Other effects with extrusion

[sallybode]

Normally you cannot put a shadow on an extrusion. But if you duplicate the type and remove the extrusion and paste it back over the extrusions text and group it, now you can add perspective and drop shadow.

You can also add perspective to an envelope, so there are effects that you have that normally aren't put together. It is the order in which you apply the effects. Grouping allows a whole nother world of effects. If you don't want to add anything to the effect, try grouping a transparent object set to 100% transparency. Corel will still see the object and group it and you can drop shadow or apply other effects. Note: Drop Shadow must be the last effect applied.

CorelDRAW can make some interesting effects, 12 is really cool.

[Sark]

Hi Sally.

Grouping can often help solve a problem. There are many things, which though at first don't seem possible, with a bit of lateral thinking a solution or workaround can often be found. The Gaussian blur effect (using transparency on a filled object) is a good example. Here's one that shouldn't be too difficult for the more experienced to solve. Filling area's formed by a single path is not possible, so how did I get from A to B (all vectors in Draw in under 30 seconds)?

Sark

[sallybode]

Copy, paste, manually trace with a tablet, set line width to "4", change outline to object, break objects apart, ctrl "A", Intersect object, click on outline, send to back, click each object (now in front) and color one at a time.

But my fastest time was 45 seconds on my watch elapsed timer. Sark, you are amazing!

Learned a few things figuring it out.

FUN!

Can you figure out how I did this?

Okay, I retimed myself, learning the keyboard shortcuts, I cut my time to 28 seconds. Phew, I feel so much better. Of course these things also helped. I preset my line weights, printed out your challenge so it fit on my tablet, made my paper tabloid. The steps were similar:

Using freehand drawing tool, traced your squiggle: P (Center on page), Alt-A, convert line to object, Alt-A, break objects apart, Ctrl-A: intersect, deselect, select, send to back, select each object and color it, but I dragged my palette close by and limited the colors to what I needed, less distraction.

But that is a lot of setup, Sark, you did all the setup in less than 30 seconds too? You are truly the guru of CorelDRAW!

[Grafixman]

Nice tip, Sally. Yes, grouping is a workaround to add effects to effects.
One thing, though... doing so seems to block access to earlier effects .
For example, I did an extrusion to a shape, added a square with no fill and line and grouped that to the extrusion. Now I'm able to add a drop shadow to it. But even with Ctrl LMB, I seem to be unable to access the extrusion for additional tweaking. It's "locked".... simpler groups still allow individual shapes to be edited, like changing the shape, fill or line types and colors, but grouped effects seems to behave differently...
Sark, I agree with Sally, maybe you turned the outline to object and broke them apart... It's a trick also frequently used by Risto with Xara. Very handy.
But... (I know I'm beginning to feel like a wet blanket... ) one thing I don't like with Draw is that it seems to add extraneous "garbage" paths in the process, as well as too many extra nodes. Often, too, if the shape is a bit complicated, the resulting shape is broken in places. Same thing for the interactive envelope after being converted to a path... too many extra nodes. Sure you can simplify it with the slider, but still...
If you can, try downloading Inkscape at www.inkscape.org.
The line to path conversion is clean, even with very fine lines. And there are no extraneous paths or too many nodes in the result.
Draw should really clean up these things... along with anti-aliasing....

[Sark]

Sally.

You have the gist, but not sure why you're manually tracing. My time is about 15 seconds, if I race

After creating your path carry out the following (Start with a Hairline path/outline and size to suit after step 7).

1…Select path and Ctrl-C.
2…Arrange/Convert Outline to Object.
3…Deselect and click inside the object. Hit Delete.
4…Select path and Arrange/Break Apart.
5…Deselect and click inside the object. Hit Delete.
6…Marquee select, or shift select the objects and give a light grey fill.
7…Ctrl-V.
8…Turn off "Treat as Filled".

You can now fill the individual objects before grouping the result.

Step 3 just removes the transparent control path that is left after converting to an object. Step 5 removes the outer part of the object created in step 2. Step 6 just makes it easier to see the pasted outline. If you start with a very thick outline you'll see what is happening more clearly.

Grafixman

Your basic explaination is correct, but no garbage is left behind. I originally tried drawing an enclosed shape around the path and trimmed with my path. This method did leave the garbage behind and didn't always work. Will download and give inkscape a try.

Sark

[Grafixman]

Hmmm... maybe they cleaned up the code with the latter versions... I'm still on CD11... the results are not nice at all...

[Sark]

Grafixman.

It was fine in 9. And is fine in 12. Strange it shouldn't work in 11.

Sark

[Grafixman]

It's not good for me.
It seems to be a hit or miss thing with my version... Here's a screenshot of what I sometimes get:

[sallybode]

To Sark,

To me, the point is to learn how to do something. In otherwords, since I am going to later on create my own drawings, I want to know how to do it from scratch. Yes, Vector tracing, I tried a couple of times with DRAW--too many nodes, I was not satisfied, and tracing it with the pen tool, to me, in a race, is too slow.

Specify where the start mark is. We may be halfway 'round the world, somethings aren't clear. And you didn't mention a word about my stained glass challenge. It is 100% DRAW and PhotoPaint.

To Grafixman,

Inkscape is really cool and its trace is nice and clean and the price is right.

I have to use DRAW at work. But we have an HP scanner that comes with a software that can make scalable art (vector). And it works pretty well. I tried Adobe Streamline and was very disappointed.

Illustrator now has a feature I like for creating vector shapes inside a .tif's individual shape, however, the more of these you do, the slower and the process becomes. Tracing and then intersecting the shapes in Inkscape is a real timesaver, as now you have a good drawing that is small in size because it has fewer nodes, and it saves in a universal format that you can import and continue your drawing. I have often used PhotoPaint's threshold command to create black and white drawing. Sometimes I cartoon, and it is much faster to do it on paper with a marker or even the old-fashioned way, with brush and ink. This is the way the old comic books were drawn. The vector tools that simulate these line weights have many more breaks, the natural media: you can get thick and thin and thick again with one stroke. But this program--Inkscape-- is the bomb. Lots of fun, and the gradient tool is WOW. There I go, my English is sounding very Yuppyish.

At work I am often given the drawings from hell to put on magazine covers or business cards, brochures, and especially when you have to reproduce their furnished crap (the customer thinks it is good artwork!) I have had to do complete redraws.

The problem with progress is that it takes someone producing software no longer tied to the past brilliance of a program. Can you imagine how much better Word would be if the industry could accept that you are typing on a computer and stop making it work like a glorified typewriter! But then the users would have a fit, and would have to do a lot of relearning. Many people don't want to relearn anything. Which is why program such as AutoCAD are so awful. Too much tradition. Users of the software seem to want to be shown how, to be taught, not to teach themselves. How can you ever lead if you only follow?

I'm definitely going to use this one at work.

What a timesaver! Thanks, Grafixman--the resource person.

[sallybode]

Oh, BTW, Grafixman, holding down a combination of keys allows you to select and to change things inside a group without having to remove a drop shadow for instance. These keys are: Alt, Ctrl and Shift. Drilling down throught the stacking order of a CorelDRAW drawing, holding down Alt, allows you to find the item you want to change, however if grouped, holding down Alt is not enough, and it depends upon the circumstance but you add the Ctrl key or the Shift key to let you select the right item, sometimes, holding all three down, but always the Alt key.