Best way to select out image?

In article <zEb9e.1072758$>, "Darren"
wrote:

I have this image of a painted lizard on a leaf, and I want to remove the leaf, leaving just the lizard. I’ve been using a combination of the magic wand with the eraser, but the fine tuning with the eraser is taking forever! There has to be a better way to make selections like these. Any advice on how to do it?

The image can be found here:
http://baikal.arts.ualberta.ca/lizard.jpg

Nice illustration. Yours?

Well, as far as knocking out the leaf background, I don’t think there’s much else you can do besides what you’re already doing. The problem is that the image has a lot of blending, and little in the way of contrasted elements. You could try using splines to isolate the portion of the lizard you want, instead of the eraser tool, but either way, you’ll likely be at your computer for a while. 🙂

In such cases, if you’re doing this job for a client, you have to take into account things like "will there be enough time for this (ie: deadlines)?", and "will what I’m going to be paid be worth my trouble?"

Of course, I’m using an older version of Photoshop (version 4.01), so newer versions might have some features I’m not aware of that could help you out.

Good luck!

No, it’s a client’s illustration.

Thanks for your thoughts on the problem. I have found a slightly better technique. I zoom in and draw around the areas I want to remove with the magnetic lasso tool. Then I feather the selection by one pixel and delete the selection. I do this slowly working around the lizard. Still takes a considerable amount of time, but the end result is pretty good.

You’re still using Photoshop 4? I think an upgrade is long over due. If your computer is older and the newer versions would be too slow, then at least upgrade to 5.5. There were many improvements made in 5.5. You could probably find a used copy for dirt cheap.

If anyone else has other suggestions I would love to hear them. Thanks.

"Stephen Edwards" wrote in message

In article <zEb9e.1072758$>, "Darren"
wrote:

I have this image of a painted lizard on a leaf, and I want to remove

the

leaf, leaving just the lizard. I’ve been using a combination of the

magic

wand with the eraser, but the fine tuning with the eraser is taking

forever!

There has to be a better way to make selections like these. Any advice

on

how to do it?

The image can be found here:
http://baikal.arts.ualberta.ca/lizard.jpg

Nice illustration. Yours?

Well, as far as knocking out the leaf background, I don’t think there’s

much

else you can do besides what you’re already doing. The problem is that the image has a lot of blending, and little in the way of contrasted elements. You could try using splines to isolate the portion of the lizard you want, instead of the eraser tool, but either way, you’ll likely be at your computer for a while. 🙂

In such cases, if you’re doing this job for a client, you have to take

into

account things like "will there be enough time for this (ie: deadlines)?", and "will what I’m going to be paid be worth my trouble?"
Of course, I’m using an older version of Photoshop (version 4.01), so

newer

versions might have some features I’m not aware of that could help you

out.

Good luck!

Pen tool to make a path around the lizard. Convert to a selection. Invert the selection, delete everything in the inverted selection (press Delete). Only Mr Lizard is left.
The pen tool can be very frustrating until you get the hang of it. After that, it’s the most valuable selection tool available when you are working with clearly defined (and hopefully not too complex!) outlines. Well worth learning.

"Darren" wrote in message

I have this image of a painted lizard on a leaf, and I want to remove the leaf, leaving just the lizard. I’ve been using a combination of the magic wand with the eraser, but the fine tuning with the eraser is taking

forever!

There has to be a better way to make selections like these. Any advice on how to do it?

The image can be found here:
http://baikal.arts.ualberta.ca/lizard.jpg

Thanks!

"Darren" wrote in message

I have this image of a painted lizard on a leaf, and I want to remove the leaf, leaving just the lizard. I’ve been using a combination of the magic wand with the eraser, but the fine tuning with the eraser is taking

forever!

There has to be a better way to make selections like these. Any advice on how to do it?

The image can be found here:
http://baikal.arts.ualberta.ca/lizard.jpg

Thanks!

Mike’s suggestion re the pen tool is probably best, but you could also use the quick mask tool and paint around the lizard with a hard edged paint brush, when you are happy you can convert to a selection and erase or copy to new layer.
The mask tool is the most forgiving in that you can paint back bits you removed accidentally and it is easier to use than the pen if not quite as precise. (I’m assuming you can use the mask tool)

Harry

In article <zEb9e.1072758$>,
"Darren" wrote:

I have this image of a painted lizard on a leaf, and I want to remove the leaf, leaving just the lizard. I’ve been using a combination of the magic wand with the eraser, but the fine tuning with the eraser is taking forever! There has to be a better way to make selections like these. Any advice on how to do it?

