Outlining halftones

[sallybode]

While I was on the subject of newletters, there are often many times when you have a group of halftones that you have on one page and some have great backgrounds that don't require an outline and the others are falling out because the background is so poor. I found a great script at OberonPlace.com's forum, I altered it so that the outline is CYMK Black 100% and is at 1pt.

What the script does is it finds all halftones and will outline them. If you are doing a High School Football program, etc., you don't have to outline the pictures or put them in PowerClips, I often have all my pictures sized before doing this as it makes the process that much quicker.

Anyway you don't need to select any halfton on the page, just run the script. It will also recognize rotated halftones. (On glitch is that if it sees a rotated halftone, it may or may not rotate the others to match). But for most static pages and pages of directories, etc., that have picture after picture, it is most useful.

This works in both 12 and X3, it may work in 10 and 11 as these designate scripts as .gms also.

In order to use, unzip the file, copy it and navigate to C:\Program Files\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 13\Draw\GMS and paste the .gms file.
Restart DRAW. You can then find it among your installed scripts and can play it from your Visual Basic Toolbar (if you have that up) or under Tools/Visual Basic (way at the bottom)/Play.

This is a lot of rigamarole to go through if you are doing a catalogue, so I'd suggest assigning a shortcut key or making a button for it. You can do this under Tools/Options/Customization/Commands/Choose "Macros" (under the dropdown menu which by default reads "File") and you can scroll to find "Main.OutlineBitmaps" or use the Search Tool (easiest) and just type (Bitmap). Note: the Search Tool (looks like binoculars) will find all instances of the word "Bitmap" or whatever you select, but if you are preselects to search "Macros", it will look in Macros only.

Once you find the listing under Macros, close Search and make sure the selection you want is highlighted, on the right panel are Shortcut Keys and Appearance. I suggest to use the Appearance tab because it is easy to forget you shortcut keys but with custom buttons, they tell you what they are for when you hover on them. So under the Appearance tab choose the "Import" button and navigate to what will help you remember what the script does. Mine is a thick box outline. Once you click on what you want, the icon is applied to the script. Now you can click on the script and drag it to the desktop, remember to hit O.K. or you get to do it again. Click your button and you have all bitmaps outlined.

Now if you want a 2pt line, you can edit the script but to do so you must use the Play button to get to the dialogue box to see the Edit button or if you have the VBA toolbar up, you can choose the edit script button and scroll to find it or under the find Tool/Visual Basic/Script Editor. The part of the script that pertains to line weigh measures line weight not in pts but in inches, and it works this way, so for 2pts, just double the contents of this callout and save the script.

The line to edit would be:
sRect.Outline.SetProperties 0.01389, , Color:=CreateCMYKColor(0, 0, 0, 100),

If you want a 2pt line, the input would be "0.02778", you can also edit the color here as well. You could also create a script that is unique for 1pt, 2pt, 4pt, and so on, but it isn't that bad to alter it for one use and then save it again for me. Perhaps someone else will feel so inspired.