Where/How to start 1

[wlpsyp]

Hello all. I was just handed a new full version of CorelDraw 11 Suite and was told to make three images for web pages. Well, I am a Net Admin and in no way a graphics artists so.... here I am. What I need to do is this (excuse the terminology if not correct) I need to take about 7 photo's of U. S. Army vehicles/weapons and make one image or coloage or mixture of photos overlapping some and edges transparent etc. I just do not know where to or how to start with this without creating a large headache and mainly with limited time. I have looked at tutorials, but nothing along the lines of what I am needeing to do. Guidenece on how to start? or where to learn only this particular subject for now? I want to really dig in and learn this program, but am on a time crunch for these web photo's. The old Army saying "Hurry up and wait" does not apply here unfortunantly.

Thanks for any and all guidenance.

Bill

 

[attrofy]

Start with Corel Photopaint.

Find the images you need onthe web, or scan the images you have or take from some other electronic format.

Starting with the "Welcome Splash screen" select New Image.
Color Mode: 24 Bit RGB (Be sure that "No Background" is NOT checked for now, too hard to explain how to work around it for now)
Size: Whatever works for (4X6 or so should be good)
Resolution: 300
Click "OK"

On the top tool bar (just below the Text Choices (File|Edit|View etc) there is an icon with a floppy disk and arrow in a page - that is Import (or CTRL+I or File-> Import). Select the image to import.

Drag the image anywhere on the sheet that is appropriate (middle of your working space is good) and left click. This "drops" the image at that location.

On the left hand tool bar (Arrow|Dashed Box|Magnifying Glass etc) Select the Dashed Box (Second item from top) - this is your Mask tool. Click the little arrow in the bottom right hand corner, this flys out a whole slew of mask tools. This will be important later.

For now, be sure the square box is selected. Drag a box around the perimiter of your image, but be sure that it is inset a bit from the edge. By a bit, I mean for example take a 4 X 6 postcard sized image. Leave about a 1 1/2 to 2 inch border of the image, outside of your masked area. You will see the rest of your page turn red. The part that is not red is your masked area. If you messed up, there is a Circle with a line through it on your top tool bar (like a no smoking circle) this removes your mask and you can start again.

Up top go to the word Mask. This is your Mask Menu. Mask-> Mask Outline-> Feather. From the popup box select about 15 to 20 pixels for the Width box, and be sure that "Outside" is selected for Direction. You will see the red square start to grow or shrink (depending on which item
is defaulted in the Direction section).
Click OK.

Go to the Object Menu. Object-> Create-> Object: Copy Selection. Now you will see your red has disapeared (because you converted your masked area to a new object) and you will see 6 little boxes around the middle of your image. If you click and drag these (with the Arrow - your pointer) you will see you have created a new image, about the size of the area you masked, with a nice featherd edge, fading off into transparency. If this is not the effect, or amount of fade, or enough picture showing, be sure the new feathered image is selected, and hit the Delete button, or Right click on the image, and select delete.

This is the same procedure you will follow for all of you images. One word of note. It is adviseable to keep a few "project" windows simultaneously. One easy method to do this, is leave both images you have just created alone on this open document. Keep this as your work board document so to speak (don't be afraid to save it as a CPT (Corel Photpaint Image - which is the default) on a regular basis). Now, click on the feathered iage you just created. Up top find the Copy icon (or CTRL+C. Goto File, click New From Clipboard. Now you have a new workspace with just that image in it. There is a few things you can do. If you are going to be saving these images seperately, then goahead and save this new object (you can maximize and minimize the new window just like any other Window).

Assuming you want to save this image as a *.jpg or *.gif, click on Save AS from the File menu. Choose JPG (for illustrative purposes as GIF has some special requirements)and name your file and select your storage location. Click Save. You will get a warning that all objects should be merged with background - click ok. Be sure the Optimize button is checked on the popup menu, and that the Preview button is pressed in. Play with the sliders to acheive a good balance of file size and image quality. You can put the little hand over the left hand image, and move it around to different portions of the image by clicking and draging. If you just click with no drag, the image will zoom in. RightClicking will zoom out. If the Preview button is enabled, you will see realtime what effect your sliders have on the image. Sometimes you have to be zoomed way in though. Usually for web images, Smoothing can be at 10 (I prefer 0) and Compression should be no more than about 40 - 50 if file size is more important than image quality. Hit ok.

Now you have a JPEG of your feathered image...Enjoy.

If you want to make a collage, after you have all of your feathered images in one workspace (assuming the first workspace is where you are putting everything) we can procede. Note: Don't import all of your created jpeg's into a single workspace, the results will be less than you had hoped for. Keep the original scanned image, or electronic image in CPT format, with a relatively high resolution (300 or so) until you are ready to create an image. The quality drops way off if you use jpg's and gif's. If you have a good imae in these eftra little windows, you can drage them right out of one open window into another with no problems. THis can be helpful when you have multiple copies of the same image (i.e. you hit New From CLipboard 3 or 4 times). Anyway, get all of your finished feathered images together in the same space. You will see each image can be clicked on and moved around seperately. ANy that need to come to the top or go to the back, you can right click on the image and hit Arrange-> Order-> To Front (or To Back)(or Shift+PageUp, or Shift+PageDown). With the Pointer (arrow) selected, you can click on a selected object more than once. The fisrt click, the little squares all turn to double ended arrows. Grabbing any of these arrows on the corners allow you to rotate the image. Any of the arrows in the centers cause the image to skew. You must right click and hit apply (notice the "UP" button icon, It is on the menu up top too. Either method must be clicked to "engage" your changes, otherwise you get a "no smoking" circle, and can't do anything.) Clicking again turns the boxes into double ended hollow arrows (distort), once again into circles (perspective). These last two control perspective, angle, shape and the like, and are probably not what you are looking for at this time.

