CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide part 37 pdf

Using the Free Transform Tool The Free Transform tool, located in the same group as the Smudge brush, the Shape tool, and the Roughen brush, is your one-stop shop for performing rotation

● Dryout This option sets a rate for the effect of gradually reducing the width of a smudge according to the speed of your click-drag action and can be set between –10 and 10 Higher values cause your smudge to be reduced in width more quickly (as shown next), while a setting of 0 deactivates the Dryout effect Interestingly, negative Dryout values make your stroke begin small and eventually widen as you click-drag

● Tilt The Tilt value controls the elliptical shape of the Smudge tool nib Tilt is measured in degrees set between 15º (a flat-shaped nib) and 90º (a circular-shaped nib), as shown next Tilt and Bearing values (discussed next) work in combination with each other to control the smudge nib shape

Dryout setting of 3 Dryout setting of 10 Dryout setting of –8

Tilt = 15º, Bearing = 0º Tilt = 45º,Bearing = 0º Tilt = 90º,Bearing = 0º

● Bearing Bearing lets you set the angle of the cursor in circular degrees (0 to 359º).

The effects of changing Bearing are most noticeable at lower Tilt values—such as

15°, as shown here It’s the rotational angle of a non-circular tip

Using the Free Transform Tool

The Free Transform tool, located in the same group as the Smudge brush, the Shape tool,

and the Roughen brush, is your one-stop shop for performing rotations, skews, and other

object transformations using an onscreen guide

Unlike with the Pick tool for object transformations, the Free Transform tool has a handle

by which you steer and have precise control over the object you manipulate To use the tool,

you choose it from the toolbox, choose a transformation type on the property bar, and then

with the object selected, you click-drag on a control point (or any object node) to set the center

of the transformation; dragging reveals a handle that also serves as a visual indicator of the

amount of transformation you’re creating This preview of the transformation is in effect until

you release the mouse button As you can see in this illustration, it’s obvious the rectangle is

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Tilt = 15°, Bearing = 30°

Tilt = 15°, Bearing = 45° Tilt = 15°,Bearing = 90°

Free Transform tool

Property bar options Rotate Reflect Scale Skew

being rotated, where the center of rotation is, and the extent of the rotation before the

transformation is actually made

The Roughen Brush

To add a touch of character and imperfection to ultra-precise objects, you have the new Roughen brush in the group with the Smudge brush, shown here:

The Roughen brush alters the course of an outline path on an object, and depending on the setting you use on the property bar, you can achieve effects that range from lightning bolts, to really gnarly lines, to zigzag patterns, just by dragging on the edge of a shape The options you have when using the Roughen brush can be seen here on the property bar; they’re similar to those of the Smudge brush:

Spike Direction (digitizing stylus only)

● Brush Diameter This sets the size of the Roughen brush It’s usually a good idea

to scale the nib in proportion to the selected object you want to roughen By default

the scale of the nib is measured in inches

● Pressure Sensitivity If you use a digitizing tablet and stylus that responds to

pressure, this option can be used to vary the nib width as you drag over object areas

The option is dimmed on the property bar if CorelDRAW doesn’t detect a digitizing

tablet hooked up to your system

● Frequency You’ll see that the Roughen brush creates irregularity on an object

edge that is similar to the peaks and valleys of a mountain range—it varies the object

outline in an “in and out” fashion At low Frequency values, the roughened object

outline will feature large, varying areas At high Frequency settings, you’ll attain a

zigzag effect The range of Frequency is from 1 to 10 (10 produces zigzags)

● Dryout Like the Smudge brush, the Roughen brush can “dry out” at the end of a

stroke you drag with the cursor The range of dryout effect is from –10 (the stroke

tapers in the opposite direction in which you click-drag) to 10 (the stroke tapers and

fades) At 0, the stroke remains consistent The greater the Dryout setting, negative

or positive, the more natural a roughened appearance you can achieve

● Tilt This option measures your stroke with the Roughen brush perpendicular to the

edge on which you stroke Therefore, if you have an edge that travels straight up and

down, at a 90° setting you’ll achieve very little effect In your experiments with this

tool, try 45°, an overall good setting for all angles of edges on most objects When

you roughen an edge that already has roughening applied, you overwrite the

previous distortion of that edge Figure 11-11 shows two examples of the Roughen

brush; at left a small nib is used at a low Frequency, and at right a large nib is used at

high Frequency

Shapes that have special properties, such as rectangles and ellipses created with the

Rectangle and Ellipse tools, need to be simplified using the Arrange | Convert To

Curves command ( CTRL+Q ) before they can be roughened If you try to use the

Roughen brush on such a shape, you’ll get an attention box telling you that the

object needs simplifying, but then CorelDRAW will automatically do the operation

for you So if you want to avoid the attention box, press CTRL+Q while a shape is

selected, so you can get right down to editing.

