Hey everyone,
We use watercolor images for printing on products (mugs, bags, etc.) While creating the designs, I imported png watercolor images that needed to be traced, so that I can change some parts. In order to keep the watercolor "look", I had to keep the detail slider pretty high when tracing, or else the images lose a lot of color dimension. The problem now is that each watercolor flower bunch is now made up of at least a thousand small individual pieces/curves.
The document holding all of these images is running very slow, and there is about a 2 second lag when dragging a floral graphic across the screen, and a big delay when scrolling in and out of the workspace. I've been trying to figure out how to make these images take up less space so that the document runs smoothly. Does anyone know how to do that? I've attached photos to show the document that I'm working in, along with a closeup of one of the floral graphics after using Power Trace. I've tried to ungroup the flowers, grab all the pieces and Combine under the shaping menu, but every time, I just get the hourglass and eventually have to close the program and restart Corel.
Is there a way to "join" all of these pieces back into one object that might be more simplified that doesn't slow down Corel?
Thank you in advance!! [:D]
Charissa
charissa.leigh said:So I have to break the image apart in order to edit the parts that are lighter in color, because the light colors don't press well on the light canvas bags. For example, if the image is a flower bouquet with one type of flower that is a pale peach color, I Power Trace it. The I ungroup all the pieces so that I can edit that light peach area to darken up some spots (or make them more bold so the printer lays more toner down so it will adhere better when pressed).
After you have gotten one of these images PowerTraced, and have edited the resulting vector content to get the colors "dialed in" the way you want for printing, is that component of your design essentially "done"? Something that you will use over and over again, perhaps rotated or mirrored, but otherwise unaltered?
I experimented some using traced pictures of similar complexity to yours. I'm no expert with respect to the inner workings of CorelDRAW, but I'll make some general comments based on my observations.
I think that you might realize some significant performance improvements by coming up with a strategy that has much less stuff in the documents you are working on day-to-day for printing, but that still gives you convenient access to the "library" of design elements that you have built.
That might be as simple as having a folder of floral graphics, with each graphic as its own .CDR file, with that folder set in Windows to show large or extra-large icons so that it's easy to identify them. Then, drag-and-drop individual graphics from that folder as necessary into the documents you are working on when setting up jobs for printing.
charissa.leigh said:I could save each as its own individual CDR document, but then I would need to open each CDR document with that single floral element, and then copy and paste, which just makes an extra step. What format should the images be in that are saved to the floral graphics folder, so that they can easily be dragged into the working document?
If you save individual files of design elements, you will not have to open, copy, and paste to use one of those in another .CDR file. You can just drag the .CDR file from the folder where it lives, onto the CorelDraw document window where you are working, and it will import that .CDR content. That works with bitmap content, too.
If "thumbnails" are working properly, then you can set that folder in Windows to display as large or extra-large icons - so you could identify visually in that folder, then drag-drop to bring it into your working document.
You could do the same thing with some of your stylized text. Drag-and-drop floral content, drag-and-drop stylized text, then edit to suit the job at hand.
charissa.leigh said: How do I export/save an image as a .CDR file? I know I can export the image itself to Jpg, pdf, etc, but how do I save as a .cdr?
To save just part of your content in a new document, you can select what you want, "Save As", and then check the "Selected Only" box in the Save dialog.