I am not a graphics designer or an artist. It's all I can do to create an ebook cover.
Even worse, I have a very old version of CorelDraw. It's Corel Draw Select from 1998. I'm using Photo Paint 7.4 at the moment. I'm trying to follow directions in a PDF report written by a graphics designer. He uses Photoshop to create his stuff but I thought I might be able to use some of the same tools he uses, except using CD or PP.
The report, which outlines how to create an ebook cover, is well written and very clear. But the tools don't convert directly, or I just don't know how to do it. One of the things he has done is, take a stock graphic of a military type, one guy, and crop the image so there is no background colors. He does this in Photoshop using the Pen tool. He's very strong about that...if you're going to do this, he says, use the right tool, and the Magic Wand tool or the Lasso tool are NOT the right tools to use to crop this image. Too sloppy.
OK, so I go looking for a Pen tool in CD and PP, and couldn't find one. So I imported the same image he uses into PhotoPaint as a jpg image. Then I selected the Node tool and proceeded to outline the image all the way around. There must be 70 or 80 nodes. And this is where I'm stuck. I don't know how to tell PP to crop everything outside the node loop. If I could do that, it should leave me with the same clean, sharp image he has, with no background to deal with. Which means I can place the image as part of a cover design.
Is this do-able the way I'm trying to do it? Or is there a better way, maybe using different tools? Someday I'm going to buy an updated version of CD Suite, just to have it around. The problem is, the 1998 version still works just fine whenever I (rarely) need to use it.
Appreciate any suggestions.
Wes
Hi Wes,
I typed to lengthy replies to you and both failed (one in IE9 and one in FF12). I won't go through all that again. If you have the path already then you can simply:
If you can post a pic of the image you are working with here, we can offer suggestions as to the best method for making your initial selection. The author of the tutorial is only giving his/her opinion and that may not be the opinion of others.
Best regards,Brian.
Brian,
Here are some pics the designer used in his tutorial, which give an idea of what he has done. I tried to do what he did in separating the warrior from the background, period. Stop. So far, no go but I havn't tried what you suggested yet.
Appreciate your interest. Hope the pics help.