In this case, the lizard is relatively hard-edged. The easiest way to select the lizard and isolate it from the background is with the Pen tool.

Use the Pen tool to put a path around this lizard; this can be done very quickly. Then turn the path into a selection and use the selection to mask out the background.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

In article ,
(Stephen Edwards) wrote:

Well, as far as knocking out the leaf background, I don’t think there’s much else you can do besides what you’re already doing. The problem is that the image has a lot of blending, and little in the way of contrasted elements. You could try using splines to isolate the portion of the lizard you want, instead of the eraser tool, but either way, you’ll likely be at your computer for a while. 🙂

Naah; someone proficient with the Pen tool can path the lizard in about five minutes. 🙂

The Pen tool is the most difficult tool on the Toolbar to learn. It’s also one of the most powerful, and a person who has mastered it can do in minutes what might take hours with the other tools.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

Ok then, I guess it’s finally time that I learn how to use that pen tool. I’ve always been a little scared of it. It might take me some time to learn, but it sounds like the time invested is definitely going to pay off in the end.

Thanks again for the advice!

"Tacit" wrote in message

In article <zEb9e.1072758$>,
"Darren" wrote:

I have this image of a painted lizard on a leaf, and I want to remove

the

leaf, leaving just the lizard. I’ve been using a combination of the

magic

wand with the eraser, but the fine tuning with the eraser is taking

forever!

There has to be a better way to make selections like these. Any advice

on

how to do it?

In this case, the lizard is relatively hard-edged. The easiest way to select the lizard and isolate it from the background is with the Pen tool.

Use the Pen tool to put a path around this lizard; this can be done very quickly. Then turn the path into a selection and use the selection to mask out the background.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

In article <13d9e.1076318$>, "Darren"
wrote:

You’re still using Photoshop 4? I think an upgrade is long over due. If your

Nah. Newer versions of Photoshop don’t have any features in them that I really need. In fact, I use the GIMP quite a bit too, and there will come a point in time where it will replace Photoshop for my needs.

computer is older and the newer versions would be too slow, then at least upgrade to 5.5. There were many improvements made in 5.5. You could probably find a used copy for dirt cheap.

Actually, I have a copy of 5.5 that I bought from my alma mater’s computer surplus facility about a year ago for about $50.00, still shrinkwrapped in the box, but I never got around to installing it.

My goal is to move away from commercial software someday, and rely on opensource for what I need my computers for. In fact, when I finally have enough money to get that new G5 I want (or whatever is the latest and greatest workstation then), I plan to have no commercial software on it, with the exception of Mac OS X.

In article ,
Tacit wrote:

In article ,
(Stephen Edwards) wrote:

Well, as far as knocking out the leaf background, I don’t think there’s much else you can do besides what you’re already doing. The problem is that the image has a lot of blending, and little in the way of contrasted elements. You could try using splines to isolate the portion of the lizard you want, instead of the eraser tool, but either way, you’ll likely be at your computer for a while. 🙂

Naah; someone proficient with the Pen tool can path the lizard in about five minutes. 🙂

Five minutes? Are you sure you’re not talking about "bullet time". 😀

The Pen tool is the most difficult tool on the Toolbar to learn. It’s also one of the most powerful, and a person who has mastered it can do in minutes what might take hours with the other tools.

True. The pen tool has saved my rear end a few times when my ink jobs on my comic art didn’t turn out exactly "neat", due to imperfections in the paper, or carelessness on my part.

In article ,
(Stephen Edwards) wrote:

Five minutes? Are you sure you’re not talking about "bullet time". 😀

Assuming the image is the size of the one on the Web page, and not larger, then yes, five minutes should be about enough time. Of course, I’ve been using the Pen tool since about 1994 or so… 🙂

True story: Back when I was working prepress at the second trade shop I was at, I had a project (a catalog) that required putting clipping paths on a large number of images. One of those images was a photograph of a pile of bolts, about 80 MB in size, full-page. I had to put a path around all the bolts, carefully outlining all the threads on each bolt; took, all in all, about seven hours.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

In article ,
tacit wrote:

In article ,
(Stephen Edwards) wrote:

Five minutes? Are you sure you’re not talking about "bullet time". 😀

Assuming the image is the size of the one on the Web page, and not larger, then yes, five minutes should be about enough time. Of course, I’ve been using the Pen tool since about 1994 or so… 🙂
True story: Back when I was working prepress at the second trade shop I was at, I had a project (a catalog) that required putting clipping paths on a large number of images. One of those images was a photograph of a pile of bolts, about 80 MB in size, full-page. I had to put a path around all the bolts, carefully outlining all the threads on each bolt; took, all in all, about seven hours.

