I put together magazine articles and need up to 30 images to select from for the page spread. i can import all the images and then hit return and the drop on top of each other but then I have to manually spread them so that all are visible at the same time for me to select from. is there an easier way to have them all place next to each other?
Using Align and Distribute you can sort out the jumbled mess of images. Specifically, you'll use the Distribute Spacing (most likely horizontally but vertically does the same thing just in a vertical orientation). It works with any objects in Coreldraw (bitmaps, vectors, whatever...) The secret is to be zoomed out quite far into the surrounding canvas work area surrounding the page (because images will have various physical sizes, you have no idea how much space they'll take up until dumped) and then select one image and move it to the left a fairly large distance away in a horizontal line (it helps to constrain your drag movements by holding down SHIFT when you drag the images left or right) and then select a second image and move it a fairly large distance to the right. THEN select all images (left-click/drag to select a marquee around ALL the images) and choose CTRL + SHIFT + A to open the Align and Distribute Docker (it's obviously easier if you have this Docker open already...) and choose it's Distribute Spacing Horizontally button. They'll line up nicely in a horizontal fashion. It all depends on how far left and right you dragged the first image and second images (to set a beginning and end point for Corel to space the images out in-between). You'll see what I mean when you try it the first time... I just tried this with 20 images in a file. I pressed Enter 20 times to dump them one after the other on-top of one another just as you mentioned...but then I dragged one image to the left and one to the right and then selected all of the images and distributed their spacing. It worked perfectly. If you screw it up at first, you can get all the images to pile up on one another again by dragging a marquee around them all and again, using the Align and Distribute buttons press Align Centers Horizontally and Vertically (or the C and E buttons on your keyboard, you can stack them again. Then you can practice your click/drags and the distribute spacing until you've got it mastered. It's super easy to do but harder to explain in text.
You're very welcome! I hope it helps you. PS. I have created a short video that demonstrates this (it's a .MOV video, tried WEBM but the forum wouldn't accept it and it's pathetically bad quality but the forum has a 512kb limit which is incredibly small for a video). In the video I did the distribution twice to help break it down. Anyhow, the Align and Distribute Docker is amazing!!! Good luck creating your masterpieces!
Brilliant mate, thank you so so much, saved me ages aligning stuff. i know Corel is feature packed but mid flow its a nightmare to pause and learn lol. thanks for taking such time out mate!