In this example we will be lasering an image of an eagle onto black laser tile. Figure 1 shows a photo that I bought off the Internet. I am using this image because I want to see what the effect of having our background image being a bit out of focus and to see how it appears on the tile.
Click here to download the Corel example file

Figure 1 shows us the original image I bought off the Internet for $3

First of all we need to convert out image to grayscale in CorelDraw. To do this go to IMAGE | MODE | GRAYSCALE.

With our image in grayscale we need to adjust the image with out Contrast Enhancement. To access the Contrast Enhancement command go to EFFECTS | ADJUST | CONTRAST ENHANCEMENT.

Figure 2 shows the Contrast Enhancement command

Figure 3 shows the Sharpen command

Figure 3 shows the Sharpen Command

Figure 4 shows the image lasered engraved on the black granite

Figure 4 shows the image lasered on the black granite

Figure 5 shows the image painted white and sealed with a clear gloss sealer

Figure 5 shows the finished tile after it has been painted and sealed

It may seem trivial to talk about laser engraving wood but considering that it is one of the products that most of us do a lot than we should spend some time talking about it. We can talk about raster engraving and vector engraving as two separate processes when it comes to wood.

Raster Engraving Wood

When a laser is raster engraving (Figure 1 shows us some samples of raster engraved images) the laser marks with a back and forth motion. This motion is similar to what you would see with a laser printer or an inkjet printer. The laser slowly moves its way down the table. The amount of the movement is dictated by the dpi that has been chosen in the driver. When we are engraving a message in wood we use the raster movement of the laser to create the message.

When we are raster engraving wood most of us have our preferences as to how deep we need to engrave into the wood. The deeper that we need to engrave into the wood requires that we use more power (or slower speed). The higher the power or the slower the speed will cause the laser to penetrate farther into the wood. So when you are laser engraving wood it is the power and or the speed of the laser that will determine the depth that you go into wood. If you want a deep cut the laser will typically need to run slower which means the job will take longer to engrave than if we required a shallower engraving or cut.

Figure 1

Vector Cutting Wood

Vector engraving (Figure 2) in wood is when the machine runs like a plotter or a rotary engraving machine. Output from CorelDraw is vector lines not bitmaps or raster images. Typically to cut out material such as wood you require high power and a slow speed. When you are cutting out the wood because of the high power sometimes you create excess flaming. Most laser machines come with an air assist system so that you can blow out any excessive flaming that may occur. It is not cooling that we are doing here as cooling would defeat the purpose of supplying power to cut out an object.

Figure 2

One thing that should be talked about now is how air assist works when you are vector cutting. The first rule is that you should really only use air assist when you are vector cutting. Using air assist when you are raster engraving tends to cool down the engraving area and thus defeats the heat of the laser to effectively vaporize the wood. Secondly for the most part only use air assist if after testing the material with and without it that there is a noticeable difference. Figure 3 is a piece of birch plywood that had not had air assist used on it. Figure 4 is the same material with air assist. In my opinion there is no noticeable difference. This is not to say that air does not work it just means that you need to test before you use it.

Figure 3

Figure 4

DPI and Speed

One of the characteristics of wood is that it tends to be rather porous. Because of this porosity and because of the grain of the wood typically wood plaques do not need the same quality of engraving that is needed on other products such as metal or plastic. For this reason you may find that you can run at lower resolutions (check out figures 5 and 6) than you would need on other products. This causes two things to happen. The first is that the lower the resolution the faster the job engraves (the quality of an image can suffer if you lower the resolution to much). Since most of us base our pricing on time than the faster that we can go means we can save money on producing an image if we use a lower resolution. Secondly because we are laying down less dots (600 dpi has twice as many dots as 300 dpi) than we need to adjust the power or speed so that we are supplying more power to the engraved area (figure 6 is different resolutions same power and speed. You can see that as the resolution goes down so does the depth of engraving). So there is a trade off. A lower resolution can decrease our engraving time but we may need to supply more power to the engraving machine to make up for the lack of dots that are there. For this reason just because you lower your resolution from 600 to 300 does not mean that you are decreasing your lasering time in half. You may need to supply more power so if you need to slow down to supply more power than your speeds may decrease.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Cleaning the Engraved Area

When the laser burns away the area it tends to leave a small amount of residue. If the wood item has a sealer finish on it than all you need to do is to take damp rag or shammy and wipe off the excess residue. If the wood is raw than the residue left by the burning process can cause a permanent stain. Thus you will need to either mask off the wood so that there is no stain or sand down the wood after you have lasered it. The sanding process will get rid of any residue that stains the wood.

