Graphic art services

[Flat32]

Would you believe I just realized the importance and function of layers in Draw??  Never used them before.  Tried once in Solidworks, but my model files were so large I'd be ram limited and the program would slow to an annoying crawl.

[Dave Van]

Layers seem to confuse my brain.....maybe just me.....

[peteski]

1 hour ago, Flat32 said:

.  I'm hoping to find I can edit a bitmap within Draw, but manual tracing negates the need.  Hmmm

You can insert bitmaps into .CDR drawing, and you can edit them too. But that just opens up the bitmap in PhotoPaint.  I only use that feaure when I want to resample (change dpi) a bitmap I resized in the .CDR drawing.

 

I find layers indispensable, especially when i manually trace bitmaps.  You can see that in the screen capture I posted earlier. I place the bitmaps I'll trace in a layer I call "Bitmaps" and I lock that layer. That layer is under the layer I create the artwork.

Think of layers as a stack of transparencies on which you can draw, make them visible/invisible printable/non-printable and you can lock them to prevent editing.

Layers also come in very handy for when I make decal artwork for Alps.  I place the various spot colors I'll have to print on separate layers.

[Flat32]

What can I do with this?????

[peteski]

Not much.   Looks like you just re-sampled the original into much higher resoluton.

I took the image you cleaned up, touched it up a bit and resampled it.  Yes, it is jaggy, but I could still do a decent job manually tracing it. Human brain can do a good job filling the missing info when you are tracing.

This is good application for layers. You can trace on a layer over the bitmap, and then be able to instantly switch between making the bitmap visible or hidden as you are tracing. That helps to manually shape the letters so they look good to your eyes.

Edited April 1, 2020 by peteski

[Dave Van]

3 hours ago, Flat32 said:

What can I do with this?????

I'd find a font that would get you close on the 'resh' and then draw by hand the 'F' . You may have to edit the fonts, like the 'h' for sure....but should get you real close. 

[Flat32]

What is your favorite or most used font search websites????  Looking for one where you type in your text, choose a filter or two and scroll through the samples.

"F" will be Peterized, "resh" will be Dave'd.  Result will be when I get the Corel program installed on my separate laptop workstation with a dual monitor set up.  I am wanting to watch tutorials and practice the exercises at the same time.

Forever grateful to you guys letting me into your graphics candy stores and pointing me toward the chocolates.

Edited April 1, 2020 by Flat32

[peteski]

This is all fun stuff!  This one identifies fonts from a picture, but what you have is way too coarse for identification.  If I have higher resolution picture of the lettering I need, I often clean it up and convert it to line-art. I still have mixed results.

https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Then others:

https://www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator

http://www.identifont.com/

Just do a Google search for "font identification" for many more sites.

[Flat32]

Astonishing to realize how many fonts there are in my house. Seems like 90% of the  stuff has printing on it and most have multiple fonts, like six or more on a packaged food item.  Making me nuts looking at them all.  Then there's even a font identifier app for phones.

On one hand the font art style adds beauty, on the other It's a form of subliminal mind control. Very foreign to my mechanical engineering mindset.  Wanted to put the Ford script logo, which I dearly love, on my carburetor 3D cad model and spent a week trying to create it in Solidworks. These new, to me, techniques will make that previously frustrating ordeal a fifteen minute breeze.

Did the Google search and checked out a few of the links including Pete ones. Finding out Corel has advanced font tools.

I'll never be an artist, but I'll certainly master reverse engineering a graphic, eventually.

 

[peteski]

Yes, there are tens of thousands of different fonts available out there, and you right, you are crossing over from technical into the artistic realm.

As far as the Corel font tool goes, it is a Font Navigator. It is just a tool which allows you to catalog and categorize the fonts residing anywhere on your PC.  Since you could have thousands of fonts on your PC (not all installed), it also allows you to install and uninstall them, along with displaying them and allowing you to see how your sample text would look like in some font.  It is convenient, but I'm not sure if I would consider it as advanced.

 

As for things around your hose, I suspect that Helvetica (or one of its clones) is probably still one of the most widely used typefaces (fonts).

[Flat32]

Helvetica seems primarily used for the pure text printed stuff.  You know, the stuff you really need to read that gets printed 0.5 point type.

For mechanical drafting blueprints usually have only one font. Engineers don't need no stinking artsy font graphics.

The feature I like and will use is where you can have a group of favorites separate from the "big" list. I think it will also save a globally adjusted custom version as a new font. Like if I take a straight up version and adjust it to italic with a custom slant or changed  letter spacing for example.

[robdebie]

On 4/1/2020 at 12:31 PM, peteski said:

This is good application for layers. You can trace on a layer over the bitmap, and then be able to instantly switch between making the bitmap visible or hidden as you are tracing. That helps to manually shape the letters so they look good to your eyes.

Another vote for working in layers! Sometimes it helps to 'lock' the layer with the bitmap, since without locking, the 'pen' of your own artwork layer wants to follow the bitmap that you want to copy. I never understood that behaviour though.

And another CorelDraw tip: try different view settings under the 'View' menu. Sometimes the 'Wireframe' setting makes for far easier drawing on top of a bitmap. It makes your artwork lines clearer, and softens the bitmap that you're copying.

One last tip: for everything that I draw as decals, I set the line thickness to zero. Just use the 'fill color' to create the letters. Otherwise your artwork will look just a little 'fatter' than the original. And if you scale artwork, the line thickness (if not zero) will often not scale accordingly, leading to other surprises. In short, always set the line thickness to zero, for everything you draw.

Rob

 

[Flat32]

On 3/30/2020 at 4:08 AM, robdebie said:

CorelDraw isn't easy to start with, but you need to learn only a few things to do your decals. The program can do 100x more, but you don't have to learn all that.

Have fun!

Rob

I took this to heart immediately, but forgot to thank you for it.

Thanks Rob.

[Flat32]

Wasn't a fair comment.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Flat32
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