AUGH! Flashbacks! Unclean! Unclean! Make it go away!

I had to do something similar to a large poster sized picture of a bunch of coins scattered across a desk. The picture was for a brochure for an insurance company’s local office.

At the time, I was using a Macintosh Centris 650, with 32MB of RAM, and System 7.1, which loved making my applications quit at just the right time. Not fun. It was, as I like to say, like kicking dead elephants uphill… barefoot… in the snow… while having rabid ferrets snap at my heels.

But it was, by no means, the worst thing that I’d faced in those days.

No, the worst time I think I ever had was when I was tasked with laying out a bunch of attachment cards for some chintzy line of jewelery a client wanted to market. Now, for you newcomers to the industry:

RULE NO. 1) Never agree to work with an associate of your client’s on any project(s) unless they are proven to be knowledgable and reliable.

It seems that our client already had someone on their end create some artwork for us to use. "Sure", says I, thinking that it would save me time. Of course, it ended up costing me about two weeks of wasted time. For starters, this said someone had absolutely no experience with graphic design. She sent her artwork to us on CD (because she had no idea how to use her internet account), which I promptly had a look at upon reciept. When I attempted to open it in Illustrator, I saw the damnedest thing: random parts of the image were vector data, and other parts were raster data… I’d never seen anything like it. During the numerous times that I had spoken to her, from what I could gather, she was creating some portions of the "artwork" in Corel Paint, and importing it into Corel Draw, adding some vector art to it, *CUTTING* it, and then *PASTING* it into Illustrator. I kept telling her that this was a Very Bad Idea(tm), and that she should create the artwork in Illustrator, but she would simply pretend to agree to my comments, and just do the same thing (or just send the same exact file to me) over and over again.

For two weeks, this is pretty much how my days went:

1.) Get another CD in the mail.
2.) Open the file in Illustrator, only to find that it’s still wrong.
3.) Call client’s "artist", and sit on the phone with her for two hours in
an attempt to explain to her for the billionth time how to create and properly export artwork for me to use, as well as ask her to send it on CD when she’s finished.
4.) Hang up the phone, go outside to the parking lot, and scream at the top of my lungs.
5.) Come back inside and explain to boss why the project isn’t getting done.
6.) Call client and explain to him why the project isn’t getting done.
7.) Wait for boss to finish talking to client on phone, knowing that client’s clueless "artist" is blaming me, and yet again, explain to my boss why the project isn’t getting done.

And I would repeat this ad nauseum every day for fifteen days. No, I’m not kidding.

To make matters worse, we were using Illustrator 6 at the time, whereas they were using version 7, and so it was very easy for them to point their fingers at me as the cause of the problem. So, what did we end up doing? I told my boss:

"Okay, fine. I’m tired of playing games. If they want this utter crap in print, they’ll get it."

So, we ran it. It looked like shit. The client didn’t like it, and after I had sternly talked some sense into the client, and told him that normally, the kind of time his project took would have cost him thousands of dollars anywhere else, he agreed that someone else should do the artwork. Of course, it wasn’t us… it was some half-assed outfit that charged him about twice the amount that we would have… and they didn’t do a very good job either, but by that point, I was so over that job, that I just didn’t give a flying fuck about any quality in the product whatsoever.

By far, my worst experience ever in graphics design.

In article ,
(Stephen Edwards) wrote:

By far, my worst experience ever in graphics design.

Heh. By no small coincidence, my story also involved CorelDRAW:

We had a client who did low-end work–generally, one and two color trifold brochures, that sort of thing–and refused to use anything but CorelDRAW. Generally it wasn’t that big a problem, because he usually knew what he was doing well enough to get by.

Somehow, he scored a significant client way out of his normal league, a client that wanted him to do package design and a five-color catalog. Well, our friend Mr. Client was totally unfamiliar with such highfalutin’ concepts as "color separation" and "prepress," but since one does not know what one does not know, he soldiered on anyway.