Once you get all of your images aligned, and laid out in the proper collage, you are ready to export it as a gif or jpg.

We covered jpg above. To control the file size a little better, you need to make some adjustments to your image.

For web format, the images need to be small, yet colorful. So once you have your image set (save it as a CPT incase you need to make corrections latter - this will act as your "master" working file)


Use the "Crop" tool on the left hand side (mouse over the tools and pause, it will tell you what they are) to cut the image down to size. This will complete delete everything outside of the cropped area. So be sure you are not cropping any of your feathered edges or anything. The area will turn Gray, showing what will not be in the final image, double-click anywhere inside the non-gray portion to crop to your selection.

Now click Image-> Resample. This brings up a box that controls your image choices. Reduce the resolution to 72dpi or 96dpi - depending on what the image is, and on final size, more dpi is sometimes needed over less. Anything less than 72dpi and the image begins to distort. It wil appear that image has shrunk way down in size. Zoom in until you can see the image clearly. Make sure too much resolution didn't get lost. If it did - hit the Undo Icon in the Top menu bar (Curved left point arrow). If you need to make the overall size of the final image smaller, go back to Image-> Resample and change the Image Size.

If you want to control the color output, you can convert the image to 8 Bit (this brings up the same menu if you save as a GIF). Go to Image-> Color Mode-> Palleted (8Bit)...

Here you can change the number of Colors in the image, the "type" of Pallette to use (Adaptive and Optimized use only the colors in the image, so it can reduce the file size by getting rid of "unwanted" colors. ALso you can chose Web Safe.) Be sure to select a "Dither" method. Jarvis, Stuki, or Floyd-Steinberg are the best choices, it keeps the image most "presentable" and not so "pixely".

If you got to this menu choice by saving as a GIF image, your last choice will be to pick a color to make for a "transparent" background. White is not a good choice, as ALL whites get turned transparent. If you have to do a transparent background, select the mask tool flyout arrow, pick the lasso tool, and go around the whole image. You can click and drag (which is a bit tricky) or you can click and set nodes (points) around the image. This will create an "elastic band" line showing what all would be encompased in the lasso's path if you double clicked at any given moment. So don't get concerned until you get more than half way around the image, it will become apparent what I am talking about. Furthermore, it doesn't have to be tight against the image. The lasso draws the mask in tight around the border of your image. With "feathered edges though, you are better off choosing the background color of your web page as your starting "Paper color". This can make things easier for you. Anywya, if you don't have feathered edges, and you mask out the image, when you save the image as a GIF, you can make the transparent parts anything that is not masked. You will see if you try it out.

ANy more questions, let us know. I know this is a lot to absorb, but this is pretty much a complete run through of how to get an image on the web. This should give you enough starting point to experiment with some confidence.

Play with the included tutorials. They will help. but this should get your image online by tommorrow.

Russell

 

[wlpsyp]

Russell....

WOW, was not expecting that much detail. THANK you... I will give it a try soonest and post back. AWESOME. Now just to have the brain obsorb.

Bill

 

[attrofy]

It sounds a lot more complex then it really is. It would be best to sit there with this page printed out, and go through step by step. It will make much more sense, and you will see it is not that bad.

Let us know when you come to something you don't understand.

Russell

 

[wlpsyp]

I already did the print thing

What I am trying to accomplish as stated before with alittle more detail is take say a tank ot a soldier with hiw weapon or a photo of personnel jumping out of a airplane and only show that individual piece. i.e. not the background, just the edging if you will of the tank or soldier. once I have 7 or so photos that are "outlines" then lay them out and "overlap" or "collage" them together into one .jpg or gif, .tiff etc for a banner type web page front screen image.

Bill

 

[attrofy]

If you follow the above methods, you will see what you are looking to do is Mask the part you want, Make it an OBJECT, then do whatever with that object (put in a collage, rotate, resize whatever).

The Mask Tool suddenly takes on a whole new world. The fly out Mask tool gives you quite a few options. The Lasso, as mentioned, can have pretty good results. However, color breaks (between object being outlined, and background) must be pretty stark. As the tool tries to find the color break, and snap the mask to that new color. Conversely, the Magnet Mask tool (new to version 11) works similarly, but I find it a bit awkwards at times, but play with it, you may like the results. It works best on straight lined objects (i.e. vehicle outlines, etc.)

The Mask Paintbrush is sometimes your best bet. You can control the "Nib" size and shape (imagine an invisible paint brush with the end shaped like your choices, of varying sizes. Be careful of the feather brushes - as they leave holes.

One other one that works well for masking "whole objects" (as sometimes the paint brush leaves "streaks" not filled in) is the Freehand Outline Mask tool. This lets you draw a line around an object and creates the mask within that area. The paint brush can then be used (set on Subtract - see below) to clean up any areas. This is usually a little more tedious, as you have to click (like with the Lasso) nodes, along the border. However, with the zoom tool, this can achieve the most acurate masking results.

Also, one other tool that is crucial to masking is the "Mode". You have an arrow - just plain mask, click again, and lose what you masked and start again. The "Plus" - this adds to your already masked areas; and the "Minus" - this takes away from something you have painted a mask over. Kind of like erasing what you have masked. Be sure you are in the proper mode when masking.

The Magic Wand Mask usually works pretty well, but it only finds areas of "similar" color to mask. So camoflauge fatigues would be a bit tricky. However, a silhouted (sp?) HALO jumper would work nice against a morning sunrise.

Play around with them. Just remember anything you mask, will copy that area, and create a new object that you can move, rotate, put into a new background, etc.

Good luck.