Watch me trace

[Joe Diaz]

First off nice video Eric. I enjoyed watching it.

I have no loyalty to any one single vector-based drawing program. I'm only interested in getting artwork created using the best, most efficient tools for the job. None of the drawing apps are perfect and I'm only too happy to point out their flaws.

I think the thing to keep in mind is what you and other people view as "flaws" could be completely different. It probably has a lot to do with personal preferences, what you use the most, what you are most comfortable using, what you started with, etc... The fact of the matter is some of the things you point out as flaws, I actually wouldn't change in Corel and I think are very efficient, but then again I might approach a similar problem in a different way.

For example after watching Eric's video I noticed right away that I have a completely different method of doing the same thing. Not to say one method is better than the other, but our differing methods are clearly influenced by the different tools we use.

The scroll wheel zoom and "N" navigation function (kind of a ripoff of Photoshop's navigator palette) are crude tools and don't have the intuitive feel of the Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar model in Adobe's applications. I didn't like the navigator palette in Photoshop either. BTW, the "N" shortcut in Corel isn't available while you're drawing with the Bezier pen tool.

See here I disagree 100%. The scroll wheel zoom feature, to me, is far from crude, I find it an extremely intuitive way to move about the work space. I actually use it to zoom and pan at the same time. I find it much easier than using shortcuts.

Node tracking gets you part of the way there. The problem I have with it is Node Tracking is an "always on" option when enabled and that can aggravate users. It's easier to have a Ctrl or Alt key toggle on/off the ability to manipulate points and point handles while you're drawing a path. Getting rid of the node editing shape tool when you no longer need it only happens when you add another segment to the path. It's not like releasing a Ctrl or Alt key in Illustrator to allow the Pen tool to toggle back into view on the screen.

See this is because you appear to be more comfortable designing in a certain way. I prefer to rough out a shape using the freehand tool, than switching over to the shape tool (F10) to further manipulate that shape. By simply right clicking on a line segment, I can add new nodes, delete them, convert curves to lines, covert lines to curves etc. And its all right there, every tool I need, every time I right click.

Corel also has the Bezier tool if you prefer that over the freehand tool, which is a bit closer to what Eric was using in his video. I'll be honest, I never use it, because I'm not comfortable using it. Again, different strokes for different folks.

The problem is the Adobe Standard is practicaly monopolizing the market and threatening to muscle Corel out of existence. I don't want that to happen. Corel needs to incorporate certain Illustrator-centric features. Adobe has been putting more and more Corel and Freehand style features into Illustrator. Corel may need to come up with some revolutionary new features.

I think if Corel adopts ideas from adobe or other design software, it would be in their best interest to do so without effecting the tools and features they already have. I agree that both and all design software can learn things from one another, as long as they don't lose some of their uniqueness, because it is that uniqueness that attracts different designers.

GAC05, I assume you're using X5. Are fountain (gradient) fills still limited to 256 steps? Are the various fill palettes and dialogs still limited to whole numbers?

No, In the fill properties screen, you can either allow Corel to automatically handle steps for you, or go up as far as 999 steps.

 

[Bobby H]

I forgot about "unlocking" the pad lock icon in the fountain fill dialog box, which then allows entering in a higher number than 256. Not that I rely on it. For years, I've been taking Corel-generated artwork in Illustrator and Photoshop and finalizing color there. Gradients in Photoshop and Illustrator have a seemingly infinite number of steps.

What about the color fill values? Are they still limited to whole numbers and no decimal values?

Regarding the Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar zoom/hand panning topic:

See here I disagree 100%. The scroll wheel zoom feature, to me, is far from crude, I find it an extremely intuitive way to move about the work space. I actually use it to zoom and pan at the same time. I find it much easier than using shortcuts.

You only use a mouse or tablet stylus with one hand. Typically the left hand is free to trigger key board short cuts. I have no problem triggering any of the Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar options with just the left hand. Corel's scroll wheel is jerky in how it zooms. The panning function (activated by clicking down the scroll wheel) just runs at a slow speed. Adjustments, if there's any at all, appear to be limited to the mouse's own driver software.

Corel also has the Bezier tool if you prefer that over the freehand tool, which is a bit closer to what Eric was using in his video. I'll be honest, I never use it, because I'm not comfortable using it. Again, different strokes for different folks.

I rarely use Corel's freehand tool. If I have to manually draw something by hand, I'd rather make a pencil sketch on paper, scan it and vectorize it. The bezier tool is better suited to precise, technical oriented objects.

I prefer to rough out a shape using the freehand tool, than switching over to the shape tool (F10) to further manipulate that shape. By simply right clicking on a line segment, I can add new nodes, delete them, convert curves to lines, covert lines to curves etc. And its all right there, every tool I need, every time I right click.

With the kind of short cut keys Illustrator has, it's possible to draw the path just the way you want it and not have to bother going back to edit it further. Eric's video is a pretty good example of it in action within Illustrator. I can breeze through digitizing clipping paths over photographs or vectorizing hand-drawn artwork within Photoshop. I'm not quite as good/fast at it in Illustrator.

