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Making Sense
of Steps
There is one more option in the Fountain Fill dialog that can have a
significant impact on your work: intermediate to advanced users will want
to get a good understanding of exactly how the Steps field works. Steps
(under Options in the Fountain Fill dialog, usually grayed out) controls
the number of bands used to display and/or print the transition
from one color to the other.
This can get confusing because there are two other places in the program
where you can effect this change, and the three controls interact. Most
of the time, you will probably keep the Steps field in its locked
position (notice the little padlock to its right); when you do, Steps
is determined by the value set under Tools Ø
Options Ø Workspace Ø
Display Ø Preview Fountain Steps (PFS).
Locked, therefore, means the value is locked to the default value of the
PFS setting. That setting is dynamic and global—change the PFS, and
the display of all objects with fountain fills will adjust, as long as
their Steps value is locked.
If you unlock Steps and enter a value in the Fountain Fill dialog, you
are overriding the PFS default and establishing a permanent and fixed
number of fountain steps for both displaying and printing that particular
object.
This leads to the third place you can control the number of steps in
a fountain fill: the Print or EPS Export dialog. If you change the Fountain
Steps (FS) setting during printing or EPS export, you are setting the
steps for any fountain fills whose Steps value remains locked, but an
unlocked fountain fill retains its Steps value. Unlocking the steps of
a fountain fill supercedes any other action. If you keep it locked, the
FS setting controls its output and the PFS setting controls its display.
If this confuses you, follow this advice: Do nothing. Ignore all of this.
Doing nothing usually works just fine, because both the FS and the PFS
default to 256—a value more than sufficient for printing and displaying.
So when would you want to change these values? Here are our recommendations:
- • Keep the Steps value in Fountain Fill locked,
except when you want a particular fill to have a specific number of
visible and printed steps. Figure 6.5 shows the outcome of changing
the Steps value.
- • Don’t change the PFS setting in Tools
Ø Options Ø
Workspace Ø Display unless your
system slows down when displaying fountain fills. Most systems today
are fast enough to render this point moot, but judge this for yourself.
Radial fountains tend to be the most taxing, so create a bunch of radials
on a page, press Ctrl+W to refresh the screen, and check performance.
- • During printing and exporting, adjust the
Fountain Steps setting as needed. But again, unless you are seeking
a particular print effect, there is little reason to change this value.
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| NOTE For PostScript
printing and EPS exports, use the Auto Increase Fountain Steps option.
When checked, the optimum number of steps is calculated at printing
time based on the resolution and screen frequency of the output device,
and each fountain fill (or pair of colors in a custom fill) is increased
to use that number of steps. Or, for faster output, use Optimize Fountain
Fills, which reduces the number of steps to the maximum number that
can be printed by the device.
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Like a Fountain
Fill? Bottle It
If you create a certain fountain fill over and over again, you can capture
its settings as a preset and apply it to other objects. Simply
create the fountain fill, type a name in the Presets field of the Fountain
Fill dialog, and save it by clicking on the plus button at the right.
Your new settings are then available to any object within any .cdr
file. This holds true until you delete the preset (by selecting it in
the Presets drop-down and clicking on the minus button).
FIGURE
6.5 These three rectangles will display and
print according to the Steps value set for each.
We recommend that you name your presets with a special character as the
first letter, like &Sunset or %Gold Plating. That way, they will show
up at the top of the Presets list. There are so many presets that Corel
gives you, the ones you make will get lost in the shuffle unless you force
them to the top.
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A Word about Choosing Colors
Nothing is more fun and exciting than mixing many colors to produce
rainbows and fountains on color displays. Printing them, on the
other hand, is an entirely different matter, and mistakes can be
costly. Before you go wild with fountain fills, you should know
both your target output device and your budgetary constraints.
Printing to a color desktop printer
In this case you can go wild. Color laser printers, thermal transfer
printers, and ink-based printers can create virtually any color.
Use your imagination and (please!) your own good taste.
Creating four-color separations
If you plan to create four negatives, one for each of the CMYK
colors, then you can once again spread your wings. You can be confident
that whatever colors DRAW uses, your four pieces of film negative
will be able to represent them. But the important caveat is the
unfortunate fact that your monitor will not accurately represent
the colors that will actually appear in your printed piece. This
is true in all cases, not just fountain fills; you should always
confirm your color choices with a swatch book or reference of printed
samples. The problem, however, is that it is difficult to know just
what colors exist in the middle of a fountain fill. You need to
have a pretty good idea that your start and end colors are complementary
and will blend well, and ideas like that only come from practice.
(Keep reading for a new DRAW 9 feature that addresses this.)
Creating spot-color separations
Here you must proceed with caution. Covered in detail in Chapter
27, spot-color printing is the method for adding just one or two
extra colors to a project, not four. Instead of using the CMYK model,
requiring four separate pieces of film, you designate specific colors—the
spot colors—and your print house makes a print run for each
color (typically black and one spot color).
You can create a fountain fill with spot colors, and DRAW will
create transitions that are made up of just those two spot colors.
But you are in treacherous waters, as it’s anybody’s guess
what will actually come off press. The safest way to create fountain
fills with spot-color jobs is to use one color and vary its tint:
- 1. In the Fountain Fill dialog, define the
From color. Click on the First Fill button, then Others, then
Fixed Palettes, and choose, say, Blue Pantone 072.
- 2. Use the same Blue 072 for the To color,
but assign a different tint to it, like 30%. You can set a tint
to any spot color.
This gives you a nice fountain, staying entirely within your Blue
072 color. The transition will be from 100 to 30%.
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