Wood Grain fill

[Colin]

I am doing a logo for a customer and he wants wood-grain for the lettering. For signs I will use the Avery Cheyenne Teak vinyl, but for his business cards (which I am doing up in CorelDraw) the "fills" that are in CorelDraw just don't seem to work. They seem to be "set" at a certain resolution and just turn into a blur when applied to the (small) logo on a business card.

Any ideas on how to get a nice wood grain fill to happen at a small size in Corel?

 

[Fred Weiss]

With any fill there are size issues of the bitmap in relation to the vector that will be used to cut it or mask it. You should be able to increase or decrease the size of the bitmap in an image editor to get the effect you want.

 

[iSign]

I've scanned my cheyenne teak vinyl before. For a card that should match a sign made with that stuff, it might be a good idea to try.

 

[ChiknNutz]

One of the Alien Skin plug-ins will create wood grain. I used it for a vehicle lettering/logo job.

 

[Colin]

Thanks guys. Doug: you mean cut a small version of the lettering at something like 8" - 10" in length, and then scan that?

If you mean scanning the sheet of vinyl, how do you then get that to become a "fill".

 

[ChiknNutz]

For a business card, that would be easy to use as a fill. Under your "FILL" feature, there is a fill option for bitmap images. You can also simply drag in the scan (TIF, JPG or otherwise) then use it in a PowerClip.

 

[wylie]

aurora graphics has a free wood grain sample on their web site. size it so that
it becomes the size of the grain you want in your lettering. if it is not long enough duplicate and tile, then pick the whole fill - convert lettering to curves, go to effects, then to powerclip, then place in container.
the bitmap will be placed in the lettering and you can still work with it
as a graphic.

 

[thewood]

There is a really cool wood texture generator called Wood Workshop by Spiral Graphics. Google it. I've used it on half a dozen jobs and really like it. It has tons of options, it's easy to use and it's FREE!

 

[Steve C.]

I use textures that are not actual fills all the time. You can make them
work as fills if you import them to corel, then make a square or rectangel
the same size or a bit larger than the texture. create your background shape,
lettering or what ever you want to be filled and combine it with the rectangel.
It makes a mask so that the texture shows through the shape and the
rectangle/square is your background.

 

[Steve C.]

then pick the whole fill - convert lettering to curves, go to effects, then to powerclip, then place in container.
the bitmap will be placed in the lettering and you can still work with it
as a graphic.

That's pretty cool, I never used the Powerclip before....that works great!

 

[Replicator]

There is a really cool wood texture generator called Wood Workshop by Spiral Graphics. Google it. I've used it on half a dozen jobs and really like it. It has tons of options, it's easy to use and it's FREE!

Thanks for the cool program,
I'm an alien skin user,
but this is very col by itself !

 

[Colin]

Cool, thanks Steve! I found that the rectangle had to have a color fill applied to it in order to work.

 

[vid]

That's pretty cool, I never used the Powerclip before....that works great!

....... ARE YOU KIDDIN' ME? never used it before? oooooooh man.... how do you scale photos? I gotta tell ya, I've found that the powerclip is one of the the most helpful features in CorelDraw for my work flow. I'm a powerclippin' fool...........

TIP:

To scale images with CorelDraw's powerclip:

When taking a photo, --- a vehicle for instance --- measure the length of the door from edge to edge. (It's protocol for our shop to consistently measure horizontally below the door handles.)

Once the image is imported into CorelDraw, simply draw a rectangle from the edges you've measured and "powerclip" the image to the rectangle.

In the menu bar, type your measurement into the scale box --- constrained proportions. Then extract the powerclip. Your door will be scaled to actual size. ...no muss, no fuss and best of all no old time scale and reduction wheel to find.

WARNING: It's been awhile since I set up CorelDraw at the shop, but I think the powerclip is set to center the image by default. Somewhere in the "Tools/ Options" there is a checkbox that needs to be unchecked for the powerclip to clip exactly what you've surrounded with your rectangle.

---I don't have CorelDraw on my home computer to figure out where it's at.



oooooh ooooh, here's another trick with the powerclip...

Say you need to mask that old run down sign on the side of a building in your photo. Duplicate the photo, then draw a shape --- a rectangle for arguments sake --- over an area of the building that doesn't have the sign. Powerclip your duplicate photo to the rectangle, then move that over that old run down sign in the original image. From there, you can mock up your new and improved sign over the composite of photos to woo and wow your customer with no remnants of the old sign.


hope that makes sense....

 

[mladams7259]

Why not try one of these sites and use the image as the texture?
I didnt read the whole thread so Im not sure how big you output is so Im not sure if the files are large enough. But they might work....

http://www.psicosonic.net/
http://www.mayang.com/textures/

 

[JR's]

ML adams

Thanks

JR