If you get an actual burn on the edge of your engraving you can decrease the power or even your air flow. Sometimes a powerful exhaust can cause the exhausted air to flow very close to the top of the plaque which will drag the frame on top of the plaque.

Painting MDF (Laminate plaques)

One of the problems when you laser engrave MDF is that the engraved area tends to come out rather white or light. For certain plaque colours this is fine and we prefer to leave it as is. However there are times where this is not acceptable and has to be changed. There are also times where we are trying to match up colours that may be in a logo. Because of either of these two reasons we need to paint the laser engraved area.

One of the most common misconceptions when you talk to people about painting MDF plaques is that they think that you need to go deep into the MDF. Actually if you go to deep you actually make it harder to paint. Also because MDF is wood fibers held together by a lot of glue than you need to provide a lot of power to achieve this depth. Figure 7 shows a plaque that has been laser engraved and has not been paint filled.

Figure 7

Painting MDF is actually quite easy. Typically when I am painting the wood I will use a water based acrylic. You can either place the paint on by spray or by sponge brush. Once the paint is placed on the plaque allow it to almost completely dry and than wipe of the access paint with a damp paper towel. Figure 8 shows paint that I typically use to gold paint fill my plaques. It is available in my area at hobby or craft stores.

Figure 8

Figure 9 shows that I have spread the paint on the plaque so that all the engraved areas are filled with paint. Next we need to take a damp paper towel and wipe of the paint. Typically I do not allow the paint to totally dry. This makes it easier to remove the excess paint.

Figure 9

Now just keep wiping off the paint until all the excess paint is removed. Be careful on the areas where there is a large lasered area as you may wipe out the paint. Figure 10 shows the plaque cleaned and finished.

Figure 10

Shoe Polish

One of the problems with lasering some woods is that the engraved areas are not dark enough. A quick way of darkening an engraved area is by using a black shoe polish. Just rub it on and than rub it off. Note: you may need to be careful not to get to much shoe polish in the surrounding area as the polish can become trapped in the pores of the wood. The nice thing about shows polish is that it has an applicator built into the top of the bottle. For this reason make sure that the shoe polish is the one in the bottle not the round can.

Painting Walnut

Although I have seen dealers use the same painting techniques to colour solid wood items typically the results are not as good as what you get on MDF. Figure 11 shows you what happens when you paint wood. This is because the paint tends to get trapped in grain of the wood. This is especially true when it comes to wood such as oak where there are a lot of grain. Figure 11 shows that I have small patches of silver painted trapped in the grain of the wood. This paint is still prevalent even after persistent cleaning.

Figure 11

What I suggest to people is to use a mask and burn through the mask. Once the mask is burned you can paint the wood. Once the paint is dry you can peel off the mask.

Note: The best mask that I have used is vinyl transfer tape see Figure 12. Products such as masking tape are not good as they tend to be to porous are the edges. This porous edge allows paint to seep out past the border of the engraved area.

Figure 12

Foil on Plaque

One of the classier effects that can be used on wood is placing a gold or silver foil to highlight a logo or text. The biggest problem with foils is getting them. Typically some manufacturers require that you purchase a sizable roll. Company’s such as LaserBits carry stock on the foil. This stock includes a number of colours.

Figure 13 shows a finished plaque that has had a gold foil applied to it.

Using this foil is quite easy and requires some practice. The first step is to make sure that the wood item is totally clean and free of any dust or other particles.

Figure 13

Once you have cleaned the wood item take you foil and LIGHTLY place it on the item. Make sure that it is completely down. Do not apply to much pressure to the foil as we will be weeding off the access foil. Create your artwork in CorelDraw. The artwork can be either raster based or vector based.

