Feathered Edges

[SickBastard]

In case you haven't guessed, yes I am and old school adobe guy, but learning corel draw.

I was wondering if there is a simple way to apply a transparency to an image in such a manner that it fades to transparent equally on the outside edges, also known as feathering.

I have played around with the dropshadow option to achieve a similar result, but still not what I was looking for.

 

[impulselondon]

That has been my constant wish - mesh transparencies. I don't think there's an easy one-step method, but you can apply a contour to an object, then break the contour objects apart. Then you can apply gradient or increasing transparencies to each object, which produces the feathering effect.

This still doesn't allow you to contour the transparency to the outline of an object though.

 

[Brushman]

Feathering is done in Photo Paint rather than Draw ie on bitmaps. If a bitmap double clicking should launch paint, Paint will open a cdr file and you can do it from there but the result will be a bitmap.
Alan

 

[javabearSTL]

As Brushman said, do the feathering in Photopaint on bitmaps. You could either use the Feathering option or the interactive transparency tool. Personally, I dislike editing a bitmap from within Draw. I prefer to launch Photopaint separately and editing the bitmap outside of Draw and then importing the bitmap back into Draw (but that's just me and my workflow).

 

[impulselondon]

Got it - I couldn't get this issue out my head, so I figured out a decent way to do it in Draw. This still only applies to vectors, though, and as both Brushman and Javabear said, it's much easier to do this in Photopaint, but...

Make your shape (or group). Duplicate them and shrink it - I do it visually, so I don't use the numerical measurements. At this point, I place the smaller shape over the bigger one, and you can centre-align them for things like buttons and non-organic shapes. Then I do a three-step blend (not a contour) between them, break the blend group apart, and apply the transparencies over each blend object in succession.

These blend objects will automatically contour to the outline of the original shape; you can also simply create a smaller object an blend to the original (so a small circle over a rectangle ends up giving an ovaline feather effect to the rectangle).

It really takes a lot longer than the Photopaint method, but ultimately allows you to retain your vector shapes. This is invaluable for me because I do a full-size comic book entirely in COREL and with bitmaps, pages can get well over 10 Mg in size.

Hope that helps, and if either Brushman or Javabear wish to try this method and vouch for it (or improve on it as I suspect they're able to do), I'd feel greatly less obtuse for explaining the whole thing .

 

[Brushman]

Good method. Blend is a function I don't use, not for any reason its just one of the very many features Draw has I don't natuarally use in my workflow. I think its time that looked at some of the newer or more obscure features Draw has.
Alan

 

[javabearSTL]

Yeah, Contour and Blend are not items I routinely go for in the ole bag o' tricks, but they can definitely be useful... and it's a unique way to approach the feathered edges issue and keep the objects still as vector items.

 

[PerZel]

Try using a utility called Knockout for Corel Draw. It works wonders and it's use is mainly feathering pics. JPEG or BMP. Doesn't matter which you choose. It'll give you great results.