TRANSFORM (2) | INVERT (3).

Our image is inverted and now can be sent to the laser machine. For a further video on lasering glass see this link or this link on lasering photographs

Hopefully as you can see the photograph has lasered quite well on the glass. Note: The one thing that you have to remember is that you need to mask the glass. For a further explanation on this technique visit my Lasering Glass Video.

Here is the photograph pictured from behind as I look through the glass

Just to make sure that I am not not using a good image here is another one

Here is our photo after we fixed it up. We had to clone out some bad rips and folds in the original image.

Select the photo and right click on it  and select edit bitmap (1). This will open the image up in Corel PhotoPaint

With the image open in Corel Photo Paint select IMAGE (1) CUTOUT LAB (2).

With the image in the cutout lab we can now work to cutout the image. First we need to outline the area of the photo that we want to keep. To out line the image we will use a marker. The marker or pen is located at the top right (1). If you want to make the nib large or smaller you can enter in the size under “Nib Size” (2). The default colour of the line that the pen draws is lime green (3). This can be changed to suite the photo.

A nib size of 20 (1) gives you a nib or brush size that is a little small for this image (2) – round circle.

To get better coverage I changed my nib size to 45 (1). My nib is now thicker than 20 (2).

Before we start we need to zoom in to make our drawing more accurate. I will select the zoom in button (1). Click and drag an area to zoom into.

If you zoom in you will need to click back on the marker or pen tool (1). Select 45 (2) and keep green (3).

Draw a line from the bottom of the photo (1) to the top of your window (2). The line is green and it is half on our image and half off our image.

Continue to draw the line around the image. Make sure that the line is uninterrupted. Do not worry about letting go of the mouse. You can do this and start again. If you press the “H” key you will be able to pan the photo by clicking on the photo and holding down the mouse button and moving the photo to get to an area that needs to be drawn on.

If you make a mistake you can erase the mistake with the eraser (1) and than start drawing again.

We have now outlined our image. The green line indicates the area we want to keep and the area we want to get rid of.

We need to tell PhotoPaint what we want to keep and what we want to discard. We do this by filling what we want to keep. So select the fill tool (1).

If you do not take your green lines right to the edge of the page (1) and (2) when you fill with the fill tool you will fill the whole image. This is no good. We need to close off those areas by selecting the line tool and extending the line to the bottom of the photo.

Our Image fills right because only the inside is filled blue.

The actual cutout is very good and we only have 3 areas that need to be addressed.

First off all to make it easier zoom into the area that needs to touched up. We need to bring some detail back that was taken away. Select the “Add Detail” brush (1). We are now going to click on the area that needs to be touched up.

When the add detail brush is activated your cursor will change into a round shape. You can now drag over the area the needs to be brought back. Hold the left mouse button down and drag and than release.

We have now brought our detail back to the image.

To get rid of some detail you can click on the remove detail brush in the tool (1).

I want to get rid of the middle section also. I can do this by selecting the brush tool and tracing around the middle area (1).

The Middle is now traced out and I can fill in the photos with the Fill tool.

This took 3 minutes to do. I have gotten rid of the background around the two ladies (1) and also the area that is in the middle (2).

To help you see any “extra” detail that you have missed in the background you can change the background colour to black (2), gray or white (1).

Here is the same image with a gray background

Our background has now been removed

To transfer the image back to CorelDraw got o FILE (1) | FINISH EDITING (2) or SAVE (3). This depends on what version of Corel that you are using.

Our Image has now been transferred to CorelDraw. You can now close PhotoPaint.

Here is the original plate that I got from my customer

My plate size is 4 (1) by 2.75 (2).

I want to first setup my text options for the paragraph text so that when I create the table it will pick up these settings. In this case I want the text to be .125 inches tall and the font to be arial. The text needs to be left justified. Go to TOOLS (1) | OPTIONS (2).

First we need to select Styles (1). than Default Paragraph Text (2). Than Edit (3)

Make your text Arial and the size .125. Note if you want a special justification select paragraph and change your justification.

For this exercise I made the default left. This is good for the two outside columns.

I drew out guidelines to help me line up the table. The left (1) and right (2) columns will be wider than the middle column (3).

