Coreldraw 7 for dummies Book

Introduction

Why a Book ...For Dummies?

How to Use This Book

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: The Stuff Everyone Pretends They Already Know

Part II: Let the Graphics Begin

Part III: Getting the Message Out There (Wherever "There" Is)

Part IV: Corel's Other Amazing Programs

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

How to Bug Me

Part I: The Stuff Everyone Pretends They Already Know

Chapter 1: What's with All These Programs?

CorelDraw

Corel Photo-Paint

Finding photos to edit

Painting from scratch

CorelDraw and Photo-Paint Duke It Out

Corel OCR-Trace

Corel Capture

CorelDream 3D

CorelDepth and CorelTexture

Multimedia Manager

And the Rest . . .

But Wait, There's More

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Chapter 2: See CorelDraw Run

Draw on the March

Interface in Your Face

Title bar

Menu bar

Toolbar

Property Bar

Tools

Drawing area

Rulers

Scroll stuff

Page controls

Color stuff

Status bar

The Mouse Is Your Willing Slave (And Other Children's Stories)

How to Deal with Complete Tools

A quick experiment

How to find buried tools

More tool tricks

Les Menus sans Soup du Jour

Les equivalents du keyboard

Alt, ma chère amie, oui?

The Incessant Chatter of Dialog Boxes

Roll-Ups, Now in Dozens of Fruity Flavors

Roll 'em up and tack 'em down

Breakaway roll-ups

Chapter 3: Ladies and Gentlemen, Insert Your Pocket Protectors!

Spank the Baby

How do I start a new document?

The enlightening Chihuahua scenario

How do I open a piece of clip art?

Adding a drawing to an existing drawing

Opening and importing from the Scrapbook

Tools for Getting Around the Drawing Area

Miracles of magnification

Zoom up to the Property Bar

Your very own zoombox

The secret magnification menu

Pull Your Image into View

The Screen Is What You Make It

Show me a rough draft

String art revival

Die, you gravy-sucking interface

Preview bits and pieces

Save or Die Trying!

Saving for the very first time

Updating the drawing

Creating a backup copy

Put Your Drawing to Bed

Part II: Let the Graphics Begin

Chapter 4: The Secret Society of Simple Shapes

Shapes from Your Childhood

Rectangles and squares

Ovals and circles

Shapes with many sides

Ways to Change Shapes

Sanding off the corners

Turning an oval into a tempting dessert

Giving the pie a wedgie

Making a wacky shape wackier

Arrow Tool Techniques (Or Tricks of the Pick)

Kiss It Good-bye

Aaaugh, It's Gone!

Chapter 5: Drawn It, Shaped It, Ready to Go Free-Form

Do Some Doodling with the Pencil

Understanding paths, lines, and shapes

Coming to grips with nodes and segments

Mastering the pencil

Experimenting with the natural pen tool

Nodes as You Never Knew Them

Bringing nodes into view

Using nodes to reshape your drawing

Meet the Node Edit Thingies

Your first tentative node edits

How to open, split, close, and join paths

More ways to make a break

Options you need once in a blue moon

Bouncy paths made of rubber

How to Upgrade Simple Shapes

Chapter 6: Celebrating Your Inner Draftsman

You Need to Be Disciplined

Rulers with no power

Go downtown

Let the lines be your guide

The status bar tells all

Tell Your Objects Where They Can Go

Nudging with the arrow keys

Moving by the numbers

Aligning and distributing objects

Gang Behavior

Your Drawing Is a Plate of Flapjacks

Chapter 7: Making Your Shapes Look Like Something

Fills, Spills, and Chills

Fill 'er up with color

Hasta la fillsta

Make the color palette your own

Make New Colors in Your Spare Time

Choosing a color model

Mixing up a batch of color

The Thick and Thin of Outlines

Outlining a path

Removing the outline

Avoiding embarrassing line widths

Setting better line widths

Lifting an outline from an existing shape

Creating custom line widths

Changing line corners and caps

I Don't Like the Default Setting!

Fill and Outline Join Forces

The World of Wacky Fills

Using the Special Fill roll-up

Dragging special fills from the Scrapbook

Filling on the fly

Save Time with Find and Replace

Chapter 8: The Fine Art of Cloning

Clipboard Mania: Cut, Copy, and Paste

Snap, crackle, paste

A few little Clipboard facts

Why I hate the Clipboard

The Gleaming Clipboard Bypass

Group before you duplicate

Duplication distance

Duplicate in place

They Look Alike, They Act Alike, You Could Lose Your Mind

Links on the brink

The care and feeding of your clones

Do the Drag and Drop

Chapter 9: The Twisty, Stretchy, Bulgy World of Transformations

Scaling, Flipping, Rotating, and Skewing

Grouping comes before transforming

Scaling and flipping

Using the provocative S&M roll-up

Rotating and skewing

Transforming by degrees

Using the not-so-provocative R&S roll-ups

Distortions on Parade

A Lesson in Perspective

Viewing your 2-D drawing in 3-D space (sorta)

Putting perspective in perspective

Envelope of Wonders

The ultimate distortion

The envelope editing modes

Push the envelope

Well, Extru-u-ude Me!