Both jobs–the package design and the catalog–were assembled entirely in CorelDRAW. He knew enough to know that he needed to place his images in CMYK, but he didn’t know enough to know how to do a decent CMYK separation, so he just scanned all the images on his desktop scanner, saved them from Photo-Paint with the default profile-based CMYK separation, placed them in CorelDRAW, and gave us the CorelDRAW file. He did not, alas, realize that he had to give us the images as well, and he didn’t realize that working in CMYK means working in CMYK in CorelDRAW too, which means that some of his black text was black, some of it was four-color black, some of it was spot black, some of it was RGB black…but I digress.

Have you ever SEEN Photo-Paint’s CMYK separations? Dear God in Heaven, they look awful.

And, just as the final kicker…the background of both the packages and the catalog was to print in a spot blue. But the client loves CorelDRAW’s lens effects and drop shadow effects, oh my yes he does. Trouble is, those effects cause anything they touch to be rasterized…

….and converted to CMYK, not spot.

He insisted the job was 100% ready-to-go, and that he would not pay for any unnecessary charges to "fix" his files. When I called him, he insisted that no, the job should go as-is. So I ran film and pulled a proof…

Have I mentioned how awful Photo-Paint’s CMYK seps are? Photo-Paint’s separation engine does for images what Jonestown did for Kool-Aid.

Needless to say, getting the job out correctly required re-constructing most of it, starting with his original scans and using his "ready-to-go" CorelDRAW files as a rough guideline to what he *actually* wanted. And needless to say, when he saw the bill, he choked.

There is a happy ending to the story, though. He insisted he would never do business with us again.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

Tacit wrote:

In article ,
(Stephen Edwards) wrote:

By far, my worst experience ever in graphics design.

Heh. By no small coincidence, my story also involved CorelDRAW:
We had a client who did low-end work–generally, one and two color trifold brochures, that sort of thing–and refused to use anything but CorelDRAW. Generally it wasn’t that big a problem, because he usually knew what he was doing well enough to get by.

Somehow, he scored a significant client way out of his normal league, a client that wanted him to do package design and a five-color catalog. Well, our friend Mr. Client was totally unfamiliar with such highfalutin’ concepts as "color separation" and "prepress," but since one does not know what one does not know, he soldiered on anyway.
Both jobs–the package design and the catalog–were assembled entirely in CorelDRAW. He knew enough to know that he needed to place his images in CMYK, but he didn’t know enough to know how to do a decent CMYK separation, so he just scanned all the images on his desktop scanner, saved them from Photo-Paint with the default profile-based CMYK separation, placed them in CorelDRAW, and gave us the CorelDRAW file. He did not, alas, realize that he had to give us the images as well, and he didn’t realize that working in CMYK means working in CMYK in CorelDRAW too, which means that some of his black text was black, some of it was four-color black, some of it was spot black, some of it was RGB black…but I digress.

Have you ever SEEN Photo-Paint’s CMYK separations? Dear God in Heaven, they look awful.

And, just as the final kicker…the background of both the packages and the catalog was to print in a spot blue. But the client loves CorelDRAW’s lens effects and drop shadow effects, oh my yes he does. Trouble is, those effects cause anything they touch to be rasterized…
…and converted to CMYK, not spot.

He insisted the job was 100% ready-to-go, and that he would not pay for any unnecessary charges to "fix" his files. When I called him, he insisted that no, the job should go as-is. So I ran film and pulled a proof…

Have I mentioned how awful Photo-Paint’s CMYK seps are? Photo-Paint’s separation engine does for images what Jonestown did for Kool-Aid.
Needless to say, getting the job out correctly required re-constructing most of it, starting with his original scans and using his "ready-to-go" CorelDRAW files as a rough guideline to what he *actually* wanted. And needless to say, when he saw the bill, he choked.

There is a happy ending to the story, though. He insisted he would never do business with us again.

Sounds like one of your "Corel is crap" stories again Tacit. All I can say is, you use Illustrator and I will stick to CorelDraw any day of the week. I have not seen CS2, but CS1 Illy – you can have it! You are so biased and promote the same bullshit I hear all the time from Adobe lovers.

That is why I have no respect for you! You can like what you like, but stop rubbishing other products. Most people who know CD well can’t stand Illustrator. The job gets done FAR quicker in CorelDraw and it produces the same final PDF as Illustrator too! It just gets there twice as quick.

Once again, I don’t want to go down this track, but just sick of your bullshit, Mr. Know All (not).

Brian.

In article , wrote:

8< SNIP >8

Have I mentioned how awful Photo-Paint’s CMYK seps are? Photo-Paint’s separation engine does for images what Jonestown did for Kool-Aid.
Needless to say, getting the job out correctly required re-constructing most of it, starting with his original scans and using his "ready-to-go" CorelDRAW files as a rough guideline to what he *actually* wanted. And needless to say, when he saw the bill, he choked.