This chapter has taken you through several processes by which you can create minor and

big-time alterations to just about anything you draw; additionally, many of the operations

apply to bitmaps you bring into the workspace Use the command that best suits the task you

have in mind, and use your judgment as to which operation will get you to your goal fastest

Personal computers are productivity enhancers: there’s no need to labor over something

when CorelDRAW and your PC can do it for you in less time

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Now that you have one, or two, or a dozen shapes on your drawing page, it would be nice to mix them up with some honest-to-gosh text: a headline here, a little body copy there Shapes and words live together, practically no one publishes an image-only website, and Chapter 12, Part IV of this guide gets you into the language of typography and the features

in CorelDRAW that make your keyboard a professional communications tool

FIGURE 11-11 Use the Roughen brush to achieve object complexity in a fraction of the time

needed using other tools

Working with Text

Getting Artistic with Text

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CorelDRAW is all about communication and expressing yourself; this chapter and the others in this part show you how to use text in a CorelDRAW creation to support and enhance your ideas as expressed on a page This chapter gets you started with the Text tool and other CorelDRAW type features and shows you how to present your thoughts and ideas invitingly and clearly Text and graphics go hand in hand in presentations; whether it’s a poster, a newsletter, a banner, or a logo, you have the tools at your disposal This chapter shows you how to access and work with them

Download and extract all the files from the Chapter12.zip archive to follow the tutorials in this chapter.

CorelDRAW’s Text Tool

All text you want to enter on a page in CorelDRAW is created with the Text tool, the tool

with an A as its icon in CorelDRAW’s toolbox To begin designing, click its button in the

toolbox, pressF8, or double-click an existing text object The Text tool cursor is a small

crosshair with an A below and to the right, which becomes an I-beam (a text-editing cursor)

when it’s over a text object

A shortcut to reselect the Pick tool while the Text tool is selected is CTRL+SPACEBAR — for all other tools, you can press either SPACEBAR or CTRL+SPACEBAR

When you use the Text tool, you can produce two different types of text objects in a document: artistic text and paragraph text Figure 12-1 shows a simple layout that uses artistic text in combination with the Text | Fit Text To Path command—the path is hidden in this illustration The smaller body text uses paragraph text; the top paragraph wraps around the top of the image by use of a CorelDRAW envelope (see Chapter 20) Artistic text and paragraph text have different properties, but are added to a document by using the same Text tool Artistic text, by the way it’s produced in a document, is easy to reshape and distort— you’ll find it simple to do artistic things with it, such as creating a company logo Conversely, paragraph text is optimized for longer amounts of text, and it’s a great text attribute for quickly modifying columns of, for example, instructions, recipes, short stories, and so on

In short, paragraph text is best used for several paragraphs of text in a composition, while artistic text should be reserved for headlines and just a few lines of text you might want to

curve along a path, extrude, or do something else unique and fancy with

Although artistic text and paragraph text have some similarities, you’re best off using one or the other depending on the type of text element you want in your design

Text copied from the Clipboard can be pasted when the Pick tool is your current

tool Usually, unformatted text—text from a TXT file you copied from Textpad, for

example—will import as paragraph text.

● Text imported without a Text tool insertion point entered on the page comes in as

paragraph text

● Text pasted with an insertion point made on the page imports as artistic text.

Text copied from word processors will import as a document object; double-clicking

the object offers in-place editing exactly as you’d edit a WordPerfect or Microsoft

Word document It’s usually best to choose Edit | Paste Special when pasting

Clipboard text, to ensure that correct formatting and the original fonts are used,

and to use the Text tool’s I-beam cursor to insert pasted text.

12 FIGURE 12-1 Artistic text and paragraph text have different attributes, and each is suited for

different text treatments in a design

Artistic text

Paragraph text