This was a file that was sent to me by a customer that had issues with an AutoCAd file imported into Corel where it would triple cut and jump all around without completing to cut one whole object. It would just cut the individual segments. In the old days we would have had to delete all the overlapping segments and join all the broken segments into one overall object. To do this requires us to use the Smart Fill tool in CorelDraw. This tool is excellent for creating a closed object where there is not closed objects. Although we do not have to get rid of our extra layers I will do it more as a house keeping excursus. … Continue Reading

One of the more popular items to put photos onto is wood or granite. The problem is that wood is really not the greatest medium to work on. For this reason we really need to give ourselves the best opportunity to get the photo right. One technique that should be done on a photo that is going onto wood is to have the background knocked out. In this article I will show you a photo that is lasered on wood with the background and one that has had the background taken out. … Continue Reading

This help file takes you through how to create a photo in CorelDraw using both error diffusion conversion (Jarvis, Floyd Steinberg or Stucki conversion method) or the halftone conversion. I have done this to show you that you can experiment with different conversion methods on photos if you want to see if you can get a different look. Also one expensive software conversion program you can buy uses the halftone method of converting images. The image is than lasered on steel using Thermark. … Continue Reading

One of the more popular questions I get asked is what file format should i ask for when someone wants to send me an image. If it is a photo than the standard answer should be the raw format. If all else fails which it normally will than the next best thing is a tiff file (and I do not mean a jpeg saved as a tiff ) or more typical if there is no tif a JPEG.
However what about a logo say from a company. Typically what you get is a jpeg from the internet and we know how bad that can be. But all kidding aside if you are lucky to get an image what should you ask for. The best answer for a logo that is not a photo is a vector formatted file. Typically that comes to you in an EPS format or an AI format. However because the laser can laser bitmap or raster images than you can also have the image come to you as a JPEG or a PNG file. Typically they are in a black and white format … Continue Reading

As we mentioned in our previous tutorial the problem when you receive a photo from a customer is it sometimes does not match up with the size that it is going to engrave at. For example if you receive a 4 by 6 photo and want to engrave it as a 3 by 3 than you will have to sacrifice part of the image when we crop the image down to the size. The Smart Carver can do that for us. The Smart Carver also allows us to do on other function. This is it allows us to remove certain objects from a photo and than resize the image to the size that we need. … Continue Reading

One problem that will eventually come up when you are working with Photographs is that you will have an issue where the size of your photo or your cropped photo does not match up with the size that you need. For example in this tutorial we will show you how we fit a 16 inch by 12 inch photo onto a 12 by 12 tile. This is a great technique to know as it will allow you to better fit a photo into a predetermined sized area. The tool we will be using is the Smart Carver feature in Corel X5 and X6. … Continue Reading

Sometimes when you go to fill a closed object it will not fill. This is because the object is not actually closed. It may look closed but the nodes that are over lapping are not closed. We can spend the time to close them which I will show you are the end of the article or we can use the smart fill tool which creates a closed object This can be a lot easier if the object has a lot of broken nodes. … Continue Reading

Starting with X5 Corel decided that the default pen width should be .007. This creates an issue for those that want to vector cut objects on a laser. This is because most laser drivers need to see lines widths less than .007.The line width allows the laser machine to recognize these lines as vectors. For this exercise I will show you how to change the defaults in X6 as this has been changed in this version of CorelDraw. Typically we made our changes in the styles section of the Tool menu. This has changed in this version which means we need to change this.

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I had a customer who bought a laser to create a number of scroll saw patterns on their laser machine. The problem is the images are in a book. This article will show you how to take the scanned image and vector it so that we can cut it out with our laser

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In this lesson we will look at recreating this photo on both anodized aluminum. Note the one problem with this photo is that the hat casts a shadow on the boy’s face. For this reason I will need to put in a little more of an adjustment to lighten up the face. Photo provided by
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