CorelDraw
Creating a Transparent Image
By Mike Clarke
Jun 8, 2003, 19:53

Let us look at how were create this effect.

Figure 1

1. The first thing that we need to do is grab our photograph. Figure 2 shows the photo that we will be working with.

Figure 2

2. Okay let us say that we want to create a coaches clip board for one of our customers. The person receiving the award is the local basketball coach of a local high school. Thus it is appropriate that the background image be something that is basketball oriented.
3. As Figure 1 shows our finished product will incorporate the above image as a semi transparent background while we super impose the court drawing on top of the image.
4. Creating the transparent background is actually quite easy. First import an image into CorelDraw.
5. Next, because we will not be working with the image anymore it is best to make the image inaccessible. To do this we will “lock” the image so that we can not select it. The easiest way to do this is to just right click on the image and select the “lock” function. See Figure 3. Why do we want to lock the image out? Basically we want to lock the image because we will be placing a number of items on top of the photograph. By locking out the image we make it less likely that when we go to select one of these top objects that we will not accidentally select the photograph. To unlock the image just right click on it again and select “unlock”. Note: if I was creating a structured drawing I personally would create a layer that just held the image and made that layer inaccessible.

Figure 3

6. Next go to the tool bar and select the rectangle box tool. See Figure 4.

Figure 4

7. Now draw a rectangle so that it encompasses the whole of your drawing. Figure 5 shows a rectangle placed around the image. Note: I have outlined it in green to show you the extent of the rectangle. You do not have to make the outline this wide as we will actually be getting rid of the box.
8. Next we need to get rid of the outline that is around the rectangle. The easiest way is to go over to our colour palette toolbar that is located on the right side of our CorelDraw window see Figure 5 and right click on the “X”. This will eliminate the outline box. So select the rectangle and right click on the box.

Figure 5

9. The next thing that we need to do using is open up our lense effect. For those that read my article on “getting out the red” you will remember that we used the lens effect to help desaturate out the red eye that was in our subject. For this exercise we will be using the same tool but we will be using a different lens effect.
10. So go to up to the “effects” menu and than select the “lens” command that is in the pull down menu.
11. You will notice that you will have the lens dialogue box “dock” to the right side of your screen.
12. Figure 6 shows you what my screen looks like.

Figure 6

13. Set you lens dialogue box exactly as I have set it up. If you do not have the transparency effect selected than click on the pull down menu beside the effect. Figure 7 shows the that in this pull down menu there are a number of effects that are available. In a future article I will be going over these effects. However for this lesson we will just concentrate on the transparency lens.

Figure 7

14. For this excerise we only need to be concerned with making sure that the we have transparency selected and that we have set colour to white.
15. The only thing else that we need to activate is the “rate”. In Figure6 I have set the rate to 50%. You can change it to what ever you want. Just remember that the lower the number means that you will have less of the image “coming” through the transparency lens.
16. The only thing left to do is to click the “apply” button and the effect is created.
17. If you want to watch the effect in real time than all you need to do is click on the “lock” button and change the rate in the lens effect dialogue box by either typing in a new number or just clicking on the up or down arrows.
18. You will see that the lens effect basically allows a certain amount if the image to come through. Now just for fun let us change the colour in the lens effect dialogue box to yellow – see Figure 8.

Figure 8

19. You can see that by changing the colour to yellow that I have caused a yellow tinge to become prevalent in the image. Thus transparencies are excellent if you want to create or eliminate a colour cast in your image.
20. Another neat effect that you can use the transparency effect to do is to create a plaque that has an area where you want to place some text. Let us say for example that you have a wedding photo and you want to place a verse over it. Figure 9 shows you the finished effect.

Figure 9

21. Creating this effect was actually quite easy and uses the techniques that we discussed earlier. Creating this effect is just a few steps.
22. First bring in the photo into CorelDraw
23. Lock the photo.
24. Next draw a black box around the picture and size it. Increase the pen width. Lock this image.
25. Next create the box. I rounded the box by using the node edit tool. Convert the box to curves. Before I created the transparency I created a 1 contour offset inside of the original box.
26. Next I broke the contour apart and selected the outside box. Use the lens effect and change the colour to light blue. Select the inside contour and change its colour.
27. The wedding bell is a piece of clipart with a drop shadow.
28. Drop in the text and position it.
29. You have just turned a wedding photo into an excellent sublimation product, one that would be cherished by the recipient. The whole exercise takes no more than 15 minutes.


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