There is a happy ending to the story, though. He insisted he would never do business with us again.

Sounds like one of your "Corel is crap" stories again Tacit. All I can

Corel is virtually never used in the graphics industry. There is a reason for that. It doesn’t have the muscle to get professionals the results they want.

say is, you use Illustrator and I will stick to CorelDraw any day of the week. I have not seen CS2, but CS1 Illy – you can have it! You are so biased and promote the same bullshit I hear all the time from Adobe lovers.

It’s not about bias. It’s about what works and what doesn’t. Corel’s products simply don’t work in a professional environment. If they work for what you need them for, then great, use them… but don’t expect professional graphic designers to look at what they nearly unanimously consider to be a pile of feces, and call it a gelato to spare the feelings of someone else who has chosen to place a cherry on top of it.

It’s the same reason why most large commercial web servers run some flavor of BSD or GNU/Linux. It’s because despite what stockholders are trying to shove down our throats, the IT industry knows that Windows doesn’t do well as a server or network operating system on a large scale.

That is why I have no respect for you! You can like what you like, but stop rubbishing other products. Most people who know CD well can’t stand Illustrator. The job gets done FAR quicker in CorelDraw and it produces the same final PDF as Illustrator too! It just gets there twice as quick.

With about 1/4 of the quality and compatibility.

Once again, I don’t want to go down this track, but just sick of your bullshit, Mr. Know All (not).

Tacit isn’t behaving like a "Mr. Know it all". He’s using common sense, and using the best tool for the job. That’s what you have to do when money is on the line.

Why are you being so defensive about this? Why do you care anyway?

OS/Application zeal is usually rooted in the fact that someone has some kind of inferiority complex issues. For example, I still use a beige G3. It runs Mac OS 8.1. Lots of people have told me that I need to upgrade, or that my version of Mac OS sucks. My response is usually this… *YAWN*. Why exactly do you care what *ONE PERSON* has to say about the software you use?

It’s not about bias. It’s about what works and what doesn’t. Corel’s products simply don’t work in a professional environment. If they work for what you need them for, then great, use them… but don’t expect professional graphic designers to look at what they nearly unanimously consider to be a pile of feces, and call it a gelato to spare the feelings of someone else who has chosen to place a cherry on top of it.

Ok, typical uneducated wanker I see! CorelDRaw is a professional product and is FAR more useable than Illustrator. Here’s one for you and Tacit, seeing that you both know so much. I will laugh when you see the results. Do some homework and tell me which product has a larger market share "in the professional arena". Keep in mind this includes the embroidery/apparel industry, promotions industry, etc. not just limited to graphic designers. You will be surprised at the answer.

With about 1/4 of the quality and compatibility.

Once again, bullshit! You don’t know too much. There is no difference in the quality. You have simply been through Adobe brainwash school and been told that. I have said this so many times. Put 2 images side by side and no-one could tell which image had been created by which programme! Compatibility….to what? Corel is compatible with so many formats it is amazing. Adobe, being the unfriendly, up-themself company they are….don’t want to be compatible with anyone. Do you know why? Because if they were, people might try other programmes and actually like them better!

Tacit isn’t behaving like a "Mr. Know it all". He’s using common sense, and using the best tool for the job. That’s what you have to do when money is on the line.

Well, once again, I "am" a professional too and I do use what gives me the best results in the quickest possible time. You said it!!! Money is on the line…so why would I want to take twice as long to get the job done?

Why are you being so defensive about this? Why do you care anyway?

I am sick of the mentality of Adobe users, that is why I get annoyed. I never go around in the real world telling people that Adobe Illustrator is crap (which it isn’t) and how much better CorelDraw is (even though I believe it is), but Adobe people (who have the real inferiority complex) do this all the time! If your product is so great, why do have this inherant need to tell everyone how crap Corel is? Why wouldn’t you just use Illustrator and shine, and not say anything? Simple, Illustrator does not shine. That is why so many (Adobe people included) prefer Freehand and CDraw.

OS/Application zeal is usually rooted in the fact that someone has some kind of inferiority complex issues. For example, I still use a beige G3. It runs Mac OS 8.1. Lots of people have told me that I need to upgrade, or that my version of Mac OS sucks. My response is usually this… *YAWN*. Why exactly do you care what *ONE PERSON* has to say about the software you use?

