What is Inflate Bitmap?

I've seen this feature in CorelDRAW for years and never bothered to explore it. Now that I'd like to know more, I find zero discussion online of what it is and why one would use it. DRAW's online help text and all other references merely regurgitate the directions for "inflating a bitmap." No illustrations. No explanation. Google doesn't list anything for it, outside of CorelDRAW, so I think this is a proprietary technique.

When I inflate a bitmap to a larger size, I increase the outside dimensions of the image without increasing the size of the original set of pixels. This appears to simply add white space on the margins of the image. Why would I want to do that? What would it help me accomplish?

Could someone provide some insight?

Thanks!

  • Some effects - e.g., Gaussian Blur - may need to modify pixels "outside" the original bitmap boundaries to produce good results.

    Try creating an ellipse, with no outline, and a uniform color fill. Convert it to a bitmap. Create a copy of that bitmap.

    Then try using Gaussian Blur on those ellipses - one of them allowing inflation, the other one without.

  • DRAW's online help text and all other references merely regurgitate the directions for "inflating a bitmap." No illustrations. No explanation.

    Have you looked at the PDF User Guide? I find it to be more useful than the on-line help.

    For "inflate bitmap", the User Guide offers a little bit of an explanation, and shows a couple of examples.

  • In my opinion this is simply a default setting to allow the application to add required area to the boundary box so effects can be applied. The argument can go both ways. 

    1 it's good, as you can apply an effect to a vector converted to bitmap.

    2 it's bad, the effects creates a resulting image that's bigger then intended I.E. you create a 123 pixel object for the web, convert to bitmap and add a blur and now it's 135 pixels when you need a 123.