Select the table command from the tool box.

I need 3 columns (2) and I need 7 (1) rows for my table. Type in this info before you create your table

With the “Snap to Guidelines” on I am going to drag from the top left corner to the bottom right hand corner. You can see that the snap is indicating intersection (via the dynamic guidelines).

To change our table widths requires me to use the shape tool. So activate it in the Tool Box

With the shape tool selected my lines turn to colour.

Place your mouse over the line until it turns into a double headed arrow and drag inwards till it snaps on the guideline

Repeat for the other side

We now have a table that is setup the way we want it

We can now start entering the text for each of our cells. With the text tool activated (press F8) click inside the table with your cursor (1).

Type in your first line which in this case is the word CUSTOMER (1).

Continue entering your text into each column.

Keep entering in your text. For the right column. For this column we need to make the justification as Center so click inside your cell press the Ctrl key and the “E” key together and this will center justify the column or you can click on the center justifcation icon in the property bar.

When I am in text mode (1) the red box in the bottom right frame (2) indicates that the text is not fully showing on the screen. We need to adjust the text size or frame size to get the text on the screen.

If the line is a little long you can use the Fit Text to Frame found in TEXT (1) PARAGRAPH TEXT FRAME (2) and FIT TEXT TO FRAME (3)

You can also decrease or increase the margins of the cell. Make sure that the table tool is selected in the ToolBox. Now click on the Margins drop down (1). If you want to effect all the margins the same leave the lock button on and type in a value. If you want separate values unlock the icon (2). Now enter in your values (3). In this case all I want to do is to increase the width so that the last character can fit on the line. Note: worse case scenario is you can decrease the font size.

The text has been laid out. The problem is that the text is higher at the top than at the bottom. We need to adjust. We could lower the table box or we can change the alignment on the text frame. Right now it is top we need to make it middle. This will force the text into the middle of the table cell and the alignment will be even.

If you want you can also change the amount of condensing on that line. Go to TEXT | CHARACTER FORMATTING. This opens a docker. Select the line you want to condense (1). Next go and decrease the character spacing to increase the condensing on the line.

Make sure that the Table command is active in the Tool Box (1). Click in on the cell that you want to change so that is active as per the round selection handle dots (2). Now from the pull down menu click on the Vertical alignment icon (3) and select Center Vertical Alignment (4).

You can see that our text is now evenly spaced out on our plate. We now have to add in our dashes into the middle column

I have entered into text mode and I am going to use the underscore dash as it is longer. I have entered it in. Because it is an underscore it is actually lined up with the center of the other lines so I really do not have to do anything with it other than make it bold (1). In the next cells I just copied the first cell and each successive cell I went cut and paste.

I have now have my plate almost complete. There is still one other step to do before I can go on.

We first must thicken up the outside border. Make sure that it is selected from the Borders pull down (1). Next make sure the colour is what you want which in this case is black (2). Next select the width of the line which in this case is .014 inches.

Select the border pull down (1) and select the inside boarder (2).

Because I want no inside border I will select the “x” which is none (1).

We now have a finished plate that we can send to our laser.

Here is an "R" that was imported fom a .plt file. You can see that the resolution on the curve is rather poor.

To test this I have created an "R" and a "D" in CorelDraw.

To export the file go to FILE (1) | EXPORT (2)

Type in a name (1) and select the HPGL Plotter File format (2). Note: make sure you note the directory you are exporting to so that you can easily find the file.

Once you click OK on the Export command window you will be taken to another window – pictured above. The change we need to make is found under the "Advanced Tab" (1)

I want my curve resolution to be as low as it can be so 0.001 or even 0 is fine (1). Click on OK (2). The default of .02 is not good enough.

You can see that the imported image is almost as good as the original and certainly better than our first image than had the default values applied

The original image is at the top and the imported image is at the bottom. With the nodes activated you can see that the imported image has more nodes than the original image. Remember each node is a direction change and thus the least amount we have the better it is – as long as we do not sacrifice the quality of the image.

How about if I use a different file format such as EPS. You can see that the difference in the two formats (the original is on top) is the negligible

When I look at the nodes you can see that the difference is basically nothing. So if you are looking at exporting or importing vector files I suggest that you use EPS as a better format or better yet PDF.