See above – it is YOU who has the inferiority complex. Post an image that is so great in quality, and let me match that quality in CorelDraw to shut you up once and for all. You are all talk, you and Tacit. Talking of Mr So Professional Tacit, why is every picture on your website unclear? It is not hard to save a small jpg and keep it clear, or is that the superiority of Photoshop – built in soft focus filter to flatter the subject? (I know that was a silly statement, I am just pissed off at brainwashed people).

Like I have said several times before, Adobe actually goes as far as to "teach" people in its classes that Corel is no good. Good way of minimising the competition I guess, but highly unethical. Most people (generalising) who criticise Corel don’t even know it! I know some of you guys do, but I am talking generally. I have had people open their mouths and close them very quickly by whizzing around my laptop showing them what CDraw can do…and guess what, they were amazed!

Anyway, enough of this repeated bullshit topic. You guys are brainwashed and will forever be criticising, so I am wasting my time even talking on this topic. I shall continue enjoying all the great advice on photoshop in here and general imaging tips, and just ignore your sad comments in other areas.

All the best,
Brian.

In article , wrote:

8< snipped worthless blathering and paranoid poser ranting >8

Your response has served no purpose but to demonstrate that you either need psychiatric attention, medication, or both. Please, get help.

None of what you said changes the fact that Corel Draw is not considered a professional’s tool by the mainstream. The reason why is because it was designed for people who want to make cutesy little greeting cards at home on their inkjet printers, not for people who have clients to complete financially lucrative projects for.

Now stop whining about this. You’re making an ass out of yourself.

Stephen Edwards wrote:

In article , wrote:

8< snipped worthless blathering and paranoid poser ranting >8
Your response has served no purpose but to demonstrate that you either need psychiatric attention, medication, or both. Please, get help.
None of what you said changes the fact that Corel Draw is not considered a professional’s tool by the mainstream. The reason why is because it was designed for people who want to make cutesy little greeting cards at home on their inkjet printers, not for people who have clients to complete financially lucrative projects for.

Now stop whining about this. You’re making an ass out of yourself.

No, not at all. You are just biased and can’t admit it. All I can say is this, carry on giving your good advice about PS, which you certainly do, and leave other products out of the NG, especially ones you know nothing about.

CorelDraw is equally as professional as Illustrator, but to anyone who knows both, a lot better to use. Illustrator CS2 may well have changed all that, of course. I hope it has, then Corel might get off their arse and bring some exciting new features to their product too.

I don’t dislike Adobe btw, Adobe makes terrific products. I just dislike biased Adobe users who can’t recognise there are lots of good programmes out there, not just their own.

Like I said earlier, post an image created in Illustrator that you think cannot be created to the same standard in that "greeting card" making programme. Then eat your words when I prove you wrong.

Have a good day, all the best,
Brian.

p.s. I apologise to you Tacit, my previous post was a little too personal and totally uncalled for. You are a very talented man and demonstrate that throughout this NG with all the knowledge you pass on to others. I just get annoyed at times and over-react. Sorry about that 🙁

Tacit wrote:

Have you ever SEEN Photo-Paint’s CMYK separations? Dear God in

Heaven,

they look awful.

No, Sir, you are wrong.
They *ARE* awful.

Helmut
—
All typos © My Knotty Fingers Ltd. Capacity Dept.

In article ,
Brian wrote:

Once again, bullshit! You don’t know too much. There is no difference in the quality.

Ah, so you’re saying that CorelDRAW handles spot color as well as other programs, then?

You do know what "spot color" is, right?

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 11:15:47 +1000, Brian
wrote:

It’s not about bias. It’s about what works and what doesn’t. Corel’s products simply don’t work in a professional environment. If they work for what you need them for, then great, use them… but don’t expect professional graphic designers to look at what they nearly unanimously consider to be a pile of feces, and call it a gelato to spare the feelings of someone else who has chosen to place a cherry on top of it.

Ok, typical uneducated wanker I see! CorelDRaw is a professional product and is FAR more useable than Illustrator.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTTTT

no it isnt.

yer welcome

they’re both good programs.

Corel has a "problem" in that you cant send raw Corel files anywhere in the world and expect flawless output from any output device. Illustrator, you can, because every shop on earth already has Illustrator.

Anyway, enough of this repeated bullshit topic. You guys are brainwashed and will forever be criticising, so I am wasting my time even talking on this topic. I shall continue enjoying all the great advice on photoshop in here and general imaging tips, and just ignore your sad comments in other areas.

