I've designed an image in Corel Draw 10 and have not found a successful way to save it in any format that eliminates the "white box" from appearing around the image. I have tried exporting in GIF and PNG (where at least I am given some option of transparency) but always end up with a black background upon opening after the save.
I want to be able to give this image to another party to use ontop of their own background without the interruption of a white box surrounding it. Hopefully, someone can walk me through a solution.
I have designed a logo for a person who is going to be setting up a website and, I imagine, setting this logo on top of an existing background there. They don't want to have the white area around the design.
Hi Larry,
I would suggest there is no error with Draw/PP's transparent PNG/GIF files. If they open fine in other photo editors and in browsers, etc, then how can they be the issue? It seems pretty likely the issue is with RotoPen being limited/fussy with what files it handles. I think you are chasing the wrong software.
Best regards,Brian.
How can this be "the wrong software" (as you said)? This is a Corel forum; The product they sold to me is a Corel product; Corel Draw, Corel PhotoPaint and Corel PaintShop Pro are all Corel products. Yet, NOBODY has yet answered my simple questions about why Corel products cannot create the same kind of simple TIF files that Adobe creates for use in the ProDAD RotoPen plugin -- which is a Corel product (now)!
This ---is--- a Corel issue! But, everybody seems to want to skirt the issue and blame somebody else. Why?
EDIT: I'm still referring to Corel's Video Studio X5 PRO "Ultimate" version, and its innability to accept any TIF images created by Corel products for use with the ProDAD RotoPen tool (which is included with the Corel product sold to me and many other people).
Removing backgrounds is something that I do professionaly, with several thousand hours of experience. Here's the method for worst case photo cleanup:
Move the image into COREL Photo Paint - we use X3.
Copy the image, paste as a new image, and adjust tone curves, contrast, etc. to give a priority to the edges of the image you want to end up with, so that you can see what is image vs. background.
Create a blank file of the appropriate size in DRAW.
Create a second layer in the DRAW page, import the image copy into the bottom layer and lock it.
Set the pen tool to .1 points, contrasting outline, no fill.
Use the Bezier curve tool at 1:1 zoom to set the initial points - the ends of curves, etc. - that define the border between pic and background.
Select the curve and then select all those points and convert them to curves and cusps.
Refine the outline to get as tight a border as possible and then fill with RGB black, invisible outline.
Export as tiff, greyscale, anti-aliasing, transparent background, no ICC.
Load into Paint. Select black object and copy. Paste into photo. Position to exactly cover image area. Select create mask from object. Use object manager to make object invisible.
Adjust mask to fit precisely, using the mask transform tool which is what the object picker tool to the upper left turns into as the one option. If there are areas that don't fit correctly, then go back to DRAW and tweak the outling, reexport and reimport into Paint, etc.
With the mask and background selected, cut out the image you want. Double click on the background with the square mask to select it and delete it. Paste the image back in.
Now you have an object that hopefully is about a tight a cut as possible, separate from the background. You can tweak this further by feathering inside the object, typically about 3 pixels.
Oh, and If there are holes in the image - such as for screws - then create a separate outline in DRAW and when you've finished with all of them, select all the outlines and combine.
Save final image as CPT or PSD, which preserves objects and masks. You can now also save as a tiff, which will flatten the image, but preserve the transparency.
PhilOsborn said: Removing backgrounds is something that I do professionaly, with several thousand hours of experience. Here's the method for worst case photo cleanup:
I've done photo restoration/manipulation/editing for 1000s of hours too and work quite differently to you, but that's the beauty of it - there are so many different ways to go about things. I won't list what I do, because I do something different on every image, depending on the image itself and what needs to be done.
Oh so true. Like, usually I can skip the step of making a copy and tweaking it just for finding edges. I think that that should be a built-in feature in PhotoPaint, actually. I.e., making temporary alterations to a photo, purely for the purpose of editing or masking.
Also, in really difficult cases - the ones where I take multiple shots of a product - one that might have both really dark areas and very white areas, some of which shots are solely for later edge detection - it can be useful to expand an image to double or quadrupal size. Then I mask it out and the final step is to reduce the pic back to original size. But then I can tweak that process by shrinking the original mask a few pixels and copying the inside area for pasting back in to the final photo, thus eliminating sizing artifacts. The edges are typically the main job - getting them so perfect that the image can be dropped onto anything without jaggies or white borders, etc.It helps to have a decent camera, of course. Someone decided to try to move our photos offshore about 6 years ago, and gave the Chinese crew our Nikon. That was a sad day. It was only an old 8Meg camera, but it was a PROFESSIONAL camera, with a great zoom lens, so that I could get way back with the tripod and zoom in, for maximum depth of field. And, the software was professional grade, with really nice noise reduction and f-stop down to 1/16. Eventually they realized that we still needed a camera here and brought in a succession of consumer grade Canons without noise reduction, lousy depth of field and f only down to 1/8, meaning that I've wasted thousands of dollars of time trying to get marginally good photos.