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Distressed effect in Corel?

Jillbeans

Jillbeans

New Member
I know in Illustrator you can add a distressed or eroded filter to something to age it up.
I am doing a logo in Corel for someone who wants a "shabby chic" woodgrain type look.
:rock-n-roll::banghead:
and it has to be vector, not a photo.
Is there any way I can distress my design in Corel?
I could probably add in splatters and weld/combine etc but I was hoping there was an easier way.
Thanks.
Love....Jill
 
letterman7

letterman7

New Member
Yes, the pattern fills are bitmaps, but then you simplify it to a black and white image and trace the resulting bitmap. The only drawback here is that you'll tend to see the individual squares of the bitmap image, easily changed by selecting the entire image with the shape tool and changing all the points to bezier curves.
 
Joe Diaz

Joe Diaz

New Member
I track down a photo of peeling paint, maybe a photo of an old barn's siding. I import that photo into CorelDRAW. Select the photo and go to Bitmaps -> Image Adjustment Lab. In the Image Adjustment Lab I take the saturation all the way down. Then crank the contrast all the way up. Then adjust the brightness to what every you think looks right. Once you are done hit OK.

Now, select your image. Go to "Trace Bitmap" it will be in the properties bar. Go to "Outline Trace" then "Line Art" Once in PowerTRACE go to the colors tab and make sure "black and white" is selected. Then go back to settings. Adjust "Detail" and "Smoothing" to your liking. Then under "Options" check "Delete Original Image" and "Remove Background". Select "Specify Color" then pick white or black (depending on the image) with the eye dropper tool and check "Remove Color from entire image". When you like what you see in the preview Click OK.

Now just take your new vector texture image, place it over the vector shape you would like to add the texture to and use intersect. Now add color to your vector texture and you are good to go.
 
Jillbeans

Jillbeans

New Member
Joe, it worked like a champ.
I somehow even made it less complicated than your version.
Yay!
Now hopefully they will approve it, I'm ready to move on.
:thankyou::signs101::thankyou:
(this is their drawing not mine)
 

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Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Sometimes I'll use Adobe Photoshop for this sort of thing. I'll lay out the original type as vector artwork (so I can get all my kerning and other anal retentive stuff just right). Then I bring the paths into Photoshop (bouncing them through Adobe Illustrator to do so).

In Photoshop there's lots of ways how to get lettering rough and cracked looking. You can incorporate images of cracked surfaces, use various filters (like Spatter, etc.), hand paint into it or do any combination of things to get the right look.

But like what Joe does from within CorelDRAW, you need to end up with a high contrast black and white looking finished result. In Photoshop I'll create a selection from the finished black and white looking artwork. In the paths palette I'll choose "create work path" and have the pixel tolerance set to 1. Boom. You get vectors that are all closed paths and can be imported back into CorelDRAW. Just use the Export Paths to Illustrator command. Note: you should be doing this procedure on reasonably high resolution graphics.

Adobe Illustrator's Live Trace and Live Paint functions work pretty well. Unfortunately they tend to generate a mix of closed and open paths that aren't vinyl cutter friendly. Photoshop's "make work path" function seems to work a little better in this regard.
 
Joe Diaz

Joe Diaz

New Member
Jillbeans said:
Joe, it worked like a champ.
Click to expand...
Jillbeans said:
I somehow even made it less complicated than your version.
Click to expand...


Good! Glad to hear it.

Yeah the process I spelled out has several extra steps, but those extra steps are meant for fine tuning things. For example, instead of using the "image adjustment lab" you could just select your image, go to Bitmaps -> Convert to Bitmap, then select Black and White (1-bit) under "color mode". That's a lot quicker way to covert images into black and white bitmaps, but by using the image adjustment lab, you can fine tune things and it also has a little better anti-aliasing results and is a bit less grainy, which leads to better trace results in my opinion.

Also rather than going into PowerTRACE, and adjusting those settings, you could just choose the "Quick Trace" Option. Again, it's faster, but less predictable. :thumb:
 
Billct2

Billct2

Active Member
Nice Joe. You should put together some tutorials that are available online for a small fee. When I'm struggling with these thingd I'd gladly pay a couple bucks to see how it's done.
 
Jillbeans

Jillbeans

New Member
I got a pic of barnwood.
Did the first step.
Then did the line art trace.
I took the inner image of the cake and combined it, leaving the outline as-was.
Overlaid the wood grain onto the cake, used the trim function.
Then I broke apart the inner cake and colored it as I needed to, then grouped and laid back over onto the original outline.
For black and white I just combined.
I didn't put too much effort into it yet as this client has rejected 4 other ideas.
:smile:
I really appreciate the tips here.
 
Joe Diaz

Joe Diaz

New Member
Billct2 said:
Nice Joe. You should put together some tutorials that are available online for a small fee. When I'm struggling with these thingd I'd gladly pay a couple bucks to see how it's done.
Click to expand...


Thanks, I actually do make tutorials for Corel. I just finished one up for them that's a step by step sign tutorial. It should be published some time next month. Corel still needs to proofread, and publish it,then translate it to other languages. You can find a few of my tutorials and recorded webinars in the "learning" section. of corel.com, along with other resources put together by other draw users and employees. You might enjoy this one: http://www.corel.com/corel/pages/index.jsp?pgid=800382&item=resource&listid=13300212
 
Joe Diaz

Joe Diaz

New Member
You can use those steps for a bunch of different things too. Here's a small snippet of a really detailed piece I'm working on now. This is only the bottom left corner of it. It's not quite done yet. The brick texture on the buildings and bridge were done that same way.
utopia 1.jpg
 
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