Here is a logo that I grabbed off the internet. To make sure that I had a good test file I took the original vector file and converted it to a rgb bitmap.

We now need to activate the Trace program. With the logo selected select Trace Bitmap (1). Than Outline Trace (2). Than Line art (3) Typically for this type of logo I will select with the Line art (3) setting or the Logo preset (4)

Here is the Before and After view in the Trace window

I like to view the logo in WireFrame overlay as opposed to the Before and After.

The default settings that CorelTrace has used create an excellent image. Our trace is outlined in red while the original image is in blue.

Here are the settings that Corel has assigned for the Line Art Settings. The detail (1) indicates how much detail you want to include in the image. I typically always leave this at the highest level for any logos I am doing. The Smoothing (2) allows us to control how smooth we want our image’s lines to be. Typically if the image is a bad scan you may increase this while if the artwork is good as it is here I leave this alone. Note: the temptation is to slide this slider to the far left and increase the detail. The problem here is that our number of nodes and thus file size becomes quite large. Also each node indicates a direction change on our machine and thus our rotary engraving machine or our laser machine will not be traveling as smooth as maybe it should. The corner smoothness (3) allows us to adjust how tightly we follow the corners of our image. In this case our image is of good quality so I am going to have the software follow the corners as tight as it can. If the image was of lesser quality I may increase this setting. Also I like to point out that the Trace setup screen also indicates the number of curves used (9 curves), the number of nodes (539) and the number of colours (2).

Once you exit the Trace command Corel will place the new trace right on top of the old trace. This can create a problem if you deselect the image

Here is the finished trace.

I went to VIEW | WIREFRAME

This zoomed in shot shows the quality of the trace lines.

If you want to edit the logo to clean up some of the lines the first step is to Ungroup the Logo so that you can select the individual lines. Go to ARRANGE (1) | UNGROUP ALL (2).

To be able to edit the nodes on in the Logo I need to activate the shape tool

When you activate the shape tool your cursor will turn into a rectangle

When you click on the image any contours that are combined together will activate their nodes

I broke my contours apart so now when I click on a contour I only get one contour. You can see that the contour is selected as the nodes are activated.

Here is a zoomed in view of all the nodes. If you want to delete some of the nodes you can select them and delete them. I am going to delete two of the nodes that are marked (1).

If you hover over a node it becomes highlighted as a rectangle (1)

To select a node all you need to do is to click on the node with your cursor which is in the shape of a triangle

With the node selected you can just press the delete key and the node will disappear. Note: when deleting nodes make sure you watch the shape of the contour as a deleted node could change the shape of the contour. If it does just undo. I have now deleted my two nodes. Note: The less the amount of nodes the smoother the logo. Just be careful if you delete to many nodes you can smooth out the logo to much so be careful

Create a page in CorelDraw that is 6.0 by 3.0. You will notice that I have places some descriptive text at the top of the page (2).

Here is the file my dealer got from their customer. There are 20 columns of names. each Column needs to have a descriptive name. In this case it is NAM01 and so forth.
NOTE: remember that CorelDraw will not condense names. Thus you need to figure out how many letters you can get on a line without the line flowing past the page margins (you could do an envelope so maybe I will address that in another tutorial). So pick your font size and figure out how many characters can go on a line and tell the customer to work within these parameters.

Here is the excel file in close up view. Notice that the first cell has the identifier text NAM01 (1). The text is in the fields below. The next column has the next identifier NAM002 (3). It does not have be NAM01 it can be any descriptive name that you want.
Note: Once the file has been checked close it down.

Got to File (1) | Print Merge (2) | Create/Load Merge Fields (3).

Select “Import text from a file or an ODBC data source” (1). Click next (2)

Select “ODBC Data Source” and then select “Select ODBC Data Source”

First click on the “Machine Data Source” tab (1). Next double click on the “Excel Files” name (2).

Select the directory where the file is (1). In this case My Documents. Next double click on the file name (2) in this case PLTALL.xls. Or click once and click “Ok”. Click next.

The PTALL file is selected (1). The Column window shows the 20 columns that where in excel that are being imported into Corel (2). Select Ok (3).