If the artwork is raster based than any of the artwork that is black (which will be laser) will burn away the foil. Any area that is white will retain the foil. Note: depending on the image you may need to have a border around the outside of the image so that you can weed out the foil. The nice thing about a raster image is that you will not have to weed to much of the foil as most of it will be lasered away.

If the artwork is vector than you laser will cut away the image that you want. Once the image is created you will need to weed away the access foil to finish off the image. Using a vector image usually means that you can process the image quicker than with raster.

Common types of wood used

Although we could spend a lot of time talking about different woods some of the more common woods that are available in today’s award market include walnut, maple, oak, ash and alder wood. Typically I like to stay away from oak as it tends to have much grain and does not look very good when it is laser engraved. Maple tends to be a good wood as it is light. The problem with maple is that sometimes it does not show up the engraving as well as the engraved area tends to stay light. One of the most popular woods is Walnut. It can be found in most component catalogues. It is a good wood to engrave with its only know being that the plaque is dark and so is the engraved area. One of the woods that I like is alder wood. This wood is nice as it light like maple. However unlike maple the engraved area tends to darken up and thus is more legible than maple.

A couple of nice woods for vector cutting include birch plywood and cherry. Cherry is nicest however you can get birch stained in a number of finishes. A lot of the nice cut samples done by the manufacturers are on cherry. Air assist can greatly enhance the edge quality of some thicker woods.

Manufactured Wood Products

Plywood standard building grade plywood is a material that usually does not produce an acceptable result when engraved. It is also a very difficult material to cut. Since the grain of the wood chips in the plywood when run in different directions, it is difficult to obtain a consistent depth when engraving. Air bubbles within the plywood cause problems because they severely disrupt the laser beam when cutting. Because of the air bubbles it is virtually impossible to cut cleanly through standard plywood. There are specialty plywood products (such birch) that can be found in hobby shops or specialty wood stores that will engrave and cut much nicer than the standard plywood products purchased through your local home renovation store.

Figure 14 Figure 14 – Photos look great on Alder wood where there is little grain and a nice brown is created. Sample from Epilog Laser Systems.

Figure 15 Figure 15 This picture frame is a combination of raster engraving (text and picture) while the vector portion of the file has taken care of the gold text and the frame cutout. Sample from Epilog Laser Systems.

Figure 16 shows some birch plywood vector cut out.

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The TherMark process utilizes marking materials, or “inks,” available in various forms, which are applied to surfaces to be marked. The ink is then selectively fused – using patented laser marking technology – to the surface with a regular industrial marking laser. Finally, any excess ink is easily cleaned from the surface. The inks are scientifically formulated to make a permanent, chemical bond to surfaces, without compromising or damaging the material being marked.

TherMark marking materials are available as paintable liquids, aerosols or adhesive transfer tapes. The paintable liquid may be applied to surfaces with a brush, sponge or air sprayer. After fusing with the laser, any excess paintable liquid or aerosol spray can be cleaned from the surface by simply rinsing with water. Tapes are applied to surfaces using their own light adhesives. After fusing with the laser, the tape is lifted from the surface, carrying away any excess marking material. The used tape is then discarded.

Regardless of the application, the end result is a durable, high-contrast and high-resolution mark. (as appears from the Thermark web site)

LASER MARKING PRODUCT

LMM-6000 Metal Marking Material

1.0 Product description

LMM-6000 is a laser marking material for metals. LMM-6000 is ethanol based, which allows for a fast drying time. It can be used on a variety of bare metal substrates including stainless steel, brass, aluminum, titanium, tin, nickel, and many more. LMM-6000 will not work on metals with a lacquered coating.

2.0 Product characteristics

Table 1

Table 2

2.6 Application Notes

For optimum mark quality, a thin even covering of LMM-6000 should be used. If the material is applied too thin, the marks won’t be as dark. If the material is applied too thick, more power will be required to make the make. Applying LMM-6000 may require a little practice to get the right coverage. It is also important to allow the coating to dry thoroughly.

