Dropshadows

[Alec]

I know very little of Corel Draw, and I´d like to know if it has good dropshadow support. Adobe Illustrator 9 (AI extension) exports well to Photoshop 6, and the dropshadows are transparent, which is good, but they´re very pixelated with low definition. What can I do to obtain good, easy to use high-def dropshadows with transparency, i. e., not over a white background? Does Corel 9 do the job? What about Freehand?

[Alec]

I know very little of Corel Draw, and I´d like to know if it has good dropshadow support. Adobe Illustrator 9 (AI extension) exports well to Photoshop 6, and the dropshadows are transparent, which is good, but they´re very pixelated with low definition. What can I do to obtain good, easy to use high-def dropshadows with transparency, i. e., not over a white background? Does Corel 9 do the job? What about Freehand?

[Not Ziggy]

Corel's drop shadow is the best, in my opinion, since it's the only one adjustable interactively. (You adjust the opacity, for instance, by moving a slider that lays right on top of the drop shadow.) And yes, it is transparent. You can also separate the drop shadow from the control curve or text and then convert it to a bitmap, and the transparency will survive IF you choose a format that supports transparency, like TIF.

However, your question lies more in how that drop shadow interacts with other software, and I don't know the answer to that, since I see no reason to involve other software.

I have a Pentium with NT4 on my right and a Mac G4 on my left and all the software made for both, and so I could conceivably find out what you need to know. But I'd rather simply state that whatever you're trying to do with PhotoShop I can do quicker and easier right in CorelDraw. The goal in graphic design is not (or should not be) to see how many pieces of software we can use on a project, in my opinion.

[Alec]

Thanks a lot.
It´s just a question o prediciting the future, I might need to export an object with dropshadow to Photoshop or another program someday...

[Not Ziggy]

Just to satisfy my curiousity, I just did a test. I created a drop-shadowed object in Draw 10 and exported it as an EPS. I then opened that EPS in Mac PhotoShop 5.5 (the newest I own) and created a new layer below the imported layer and drew on it. I got the dreaded white box.

However, I was able to achieve transparency by changing the upper layer (the one with the Corel image on it) to "Hard Light" mode. Objects below showed through as hoped with an applied tint in proportion to the darkness of a particular area of the feather-edged drop shadow, and were completely blocked by the box itself.

This is not really surprising, since the drop shadow has been essentially converted to a TIF and TIF's support transparency. The good news is that that conversion (within Draw) apparently effectively checks the "Transparency" box when it does so.

I hope this helps.

[Alec]

Yes, it does. Thanks.