Select Next (1)

You can see that the columns are imported (1). The field type is text (2). Click Next (1).

Here is the text displayed in the Merge Wizard. You can see the merge fields listed on the top (1). The names are all listed in the body (2). Note: you can spell check or change any of the names here if you want. You can also choose not to bring in a name by unchecking the name name (3). Click Next (4).

Select Finish (1). This will end the wizard.

The print merge toolbar becomes active. We now need to start inserting our merge fields. Our Name field is NAM01 and we are going to insert it onto the CorelDraw document that we created using the insert command (1).

When you insert a merge field the field takes the name of the field that was created originally in Excel. This is why it is always advisable to make sure that you chose a name that is descriptive of the data that is coming in. For example if you where bringing in data that related to a position in a company such as sales use the field identifier name “Company Position”. This way you know what is in the field.

Select all the 10 lines of text and make text left justified. Because there are two columns here I am going to make the lines left justified. If I was doing only one column I would probably just leave it at center justified.

I have placed a .25 inch margin on the plate using guidelines. Place the 10 lines somewhat like I have them. Now place the top line – Name 01 at the edge of the top guideline (1) and the bottom line – Name 10 at the edge of the bottom guideline (2). Also make sure that each line is touching the left guideline (turn on “snap to guideline”).

Select all your text. We are going to left justify the text. After that we will be aligning it and than distribute it

Select Arrange (1) | Align and Distribute (2) | Align and Distribute (3).

Select “Align (1) and than “left (2). Click “Apply (3). This will left justify all the text.

Select the Distribute Tab (1). Next select Center (2). We are now going to evenly distribute the 10 select lines evenly. I am using the top and the bottom lines as the extent of where this distribution is going to be. Click Apply (3). You changes will take place and the box stays open. Click Close (4)

Here is our finished layout. I have 10 names in the first column and 10 names in the second column. I am now ready to do my merge.

Select Merge to New Document (1) if you are a user of X4 or X5. If you are a user of X3 or less select Print in the print merge toolbar (2) and proceed to the imposition layout in the print menu located later in this tutorial.

CorelDraw will than proceed to create a new document called printmerge1 that is comprised of a number of pages. each page has a new set of names on it. In this case each new page has 20 new names on each page. If we only had one merge field than we would only have one new name per page.

You can see from the number of pages that I have created 268 pages (1). Each page created has 20 names. Thus I have a total of 286 x 20 names which means I have a total of 5720 names.

Some of the lines are to long so they need to be condensed. You can select each line individually and condense each one but the problem is you will get lines that will look different from each other.

Select VIEW (1) | SNAP TO GUIDELINES (2)

Some of the lines are to long so they need to be condensed. You can select each line individually and condense each one but the problem is you will get lines that will look different from each other.

If we condense the lines that are going past the guidelines than we end up with lines that look different than the non condensed lines. It is thus better to condense them together

Now we need to select all the text in the left column. Next click on the right middle selection handle (1) – green arrow and while holding down the mouse button drag left (red line). With the snap to guidelines on the text will snap to the guideline.

You can see that now each line in each column is justified the same. The text looks a lot better now.

Select File (1) Print (2).

Select Your Laser (1)

Select Your Page Size which in this case is 24 by 12.

Select the Layout tab (1). In Versions older the layout table is right beside the General Tab. Than select Edit (2).

The imposition command allows us to take our 286 pages and group them into bigger pages. Thus we can do more than one plate at a time. In this case my big plate is 24 by 12 which I setup in my print setup for my laser or sublimation printer. Now I am going to put a bunch of 6 by 3′s on a 24 by 12 inch plate. If I divide this number I will get 4 across (4 x 6 = 24) and 4 down (4 x 3 = 12). Thus I can get 16 plates per multiple. You can see from my screen shot I have 16 plates. Note: Make sure that the numbers are exact if you use to many plates they will fit on the big plate but make them smaller.

To preview the job click on the “Document Preview” (1)

You can see that I have 16 plats per page. Note: for this example I did not condense all the names on the pages. I will let my dealer do that. Select the check mark (1).

Select Print to send the job to your laser or you sublimation printer. Note: Sure is nice I did not have to type in 5700 names. Sure speeds up this job.