Introduction
There is a tradition from my childhood—which seems to have gone away in recent years—but that I’d like to restore with this book. It’s called the “Prize in Every Box”; remember when you bought a box of candy or cereal and there was a bonus—something really cool inside you didn’t expect?
CorelDRAW X4: The Official Guide is your handbook to the most feature-filled drawing application you could hope for, and as you’d rightly expect, the chapters contain comprehensive explanations of what tools, pop-up menus, commands, dockers, and other elements do. But the
prize in this book is that you’ll learn not only the value of the features, but also what they’re good for—how each tool, command, option, and feature can be used to best serve a design problem you want to solve. Knowledge is fine—you can get facts from Wikipedia and around every corner on the Web, the bookstore, and your friends and family. When you put facts to use,
however, you eventually gain skill you can tap into in the future, build upon, and eventually your knowledge becomes wisdom—something an ambitious, expressive designer has an affinity for— right up there with water and oxygen.
This book is divided into eight parts plus an appendix listing keyboard shortcuts that’ll speed up your work in CorelDRAW. As you might expect, the parts follow a progression, from a very basic introduction to later chapters that delve into special effects and even photo editing. If you’re the type of reader who likes to begin at the beginning and make a linear voyage to
finish at the appendix, you won’t be surprised. However, the chapters are structured and fairly compartmentalized to address a specific topic; if you want fast solutions for specific areas within CorelDRAW, you can also “pick and choose.” One of the wonderful things about books is that you can skip ahead and rewind—just as you do with DVD movies!
- Part I starts you off with the new features in CorelDRAW X4, a must-read for users who’ve made the upgrade. Also in this part you’ll be guided through CorelDRAW options, thoroughly pore through the menus and palettes (including CorelDRAW dockers), and you’ll learn how to set up the workspace to make you feel right at home. New users are encouraged to set aside some quality time for this part—you’ll save a lot of time later when you want to get to the Fun Stuff.
- Part II focuses on navigating and measuring the workspace and your document, and on how to size things up, from measuring objects to moving and rotating them. You’ll also learn how to set up a multi-page document, create brochures and flyers, and you’ll see that each page can be a unique size and orientation.
- Part III gets you up and running with two of the most important tools used in designing original artwork, the Pen Tools and the Shape Tool. You’ll also get a handle on creating shapes using various presets CorelDRAW has to offer. Once you have your object created and edited to your liking, it’s only natural to make more of them; this part shows you how to arrange, group, duplicate, clone, and perform other tasks in your document to make laying out what you’ve created an inspired effort.
- Part IV dives into typography, working with Artistic and Paragraph Text, spelling and other CorelDRAW proofing tools, and some special effects you can create for fancy headlines. Sometimes it’s better to just say it instead of show it; CorelDRAW has the ideal tools for both the text and graphic message, and this part of the book also shows how to blend the two vehicles artistically for what you want to communicate.
- Part V puts the meat on the bones of the objects you design; in these chapters you’ll learn everything you need to know about object fills, outline properties, and most importantly, about digital color. Learn how to define and apply uniform fills, bitmap fills, and colors from different color models to your work so they’ll print exactly as you intend them to. And if you need a map or schematic drawing, check out this part for the lowdown on creating dashed lines, lines with arrowheads, and more.
- Part VI is a truly special part; CorelDRAW comes with a boatload of special effect features, and these chapters take you through the steps to distorting, blending, and creating photorealistic effects such as object transparency and soft, life-like shadows. If you’ve ever been stuck at a point where your design needs that “special something,” look into this special part of the book. Learn how to create shading as you’ve seen in airbrush illustrations, design chrome and glass-like objects, and create a seamless integration between what you draw and the digital photos you can place in your document.
- Part VII shows you that 3D object and scene creation doesn’t require a megabuck modeling program—you’ll find what you need to make scenes in camera-perfect perspective with CorelDRAW’s Effects menu. You’ll also learn how to extrude objects, letting CorelDRAW perform calculations to create a side view of the front of objects you draw. It’s fun, and the result can have the visual impact you need to create new worlds and sell your ideas.
- Part VIII (that’s “8” if you’re tired of reading Roman numerals) is truly an advanced section of the book, but it’s accessible to readers of all skill levels, and its contents take you through working with photographs, getting your prints looking their best, and more. See how to work with CorelDRAW’s extensive host of print options and features, learn the techniques for output to paper, film, transfer materials, and get to know CorelDRAW’s pre-flight options so your time and the expense of professional printing are on your side. You’ll also see how to get the best look out of imported bitmaps, beginning right with CorelDRAW’s Raw Lab. Learn how to work with image resolutions, and see how to export your vector drawings to bitmap file format. You’ll also want to pore through CorelDRAW’s HTML publishing features—make that print ad you’ve designed into a Web banner with only a few clicks. Finally, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is documented. See how to write simple scripts without actually writing a line of code (it’s visual; you record cursor movements), and speed up your work by automating common tasks with VBA.
- The Appendix to the book is full of shortcuts you can use in CorelDRAW. Find a task you need to perform faster and the Appendix lists the combinations of keys you can press to get you where you need to go.
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