Extruding in the real world

Extruding in the workplace

Extruding by the buttons

Ripping apart your new 3-D object

Part III: Getting the Message Out There (Wherever "There" Is)

Chapter 10: The Care and Planting of Text

A Furst Luk at Tekst

Pick Up Your Text Tool

Creating artistic text

Creating paragraph text

Navigating among the letters

How to Flow Text between Blocks

Before You Can Format, You Must Select

Selecting with the text tool

Converting from artistic to paragraph and vice versa

Okay, Now You Can Format

Selecting a typeface

Changing the type style

Enlarging or reducing the type size

Mucking about with the justification

Formatting options for rare occasions

Dropping your caps

Please Check Your Spelling

Shortcut to Typographic Happiness

A Different Kind of Alphabet

Chapter 11: Mr. Typographer's Wild Ride

Learning the Rules of the Park

Playing Bumper Cars

Selecting and dragging text nodes

Kern, kern, the baffling term

Changing overall spacing

Riding the Roller Coaster

Orienting text on a path

Changing the vertical alignment

Changing the horizontal alignment

Shifting text around a geometric object

Shifting text in specific increments

Creating text on a circle

Editing text on a path

Editing the path

Breaking it up

Meddling with Type

Chapter 12: The Corner of Page and Publish

Pages upon Pages

Adding new pages

Adding pages bit by bit

Thumbing through your pages

Removing the excess

Flowing text between pages

Your Logo on Every Page

Establishing a master layer

Hiding master layer objects on page 1

I Need a Bigger Page!

Chapter 13: Those Poor, Helpless Trees

Reviewing the Basic Steps

Making Sure That Everything's Ready to Go

Selecting a printer

Changing paper size and orientation

Printing the entire document

Printing Those Pages

Printing multiple copies

Printing a few pages here and there

Still More Printing Options

Using the page preview area

Printing full-color artwork

Part IV: Corel's Other Amazing Programs

Chapter 14: Programs in the Night, Exchanging Data

OLE Must Be Pretty Bad to Deserve That Windup

Take OLE by the Horns

More Ways for CorelDraw to Receive Gifts

Linking, the semi-smart technique

Importing, the last-ditch effort

Chapter 15: Everyone Say Hello to Corel Photo-Paint

Blasting Off with Photo-Paint

Here's paint in yer eye!

Turn off the toolbar!

Opening Existing Images

Viewing Your Image

Using the Navigator

Dividing Up Your Screen

Creating a Brand Spanking New Image

Dots per inch

Select your crayons

Changing the Resolution and Color of Photographs

Saving, Printing, and Closing

Chapter 16: Spare the Tool, Spoil the Pixel

Pawing Through Your Toolbox

Loading Your Tools with Color

Lifting Colors Right Off the Canvas

Erasing and Undoing Your Way Back to the Good Old Days

Scrubbing away those stubborn stains

Reviewing the history of your image

Going back to square one

Drawing Lines

Drawing Geometric Shapes

Filling Your Entire Image

Plunking Down the Paint

Creating Custom Gradients

Painting with a Tackle Box Full of Brushes

Smudging, Lightening, Colorizing, and Blurring

Painting One Portion of an Image onto Another

Spray Painting with Images

Chapter 17: Twisting Reality around Your Little Finger

Specifying Which Part of the Image You Want to Edit

Carving out a little bit of imagery with the wondrous mask tools

Fine-tuning your selection outline

Making manual adjustments

Things to Do with a Selected Image

Combining Images

Correcting Focus and Contrast

Bringing an image into sharper focus

Reapplying an Effects command

Making an image less dark and murky

Setting Your Selections Free

Making an object

Manipulating an object

Moving, cloning, and deleting objects

Scaling, rotating, and other effects

Stamping Some Text into Your Image

Adding and modifying text

Painting inside text

Chapter 18: Do Dogs Dream in Three Dimensions?

The Dream That Starts Like a Nightmare

A Beginner's Guide to 3-D Objects

Importing and magnifying an object

Changing how the object looks on-screen

Moving an object in 3-D space

Scaling and spinning the object

Every Object Needs a Look

Adding a Prefab Backdrop

The End of the 3-D Highway

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 19: Ten Way-Cool Special Effects

Chapter 20: Ten Time-Saving Shortcuts

Chapter 21: Ten Little-Known, Less-Used Features

Chapter 22: Ten File Formats and Their Functions

Appendix: Installing CorelDraw 7

If You Build the Computer, CorelDraw Will Come

Checking your memory

Inspecting the hard drive

Insert the CD and Watch the Sparks Fly

Index

IDG Books Worldwide Registration Card