I've seen a number of Illustrator pen tool exercises over the years. There's a pretty good one at this page:
http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/illustrators-pen-tool-the-comprehensive-guide/
Scroll down to the #9 item: The Pen Tool Exercise. It's a downloadable file with layered AI/EPS artwork.

I think if Corel adopts ideas from adobe or other design software, it would be in their best interest to do so without effecting the tools and features they already have.

I agree. But options like the Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar method for zooming and hand panning really ought to be there. The only behavior I can such an option changing is the space bar's default of toggling between the pointer and shape tool.

 

[handl]

Awesome job Eric! The quality has always shown through in all of your work, but to see how fast your able to achieve it is really impressive!

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Thank you. 2 factors on the speed. Practice and a Wacom tablet

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Thank you. 2 factors on the speed. Practice and a Wacom tablet

Going to need to get that Cintiq. Miles difference between that and my Intuos 3.

 

[RalphGS]

How do you get the same angle every time? I would have had to use a few more help-lines to get this traced

 

[signmeup]

But options like the Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar method for zooming and hand panning really ought to be there. .

Geez... I hope not. As long as it's an option and not a default I guess it would be OK. BTW... I really think Illy needs a "zoom to all objects" button.
Bobby... you seem to know everything... how do I get Illy to not need me to hold "shift" when I want to re-size an object without distorting it?

Nice demo BTW Eric. I'm impressed with your ability to use the bezier(?) tool. Those handle thingies confuse the heck out of me. Now that I've seen you use them I'm going to try them again. I think you helped me figure out where I was going wrong.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

How do you get the same angle every time? I would have had to use a few more help-lines to get this traced

Practice. As Bobby H mentioned I could get anal and drag some angled guidelines in there. Had the art been really rough I could have done so

Out of curiosity i opened up the file and drew one line along the angle of a letter and copied it to see if they matched. Every angle is an exact match and I drew this with NO angled guidelines. No smoke, no mirrors

Pats self on back

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Practice. As Bobby H mentioned I could get anal and drag some angled guidelines in there. Had the art been really rough I could have done so

Out of curiosity i opened up the file and drew one line along the angle of a letter and copied it to see if they matched. Every angle is an exact match and I drew this with NO angled guidelines. No smoke, no mirrors

Pats self on back

Show off

 

[Rick]

Practice. As Bobby H mentioned I could get anal and drag some angled guidelines in there. Had the art been really rough I could have done so

Out of curiosity i opened up the file and drew one line along the angle of a letter and copied it to see if they matched. Every angle is an exact match and I drew this with NO angled guidelines. No smoke, no mirrors

Pats self on back

Dang... you are good.

 

[signage]

Practice. As Bobby H mentioned I could get anal and drag some angled guidelines in there. Had the art been really rough I could have done so

Out of curiosity i opened up the file and drew one line along the angle of a letter and copied it to see if they matched. Every angle is an exact match and I drew this with NO angled guidelines. No smoke, no mirrors

Pats self on back

Pratice getting those angles all the same you must do this in your sleep:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:

 

[Joe Diaz]

I don't want to Eric's thread here. So i'll follow up, but then I'm just going to leave it at that.

I forgot about "unlocking" the pad lock icon in the fountain fill dialog box, which then allows entering in a higher number than 256. Not that I rely on it. For years, I've been taking Corel-generated artwork in Illustrator and Photoshop and finalizing color there. Gradients in Photoshop and Illustrator have a seemingly infinite number of steps.

In Corel, when the padlock is locked and 256 is grayed out, the rip/print recreates the fill with as many steps as it possibly can. Or at least that is how it has been explained to me. You can manually adjust it up to 999 if you want. I can't imagine how the naked eye could see the steps beyond that. At our shop we keep the padlock locked. When printing in high quality, I have never noticed steps in our gradients.

What about the color fill values? Are they still limited to whole numbers and no decimal values?

Whole, as far as I can tell, but never once has there been a need for me to have decimals in my color values. That would be like counting grains of sugar when baking a cake. It's not needed.

Regarding the Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar zoom/hand panning topic:


You only use a mouse or tablet stylus with one hand. Typically the left hand is free to trigger key board short cuts.

Yeah but when are you ever using your other hand to do anything when zooming in and out? It doesn't matter if your right hand and mouse are doing it, or your left with the keyboard is doing it. It's just a matter of personal preference.

Corel's scroll wheel is jerky in how it zooms.

It has never bothered me. It doesn't need to look pretty when it's doing it. It just needs to do the job and it does. And for the record, it isn't Corel that's choppy. It's just the way the mouse wheel works. It chops when you are scrolling on a browser too.

The panning function (activated by clicking down the scroll wheel) just runs at a slow speed. Adjustments, if there's any at all, appear to be limited to the mouse's own driver software.

That's not how I use it to move around. If I'm moving from point A to point B, I start by being zoomed in to point A, I scroll back to zoom out, place my mouse cursor over point B then scroll forward to zoom in. It's very fast way to move around the work space. May not be your cup of tea, but I absolutely love it.