LMM-600 is formulated to be thick to prevent settling. It may be necessary to thin the paste before using. Application method will determine the amount of thinner required, along with room temperature and humidity. The ratios recommended above should be sufficient. Keep in mind that the more the material is thinned, the less active ingredients are being applied. Over thinning will result in a lighter mark than properly thinned and applied LMM-6000.

2.7 Marking Notes

Marking may require some trial and error to optimize your laser with a particular substrate. Keep in mind that all lasers react differently depending on the substrate. Also, if you are working on a “softer” metal substrate such as aluminum or brass, more power and/or slower speed may be needed. Again, you may need to run several tests to optimize the setting for your laser.

Marking may possibly be done using diode pumped, fiber and other similar types of lasers.

3.0 Product Preparation

Insure that the product has been well mixed prior to use. Some settling may occur during long storage. Paste temperature should be equivalent to your printing room temperature prior to measuring viscosity or application.

4.0 Viscosity Test Method

dmc² product viscosity is measured by a Brookfield™ RVT DVIII Rheometer using a #27 spindle at 100 RPM, 24.0 ºC.

5.0 Storage Recommendations

Product must be stored in cool and dry conditions. The storage temperatures should not be below 5ºC and not exceed 35ºC. Settling could occur if stored for long periods of time. Before use, products must be stirred thoroughly. Partly used containers must be tightly sealed after use. If stored as recommended, a minimum shelf life of six months after the production date is guaranteed.

Applying Cermark

LMM-6000 is our laser marking material for metals. LMM-6000 is ethanol based which allows for a faster drying time. It can be used on a variety of bare metal substrates including stainless steel, brass, aluminum, titanium, tin, copper, nickel and many more. If the metal has a lacquered coating, the LMM-6000 marking material will not work.

Using LMM-6000: LMM-6000 is ready to use in aerosol can form. Shake can well before using. Allow the agitator ball to rattle for at least 2 minutes. For best results, use when can is between 70 and 90 degrees F.

Applying: Clean the surface of the metal so it is free of any type of lubricants or oils. Hold the can approximately 8-12 inches from substrate to be sprayed. Depress valve fully during spray. Apply a thin coat of LMM-6000 to the metal, try to apply an even covering. Try to cover the area to be marked with a light spray, using two passes. If the material is applied too thick, it will require more power to make the mark. It is important that LMM-6000 is applied with an even and thin coat. Applying LMM-6000 may require a little practice to get the right coverage. After use, the can nozzle should be cleaned by inverting the can and spraying until mist becomes clear. Any excess material on the nozzle should be cleaned off with water.

Drying: It is important that the LMM-6000 is allowed to dry thoroughly. It can air dry in about 2 minutes. This process can be sped up by using a drying oven, hair dryer or a heat
lamp.

Marking On Stainless Steel: This step may require some trial and error to optimize your laser with a particular substrate. Keep in mind that all lasers react differently depending on the substrate, the type of laser, the lasers’ power, dot size and other factors :

Table 3

If you are using a YAG laser, you will need to use about 20-25 Watts and a writing speed between 10-20 inches/second. Again, you may need to run several tests to optimize the settings for your particular laser.

Marking On Aluminum & Brass: Softer Metals require more power or slower speeds to obtain a permanent mark. We recommend at least a 50 Watt C02 lasers for such metals.

Table 4

Clean up: Wash with water or a wet towel. After use, the can should be removed from the jar. The nozzle should be cleaned in water along with the intake pipe. When you are done clean the internal system by inverting the can and spraying until mist becomes clear.

NOTE: MAKE SURE THAT THE PLASTIC HOSE IS POINTED AWAY FROM YOU.

Any excess material on the nozzle should be cleaned off with water. The nozzle can be removed and soaked in warm water if spraying difficulty is encountered.

Working with Cermark on Steel

One of the hardest things to engrave for any engraver is Stainless steel. Typically to engrave stainless required a thorough knowledge of cutters, feed rates, lubricants and a host of other extras. Also engraving stainless required a lot of time and doing any fine text was at best difficult. This all added up to having to charge your customer a lot for the job.

One of the big problems with C02 lasers is that when it comes to bright metals they tend to not be able to leave a mark. To help C02 lasers engrave steel a product called Cermark was introduced to allow these C02 lasers to mark steel.