All the best,
Brian.

where are you from? Quebec? Typically the Corel forums are full of pisst off frenchies all bitching and moaning about Adobe and slagging it. You sound EXACTLY like one of them.

PeeVee_Hermann wrote:

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 11:15:47 +1000, Brian
wrote:

It’s not about bias. It’s about what works and what doesn’t. Corel’s products simply don’t work in a professional environment. If they work for what you need them for, then great, use them… but don’t expect professional graphic designers to look at what they nearly unanimously consider to be a pile of feces, and call it a gelato to spare the feelings of someone else who has chosen to place a cherry on top of it.

Ok, typical uneducated wanker I see! CorelDRaw is a professional product and is FAR more useable than Illustrator.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTTTT

no it isnt.

yer welcome

they’re both good programs.

Corel has a "problem" in that you cant send raw Corel files anywhere in the world and expect flawless output from any output device. Illustrator, you can, because every shop on earth already has Illustrator.

Anyway, enough of this repeated bullshit topic. You guys are brainwashed and will forever be criticising, so I am wasting my time even talking on this topic. I shall continue enjoying all the great advice on photoshop in here and general imaging tips, and just ignore your sad comments in other areas.

All the best,
Brian.

where are you from? Quebec? Typically the Corel forums are full of pisst off frenchies all bitching and moaning about Adobe and slagging it. You sound EXACTLY like one of them.

LMAO…I like the comment about the French. No, I am not there glad to say. Look, I am not commenting ever again on this topic. I have said how I feel and don’t need to say anymore. I am not bitching about Adobe, please know that much, I like Adobe products (yes, I actually do!). I just don’t like people criticising other products which are also very good.

Tacit, thanks for not biting my head off for those uncalled-for comments earlier. You demonstrated your maturity there (and highlighted my immaturity in the process). I did apologise to you in my last post, and I apolgise again now. I am feeling a little bit down and embarrassed for the stupid comments I made. You are a good guy.

Regards,
Brian.

In article ,
Brian wrote:

Tacit, thanks for not biting my head off for those uncalled-for comments earlier. You demonstrated your maturity there (and highlighted my immaturity in the process). I did apologise to you in my last post, and I apolgise again now. I am feeling a little bit down and embarrassed for the stupid comments I made. You are a good guy.

Not a problem; I’m not religious about my tools. 🙂

A big part of the difficulty with programs such as CorelDRAW isn’t in the usefulness of the tool to create a particular image. If it’s just a matter of creating a picture, then you’re right, most programs do that pretty well–put a drawing made with Illustrator and a drawing made with CorelDRAW on the screen side-by-side and people will not likely be able to tell which was made by which.

The problem with CorelDRAW, and the reason you will find people in the printing and prepress profession who hate it so much, begins after the artist has created the drawing and before the drawing gets to a printing press. To a prepress person, it’s all about ink on paper, and that’s where the trouble starts.

For instance, let’s say the job is going to print in two colors–black and red. If it’s printing in "spot color," that means the printer is planning to print it in red ink, not in a mixture of magenta ink and yellow ink (which is how you get red in "process color," or CMYK).

So. You draw something simple–a black box with a white fill int he middle of a large red field. When you print this, the press operator needs 2 printouts–one for the black, and one for the red. The black box gets printed in black ink; the red background is printed in red ink.

Now, let’s say you want to get fancy and use a drop shadow effect on the black box. Looks great on your screen, and prints great on your inkjet prionter. But guess what? It’s useless to a press operator; he can’t print it.

Why?

Because CorelDRAW rasterizes anything that touches an effect, such as a drop shadow. When you print separations, you end up with 5 printouts, not 2. You get the black box and the shadow on the black separation, but the place where the shadow touches the red background? The red prints in CMYK; it does not print in its own ink any more. Worse, that portion of the red object is broken up into pixels by CorelDRAW: it does not print as vectors. (So for example if you also had a line of type touching the shadow, the type would look funny where it intersects the shadow.)

Now, an artist or designer is never going to know about these problems, because artists and designers don’t do prepress; in fact, most of the designers I work with don’t have the foggiest idea how a printing press works, and don’t really know what happens to their job when it leaves their hands.

Nor should they have to; prepress is a field all its own, and a designer’s job is to design, not to do separations and trapping and all that other fun prepress stuff.

But because a designer doesn’t know prepress or printing, if a program works fine from the designer’s perspective, and lets him design things that look exactly how he wants them to, then he may resist being told that the program is inadequate by his prepress technician–because he never has to do prepress and doesn’t get involved in the process of taking that design and turning it into ink on paper.