I rarely use Corel's freehand tool. If I have to manually draw something by hand, I'd rather make a pencil sketch on paper, scan it and vectorize it. The bezier tool is better suited to precise, technical oriented objects.

It's just a different way of designing. I too will scan something in if I need to. But I prefer the freehand over the bezier tool to vectorize. Instead of holding the mouse button down when I draw, I will click and make lines to rough out the shape, I then go back in with the shape tool to add curves or additional nodes. It's actually a very fast way to illustrate.

With the kind of short cut keys Illustrator has, it's possible to draw the path just the way you want it and not have to bother going back to edit it further.

But I prefer to rough in the shape first and add detail after the fact. I'm not saying One is faster or better than the other, it's just different strokes for different folks.

I agree. But options like the Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar method for zooming and hand panning really ought to be there. The only behavior I can such an option changing is the space bar's default of toggling between the pointer and shape tool.

Hey if they wanted to added it and it didn't interfere with other Corel options, why the heck not, but it's not needed when you start using the scroll wheel to move about.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

I don't want to Eric's thread here.

That ship done sailed. Happens, oh well I got more views

 

[Joe Diaz]

That ship done sailed. Happens, oh well I got more views

Yeah Sorry. I just love chatting about this stuff. I wanted to respond to some of what he was saying. Looking back, perhaps I should have responded in a different thread. But I'm done now. I didn't mean any harm by it.

Love the video though. You do nice work. This should be a good sales tool, although you don't want to show them too much. People may start to think it's easy. :Big Laugh

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Yeah Sorry. I just love chatting about this stuff. I wanted to respond to some of what he was saying. Looking back, perhaps I should have responded in a different thread. But I'm done now. I didn't mean any harm by it.

Love the video though. You do nice work. This should be a good sales tool, although you don't want to show them too much. People may start to think it's easy. :Big Laugh

Not bothered by it all. I look at it as a bump. How about dem Cowboys?

 

[Bobby H]

I don't think what we've been discussing has been off-topic. We're talking about drawing vector paths fast and efficiently. Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW go about it in significantly different ways.

Illustrator is more geared to helping the user manually draw paths and get them right while drawing them. CorelDRAW is more geared to fine tuning the path with lots of different CAD-like tools after the path is initially drawn.

Bobby... you seem to know everything... how do I get Illy to not need me to hold "shift" when I want to re-size an object without distorting it?

AKAIK, there isn't any other way to constraint proportions other than holding the shift key. This bothered me a long time ago when I first started using Illustrator. It doesn't bother me now since I keep my left hand pinky finger near the Shift key anyway. I prefer to do numerical entry for sizing a lot of objects. Contraining proportions is pretty obvious in the numerical dialogs.

At least Illustrator adopted the Corel-like sizing and rotation handles a few versions ago. I never liked the original scale and rotation tools in Illustrator.

In Corel, when the padlock is locked and 256 is grayed out, the rip/print recreates the fill with as many steps as it possibly can.

I've seen Roland VersaWorks leave Corel-generated .EPS files as is and only print however many steps were generated in the gradient fill. This is one of the fundamental reasons why I'll take Corel-generated artwork into Illustrator before doing any large format printing work. Illustrator simply does gradients better. And the color output is more accurate.

Whole, as far as I can tell, but never once has there been a need for me to have decimals in my color values. That would be like counting grains of sugar when baking a cake. It's not needed.

You must have missed the example I described of printing an AT&T logo. The logo is made up of a series of very complex blends with nearly all the CMYK color values registering two digits past the decimal point. If you bring the logo into Corel all those values are rounded to the whole number. When the logo is printed again those whole number values result in visible banding.

 

[Joe Diaz]

I think I see what your problem is bobby, We use versaworks too. When designing, keep the fountian steps padlock locked. (it should be that way by default.) If you are seeing steps on the screen, ignore that. It won't print that way. When exporting an eps, in the Export EPS dialog box, make sure here you have your fontian steps set to a higher number. We have ours set to 2000. Depending on the version, there should be an auto increase fountain steps option. Check that. That is how we are set up and we never see banding in our gradients when we print designs on our Roland. Hope that helps.

 

[Bobby H]

I'll keep that in mind once we upgrade to CorelDRAW X5. We just haven't got around to it yet.

Version X3 has the older, less reliable color engine. I like doing all sorts of design work within Corel X3 for various reasons. I just don't like going straight from Corel to VersaWorks (or sending Corel-generated .EPS or .AI files to other service providers). Once I bring the artwork into Illustrator and do a little inspecting/tweaking with colors I know everything will print properly.

 

[cartoad]

Eric, and everyone else, great info, fun to watch someone fast doing this, also thanks to Eric on getting the image back to me the other day so fast! Will have to practice (in my spare time, ha, ha) but in the mean time will still use you on this.

 

[Air Art Girl]

Tablet, which helps tremendously with speed. I hate using a mouse anymore for anything. I barely use it and the mouse I have is top of the line

I thought you might be. I'm a lefty and use my tablet some but need to use it more. I have it hooked up to my lap top but you may have motivated me to hook it up on my shop computer so I use it more.