By Steve Bain
The applications and features described in this tutorial require CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 or newer to be installed.
As loyal users have come to expect, the latest release of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite comes with a substantial stockpile of digital content that you can use as you see fit. What you may not realize is that Corel has completely revamped the offering with the release of X3. The new collection isn't just a few new fonts and images added for good measure, it's a complete overhaul. Browse through these highlights and you'll see what I mean.
The digital content that comes with CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 is a valuable resource for a wide range of illustration and design tasks. The boxed version includes an easy-to-browse printed guide that showcases thumbnail images and character sets. The optimized and expanded digital content collection in CorelDRAW X3 now tops more than 10,000 graphic illustration and photos, over 1,000 character and symbol fonts, and an array of design templates.
A quick scan of the clipart category folders (shown below) will give you a brief glimpse at what's available. You'll find that more than 6,400 clipart images have been added to the collection, including images that Corel has licensed from specialty providers such as MR-Clipart (www.mr-clipart.com), Digital Art Solutions (www.digitalartsolutions.com), and Clipart deSIGN (www.clipart-design.com).
The following practical examples demonstrate how clipart images can be easily adapted or edited for special-purpose design projects. In the first example (shown below), a flame outline graphic from the Flames collection was added to a vehicle graphic from the Transportation > Cars collection to create an example of a vinyl application.
The award graphic taken from the Sports templates collection (shown below) demonstrates an example that an engravers might use in the creation of engraved award design.
These shirt and sweater designs from the Templates > Clothing collection can be easily adapted as silk-screening prototypes for the creation of team jerseys. Each graphic can be quickly edited to showcase any color scheme or stencil pattern.
If you use clipart from past versions of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, you'll be pleased to know that Corel has adopted a new naming convention that makes it easier to recognize the images specific to version X3. Insert disc 2 into your drive and click the Explore the CD button to browse the available images to view thumbnail and file names (as shown below) that include an X3 prefix.
A close examination of the clipart images will give you better insight into the attention to detail Corel has invested in the revised collection. You won't find images comprised of impossibly complex shapes that include node clusters in the thousands or graphic design elements prepared in unusable color schemes or non-reproducible color values. Virtually all objects are comprised of a minimal number of nodes.
Clipart images have been prepared in print-ready colors using either printable CMYK color values or fixed-palette spot ink schemes. The typical spot color example shown below from the Sports category is prepared using a four color Pantone® ink scheme in various tints, making it ready to use as is.
Of course, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 content still includes a collection of photorealistic images. Along with the specifically prepared images you'll find detailed illustrations in a variety of categories. The example below is typical of the inherent illustration quality available.
Glyph list fonts fully support the Pan-European character set, enabling you to guarantee that the characters in your CorelDRAW X3 document will display correctly when opened by international users working in Western, Central European, Greek, Cyrillic, and Turkish versions of CorelDRAW X3. You can view the entire character set of the WGL4 (or any other) font using the Windows Font Viewer window (shown below) opened by double-clicking a font file.
You can install any font using the Fonts utility (choose Start > Control Panel > Fonts) by choosing File > Install New Font and browsing to disc 3. For fonts, browse to [drive letter]:\fonts, choose a font folder, and select the alphabetically listed folder containing the font by name. For symbols, browse to [drive letter]:\symbols and choose a font type.
Clipart images are saved in native CorelDRAW (CDR) format for easy importing into CorelDRAW as is, or for editing to suit a specific purpose. Once a clipart image has been imported into CorelDRAW, you can ungroup it (Ctrl+U) and work with it as you would any other arrangement of objects. Photos and floating objects are saved in native Corel PHOTO-PAINT (CPT) format.
The digital photos in the collection are typically sized at 728 x 512 pixels at a resolution of 72 dpi using a 24-bit color depth and stored using an up-to-date JPEG 2000 file format. Photo categories cover a wide range of topics and subject matter and the images themselves are well composed for easy editing.
One of the reasons CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 has become such an industry favorite is Corel's commitment to provide such a well rounded collection of creative resources. With this revived collection, you're certain to find a wealth of digital resources you can put to good use.
Steve Bain is an award-winning illustrator and designer, and an author of nearly a dozen books, including CorelDRAW®: The Official Guide.