How does it work? Basically all you need to do is to make sure that your steel is clean. Next spray your product with the Cermark spray, laser the product and than clean off the excess spray.

What you are left with is a mark that is permanently affixed to the steel. You need to grind the mark to remove it.

Does it work on other metals? Some people have been successful marking other metals with the Cermark. However the mark is not as good as that on steel and in some cases will come off easy.

Do not mark coated metals. Any metals that have a plated coated such as award medallions or lacquered coatings such as pewter mugs are not to be Cermarked. Basically what happens is that if there is a coating on the metal the Cermark can not bond to the metal. Although it looks good when the spray is removed it is easily rubbed off.

How to Apply Cermark

Applying the Cermark coating is easy. Let me outline the steps to you.

First make sure the steel surface is completely clean. Use alcohol to make sure that the metal has no oil or other contaminants on it.
For most of those starting out I would suggest that you purchase a premixed bottle of Cermark along with an aerosol spray can.
Attach the spray can to the bottle.
Next lay the steel out and spray it as flat as possible. Make sure that the coating is laid on as light and evenly as possible. For those who can get one it is better to use a fine spray gun such as a hobby paint sprayer – See Figure 1 which shows the aerosol container.
NOTE USE A VENTALATOR MASK WHEN SPRAYING.

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows the finished metal sprayed. Note: if you find that the spray starts to crack than you need to go back and clean the steel.

Figure 2

Next you must allow the coating to dry. This takes around 10 to 15 minutes.
Next place your steel plate into the laser.
Your settings for the laser will depend on the speed and the power of your laser. For example on a 35 watt machine my speed is 20 percent and my power is 100. This tends to create a proper mark. Typically an image that does not have enough power tends to have the mark rub off. If you over burn the image the image tends to go gray.

Figure 3 shows the image burned into the plate with the coating still on the metal

Figure 3

Next take your plate and wash it off under water.

Figure 4 shows the finished image.

Figure 4

Figure 5 shows an image that was done by a couple of years ago. You will notice that I have tried to scratch off the image in the red box using a screw driver. Notice how good the text quality is.

Figure 5

Figure 6 shows the Cermark on a steel mug.

Figure 6

Using Cermark has made engraving Steel quite easy. Not only can you get fine detail alone with a make that is almost indestructible but you can engrave the steel quick and with little effort. But one word of advice make sure that you do not cheat yourself out of not charging enough.

The object manager can be found in the “Tools” menu. See Figure 1. Note: for this example, make sure you have no objects on your page – so start a new file.

Figure 1

After clicking on this command the object manger will “dock” to the right side of your screen. See Figure 2.

Figure 2

What is the Object Manager?

For those of us who have used CorelDraw for several versions, we know that before we had the Object Manger we had the Layer Manager. As was the nature of the layer manager the Object Manager is the controller of how we organize “layers” in CorelDraw. To me the Object Manger is like an index of a book or database that lists all the items that are in our page(s) that we have created in our open file. With the Object Manager we can easily find a certain item (in this case an object) by looking for the object’s attributes that are listed in the Object Manager.

In my opinion you do not know CorelDraw unless you know how to use the Object Manager. Typically I judge how much someone knows about CorelDraw by whether or not they use the Object Manger properly.

Understanding the Object Manager

With the Object Manager open let’s review a couple of the more notable items that need to be understood about in it.

If you look at Figure 2 you will see that we have 4 “stock” layers that come up when we open the Object Manager. Let’s review these before we continue.

Master Page – The Master Page is composed of the 3 basic master layers of an active drawing: Guides (all your guidelines), Desktop (”The layer in a drawing where you can experiment and create objects for future use. This layer is outside the borders of the drawing page. You can drag objects from the desktop layer to the drawing page when you decide to use them”), and Grid (all your grid lines).

In the Master Page you can also create Master Layers. Master layers are layers whose contents appear on each page of a multiple page document.

You cannot delete any of the 3 stock master layers.

Also created is a fourth called “Layer 1”. You can change the name of layer one. This layer houses any items that we create in CorelDraw. We can create more layers if we want. We will discuss this later on.