Like I said, I’m not religious about my tools; I use whatever works best. I started out with Aldus PageMaker; when Quark came along, and proved it was superior in tangible ways to PageMaker, I quit using PageMaker and started using QuarkXPress. When InDesign CS came out, and I saw that it was cheaper than Quark and better than Quark, I quit using Quark and jumped to InDesign.

Believe me, if CorelDRAW were better than (or exactly as good as) Illustrator for getting ink on paper, I’d use it. It works just fine for getting stuff out of my head and into a design on the computer; the place it falls down is getting that design off my computer and onto a printing press. That’s why I don’t like it, and that’s why the professional design industry tends not to use it.

At the end of the day, it’s not about programs and it’s not about computers–it’s all about ink on paper.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

tacit wrote:

Why?

Because CorelDRAW rasterizes anything that touches an effect, such as a drop shadow. When you print separations, you end up with 5 printouts, not 2. You get the black box and the shadow on the black separation, but the place where the shadow touches the red background? The red prints in CMYK; it does not print in its own ink any more. Worse, that portion of the red object is broken up into pixels by CorelDRAW: it does not print as vectors. (So for example if you also had a line of type touching the shadow, the type would look funny where it intersects the shadow.)

Hi Tacit,

to begin with, thank you very much for that long and detailed information. I appreciate you taking the time to do that. It has actually led me to do some experimenting, and I am also waiting for a response from some of the prepress gurus in the CorelDraw NG who use CorelDraw daily in print production for their income. They obviously get around the problems you have suggested in some way.

This is the interesting part though. I have done some experimenting, and guess what….CorelDraw rasterizes the drop-shadow, not everything beneath it, but, so does Illustrator! Try this for yourself, and anyone else in here who doubts me:

Firstly, just to satisfy yourself how a bitmap prints compared to a vector on a very low resolution setting on your inkjet printer, draw a square and colour it yellow. Have a low quality setting (your standard "text" setting) and print it. It will still print perfectly! Then convert it to a bitmap and print it at the same printer setting. It prints all grainy and pixellated, as one would expect using a ‘text’ printer setting. Remember, the vector square did not print this way.

Now we have that established, this is the real proof: Draw a new square and fill it with yellow. Draw a smaller circle and place the circle on top of the square (make sure there is plenty of square around the circle for viewing purposes). Fill the circle with yellow. Then apply a drop shadow to the circle. The drop shadow is obviously above the square. Now print this drawing. Guess what, the circle prints perfectly (as did the first square we did above), but the drop shadow is rasterised and all grainy like the rasterized square did in our first experiment. Also, there is a bounding box around the drop-shadow (which appears to be vectorised, not rasterised). The square below is still a vector.

I had done this exercise in CorelDraw first and CorelDraw had raserized the drop-shadow too, and printed a bounding box around it too. It had also left the square as a vector image. It gave me identical results to Illustrator. I even clicked on "publish to PDF" and generated a PDF. That looked perfect on screen, but printed in this erroneous way. I went to try the same in Illustrator and was amazed to find that Illustrator does not even have that function! Luckily, my friend has Acrobat Pro 6 on her computer, so I used the print to PDF method. Illustrator was interesting here. There is a faint outline of the bouding box for the drop-shadow. This did not appear in the CorelDraw PDF. The Illustrator PDF printed incorrectly as the Corel PDF had.

I did find a workaround though in CorelDraw: I right-click the drop-shadow and choose "break drop shadow-group apart" to separate the shadow from the circle. I then converted the drop-shadow to a bitmap. That solved the problem for me. It printed with no bounding box around the shadow. The shadow was of course a bitmap (as it would have been anyway) and the circle and square printed perfectly as vector images. I then produced a PDF from this and that printed perfectly too. I could not work out how to separate the drop-shadow from the circle in Illustrator to repeat the same experiment.

So at the end of the day, both programmes seem to handle drop-shadows in the same way. I do realise this has nothing to do with some of the other points you raised Tacit. I will have to talk to my local printer about those issues. I have only dealt with one printer commercially and he actually handles raw CorelDraw files and they print perfectly. As one should not keep all their eggs in one basket, I have to make sure other printers are going to be able to help me too, so I am really interested in investigating all this now, before the need arises. I have not heard of a printer yet (locally) who cannot handle PDF’s. PDF’s are fine in CorelDraw. If printing ever became an issue, I would certainly be interested in looking into Illustrator in a lot more detail.

Best regards,
Brian.