Course Description

Part 2 picks up right where Part 1 left off. We'll explore the rest of the toolbox, learn about a few more dockers, and discover a lot of the things CorelDRAW can do with bitmaps right within the CorelDRAW program. As we learn, we'll create a couple of practical projects and have a lot of fun along the way. This is a 6 week, self-paced, online course. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store Visit the LVS Blog for updates. If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

While some of the material presented may be applicable to previous versions of CorelDRAW, it is assumed that students will be using version X4 as help will not be available for earlier versions. It is suggested that those who have an earlier version take that class instead since it will be similar, but focused on that version of the software. You may download a trial version of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 which includes CorelDRAW, but be aware that it is only good for 15 days. If you use the trial version, be sure to uninstall it completely, including a separate uninstall of the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite Windows Shell from the Control Panel, before installing a purchased version. The DVD version is highly recommended over the download version. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. Enrolled LVS students are eligible to purchase Corel products directly from Corel Education Store at a substantial savings! Enter coupon code CRL10LVS when checking out to get an additional 10% discount on all Corel products! Follow this link for details: www.lvsonline.com/news.shtml#discount There will be Zip files provided to complete many of the weekly exercises. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or a similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression Students must have a working knowledge of their operating system, especially: How to create and name new folders How to locate files How to open and save files Here are a few free tutorials available at LVS which may be helpful to you: PC Users: Free Windows Class Directory Structure Tutorial Free tutorials are available: Basic HTML Page WS_FTP All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 2 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

The student MUST have completed the CorelDRAW X4 Introduction - Part 1 before taking this class.

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 Layout - creating a newsletter Working with guides Working with layers Working with paragraph text Flowing text and text frames Using columns Wrapping paragraph text around a shape The Simplify command The Character Formatting Docker The Paragraph Formatting Docker Converting Vectors to Bitmaps Introducing Bitmap effects Importing Bitmaps Lesson 2 Using the Three Point Rectangle tool Using the Three Point Ellipse tool Creating Arcs and Wedges Using Dynamic Guides The Fillet/Scallop/Chamfer Docker The Interactive Blend Tool Blending on a path The Spiral Tool Text on an open path Lesson 3 The Graph Paper Tool The Interactive Envelope Tool The Interactive Contour tool The Interactive Distortion tool The Interactive Connector tool The Dimension Tool The Interactive Mesh Fill tool Lesson 4 Finding and Editing Document Information The CDR file format The Find and replace Wizard The Undo Docker Symbols and the Symbol Manager Docker Using the Shape Tool on Bitmap images Cropping revisited Power Clips Lesson 5 Working with Bitmaps Power Trace Auto-Adjust Image Adjustment Lab Straighten Image Bitmap Effects Lesson 6 Adjusting Vector Images More Tables Wrapping it up Where to go from here What's ConceptShare? Creating a masterpiece

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed your break from Introduction to CorelDRAW X4 - Part 1. We're going to hit the ground running, picking up right where we left off. If you didn't take the Part 1 course, this course will assume that you did, so you'll need to see about transferring out and taking that course first. We want your learning to be fun, not frustrating! Creating a newsletter Just about everybody does a newsletter at some point in time. There are other programs out there that will also do the job and include templates to help you out. CorelDRAW X4 even comes with some great newsletter templates that you might want to check out if you purchased the DVD version rather than the download version. However, we need to learn a few more things about paragraph text and containers, guidelines, and other assorted things and this seemed like a good project to put them together. You can apply a lot of these same techniques to a lot of other kinds of layout and drawing projects. In part 2 this week, we'll play with bitmaps (photos and other pixel based images) to put a few finishing touches on our newsletter. I'm going to be using inches in my examples, but feel free to use whatever units of measurement you feel comfortable with to create a similar effect. Page Setup Create a new blank document and call it newsletter.cdr. (You can add your name to the filename now or later if you will be using the Student Upload Area to post your homework.) Use a letter size or A4 page. Make sure that Rulers, Guidelines, Snap to Guidelines, Dynamic Guides, and Snap to Objects are all turned ON (have checkmarks by them) in the view menu. Also, in the Text menu, under Paragraph Text Frames, make sure there is a checkmark beside Show Text Frames. Drag a guideline from the vertical ruler onto your page at any point. Click once on the guideline with the Pick tool, then tap the P key on your keyboard to center the guideline on the page (think P for Page). You can use the P key shortcut to center any object on the page, not just guidelines. With normal objects, it will center the object both horizontally and vertically on the page. Guidelines don't have a length, or they have infinite length, depending on how you look at it, so they only get centered in one dimension. Place two more vertical guidelines about one-half inch in from each of the two edges of the page. It is important that the two guides be the same distance from the edge. If you have problems placing the two guidelines, draw a rectangle one inch less wide than the page width (length doesn't matter) and center it on the page. Now you can drag the guidelines in to each edge of that rectangle and they will snap to the rectangle edges and be in the correct place. Delete the rectangle once both guidelines are set. Alternatively, you can type a number into the top X property bar field. Mine would have 0.5 for the left guideline and 8.0 for the right guideline. Place another horizontal guideline about a half inch up from the bottom of the page - or inside your printable area whichever is further up from the page bottom. (I'm typing 0.5 into the bottom Y field.) Your completed guideline setup should look something like the image below. I've squinched up my window so that you can see the Object Manager as well as the page below. Your property bar probably looks a lot shorter in relation to the whole work area. Drag another guideline from the top ruler and place it about two inches down from the top of the page. The area above this guideline will be your headline or title area. Let your eye be your guide for where you would like it to be. You can adjust your headline font to fit the space or adjust the space to fit your headline when we get farther along. Notice that the guidelines are being placed on the Master Page. This means that if we added a page, these guidelines would appear on that page as well. We aren't planning on adding another page to this particular project so that doesn't matter. If you have a multipage document and you would like different guidelines on each page, select the Guides layer for that page before dragging in the guidelines to place the guidelines for that page. For instance, while you might want the left, right, and bottom guides to be the same on each page, you probably want less space at the top of pages 2 and following. In that case, you'd create that last, top guide on the Page 1 guides layer instead of the Master Page Guides layer. Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to use all the toolbox tools in their default configurations, have a good grasp of text handling within CorelDRAW, and have a working knowlege of the basic bitmap and vector editing capabilities of CorelDRAW, including using special effects tools. The student should also be able to convert vectors to bitmaps and know how to convert some bitmaps to vectors.

Course Reviews

Gigi: [Liked best:] "Learning things I didn't know, but could use, about CorelDraw. The clear, thorough style of the lessons." More...