Smoother Freehand Lines
The Freehand tool sports a new smoothing slider, which functions
as an on-the-fly node-reducer. Even at the default value, the smoother
allows much more natural line drawing without the hordes of nodes from
past incarnations of this tool. For once, it is actually possible to create
useful freeform shapes with the Freehand tool on the first try.
FIGURE
2.15 These footprints were not drawn, they were
sprayed.
The Shape tool offers a similar control on its property bar. A pop-up
slider there allows you to auto-reduce the nodes of a curve interactively.
On the subject of the Shape tool, double-clicking it now selects all
the nodes in the selected object (which many users feel should have been
the case for years). And the gradual advancement of accelerator keys makes
its second stop at node-editing: pressing C while a node is selected toggles
between a curve and a cusp, and pressing S toggles between symmetrical
and smooth.
Finally, a new Flow Lines tool links objects together for creating organizational
and flow charts. You can edit lines with the same options as normal outlines;
you can add arrowheads, dashed lines, etc.
Rectangles Can Be Nonconformists
In DRAW 9, you can round individual corners, not just all four. You can
do this from the property bar or interactively, by clicking twice on the
desired corner.
Making Messes with Mesh
Were only half-kidding with the headline, as we can imagine some
of the hideous experimentation that might go on in public with this tool.
Nonetheless, the new Interactive Mesh Fill tool is very handy for creating
gradient patterns in freeform directions and shapes. Meshed objects are
output as bitmaps. We cover this tool in Chapter 6.
New Interactive Tools
Blend, Contour, and Extrude have joined their cousins Drop Shadow, Envelope,
and Distort as interactive tools. The roll-ups have been removed and the
dockers are buried in the bowels of the interface, so deep that only advanced
users could find them. This was intentional, as Corel wants you to use
the property bar and the new on-screen controls for all actions relevant
to these tools. We adjusted very quickly, and were wondering if
you will greet these new controls the same way. We know that some traditionally
inclined users will not be happy with the elimination of many dockers
that used to perform important functions. Experienced users can rescue
those dockers from banishment by going to the Customize dialog, and Chapter
34 has all the details.
The Interactive Drop Shadow tool has been enhanced to add perspective
shadows. You can determine the orientation of a shadow after creating
it or while creating it. We elaborate on Interactive Drop Shadow and all
of these interactive controls throughout Part IV.
The Eyedropper
This new tool is terrific for picking up fill and outline colors from
objects or bitmaps on the page. The selection can be from fill, a sampling
of pixels, the outline, the middle of a fountain fill, or an imported
bitmap image. DRAW recognizes the correct color model also, so colors
from an RGB image will be picked up as RGB, and colors from a fountain
fill of CMYK colors will be picked up as CMYK.
The Paintbucket tool is the partner for the Eyedropper tool, and it can
be used to fill successive objects with the colors sampled with the Eyedropper.
The user also has a modifier key (Shift) option for toggling the Eyedropper
to Paintbucket action. Read more about this new tool in Chapter 6.
Changes to
Text Handling
More subtleties mark the changes that can be found in the Text department,
and again, the key word is refinement. To wit:
- Hunt and Peck It is much easier to find a typeface from the
drop-down list. To find Times New Roman, just start spelling it. Youll
also find a Most-Recently-Used list of typefaces at the top of the drop-down.
- Robust Wrapping A new drop-down list shows all wrapping options
for paragraph text, and text can be wrapped around other text.
- Enhanced Fit Text to Path Click anywhere on the path and text
is fitted to the path beginning at that insertion point.
- Smarter Import Imported text retains more original formatting,
such as columns, page size, and margins. Were not sure if this
is a welcome addition or a hindrance. We can think of plenty of instances
where we just want the text, not the formatting. We expect to be using
Paste Special much more often.
- Better Frame Editing One editing mode fits all now, as you
can adjust the size of the frame with your cursor still in the text.
Printing
Improvements
Quite a bit of news in this department, as Corel continues to promote
DRAW as a creator of professional-caliber output.
- Support for PPD Files When printing to a PostScript device,
you can now opt to use an industry-standard PostScript Printer Description
(PPD) file. This is especially valuable if you are creating print files
for a particular and specialized output device. PPD files are free,
available en masse, and easily distributed by service bureaus.
- Support for Generic PostScript You can also create the oppositea
plain, vanilla print fileby opting to generate a Device Independent
PostScript file. This file ignores any driver-specific settings.
- Better Preflight Checking The new Issues tab in the Print dialog
warns you to potential risks and output problems that might lie ahead.
Figure 2.16 shows the kinds of circumstances that the Issues tab alerts
you to. Notices are categorized as informational, warning, and I
wouldnt do that if I were you. You can decide for yourself
which of the two dozen situations are worthy of warnings.
FIGURE
2.16 Better printing through better preflight
checking
- Interactive Preview Most of us didnt notice it until
late in the development phase, but a tiny little button at the top of
the Print dialog produces a preview panel, attached to the side of the
dialog, as shown in Figure 2.17.
- Thumbs Up to N-Up The N-Up and Signature tools have been combined
into a new Imposition Layout tool for easier access. The popular imposition
standards come as presets and you can name and save others. Furthermore,
print styles are now stored as external files, and you can opt to have
them contain imposition layouts. That means that you can transfer from
system to system (and one CorelDRAW application to another) all of the
intelligence of your print configuration.
FIGURE
2.17 Will this be DRAW 9s best-kept
secret?
- Bitmap Safety Net If youre not sure whether that cool
effect will print, you can opt to rasterize the entire page. This is
similar to converting a specific image to a bitmap, but with a global
reach.
We show all of DRAWs printing prowess in Chapter 26.
Import/Export
Well save the biggest news for the next section; still, there are
a few items worthy of note with conventional importing and exporting.
For starters, EPS export appears to be cleaner than ever and the two-tabbed
EPS Export dialog is packed with useful options. As you can see in Figure
2.18, EPS export can double as a print-file creatorhigh time, seeing
how so many service bureaus prefer that their clients send them EPS files
instead of PostScript print files.
FIGURE
2.18 DRAW 9s EPS export reaches new levels
of fidelity and functionality.
Corel also threw lots of programming time at DRAW 9s AI export
capabilities, and we offer chapter and verse in Verse 30.
PostScript import has learned many new tricks, including:
- Support for color models that previously
were converted to RGB
- Correct handling of monotone and duotone
images from PhotoShop
- Better mapping of Type 1 fonts
- More accurate clipping path calculations
Various nickel-and-dime changes were made to DRAWs JPEG and GIF
export, and you can read all about them in Part V, Drawing for Cyberspace.
Publishing to PDF
Ah, weve buried the lead. To many, this will be worth the price
of admission by itself. With version 9, Corel has announced full support
for the creation of Adobe Acrobat files.
Were not talking about the barely-better-than-screen-capture freebie
export filter thing that DRAW offered in previous releases. This is a
complete clone of Adobes commercial Acrobat product, built right
into the DRAW and PAINT interfaces. As beta testers hammered away at it
for months, they found output to be absolutely identical to using the
commercial product. The only discrepancies anyone could find were file-size
differences due to Corels use of an alternate compression scheme.
Figure 2.19 shows one of the four tabs in the Publish to PDF dialog.
All of the functionality of Acrobat Distiller is here, including featues
new to version 4, such as job ticketing, preset styles, and automatic
generation of hyperlinks and bookmarks that previously required Adobe
Exchange.
Tune your dial to Chapter 28 for full coverage of the DRAW-to-PDF phenomenon.
FIGURE
2.19 DRAW 9 users can go straight from screen
to PDF with full fidelity and functionality.
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