You will notice that each of these layers has 3 icons to the left of the layer. These icons are as follows.

The “eye” icon – clicking on this icon allows us to see or not see what ever is in that layer. For example you will notice that the eye icon on the grid layer is turned off. Click on it and a grid pattern will appear. Click on it again to turn it off.

The “pencil” icon – clicking on this tool allows us to turn on or off the ability to select or modify any object that is in this layer. When the pencil is gray we can not select the objects in the layer. When the pencil is black you can select any object in the drawing.

The “printer” icon allows us to turn on or off the ability to print a layer.

You will also notice that there are 3 icons positioned along the top of the manager. See Figure 3. Working from left to right:

Figure 3

Object Properties (Red Box) – Displays or hides detailed information about objects on different layers of your drawing, such as fill, outline, and shape. This button is active when it appears pressed.

Edit Across Layers (Blue box) – Allows or Disallows editing across all the layers in your drawing.

Layer Manager View (Green Box) – Switches to Layer Manager View, displaying lists of layers but no objects or sublevels.

The two icons at the bottom of the Object Manager allow you to create new layers or master layers. The “add new layer” is the red box and the “add new master layer” is the blue box in figure 4.

Figure 4

You may also access a number of these commands by clicking on the black arrow that appears to the far top right of the Object Manager. This will display a pull down menu as per Figure 5. Create a new layer.

Figure 5

Working in the Object Manager

One of the first things that I like to do is to go in and rename “Layer 2” to a more appropriate name. To do this first right click on the name “layer 1”. A pull down menu will appear as per figure 6. Select “rename”. Type in a new name that you want to identify this layer with. For example let’s call it “text”.

Figure 6

Now let’s create some items. Using the standard tool bar lets create some items to populate our drawing. Let’s create a square, some text and import a photo. We will place all these in the first layer called “layer 1” or “text” if you changed it – See Figure 6. As a matter of house keeping we can rename this layer “Objects”.

Figure 7

You will notice as we draw each image a small shape along with an explanation is listed in the Object Manager under the “Layer 1” layer. Also the first image that is drawn is on the bottom with each succeeding image being created on top of the previous image. We now have created an “order” in our drawing. If we press the “tab” key with nothing selected you will notice that every time you press the tab key the next image in the drawing becomes selected. This selection order, which goes from top to bottom, is the order of how the objects are arranged in CorelDraw. The “shift tab” order goes from bottom to top or the opposite of the tab order. Notice that each image that is selected on your page is highlighted in the Object Manager. You can also select one of the objects by selecting it in the Object Manager (click on the Ellipse – you will notice that it becomes selected on the page). If you hold down the “shift key you can select more than one object in a row. The control key allows us to select individual objects. Can you think of times where you had a complicated logo and selecting an object or group of objects was hard because of other overlying objects? Using the Object Manager makes this a lot easier.

House Keeping Issues

There are a number of commands that can be issued to help us “customize” our layers in the Object Manager. These commands are found in the properties of the layer. To access these commands right click on a layer and select “properties”. You will be presented with a dialogue box as per Figure 8.

Figure 8

Layer Name – allows us to change the name of the layer. The blue box in Figure 8.

Visible – allows the objects in the layer to be visible or not

Printable – allows the objects in the layer to be printable

Master Layer – allows the layer to be moved to the master layer and be viewed on all pages in CorelDraw.

Layer Colour – allows us to change the colour of the “layer indicator” box to show the colour we chose – Default colour is black. Red Box in Figure 9.

Override Full Colour View – allows all objects in that layer to be displayed in the colour that is selected in the layer colour. Note: if you select this you will see all objects drawn in this layer display in the selected colour. However they will still retain the attributes of the original colour that you drew them in. So your line may display red but if you created it in black it will still be black. To test this you can select the line and look at the attributes of that line at the bottom right corner of the CorelDraw page.

Apply all Property Changes to the Current Page Only – Basically it means that the changes you make in this box are only to be view on the current page.

Figure 9

Object Manager Operations

Within the Object Manager we can perform a number of operations on our images. All of these operations can also be done on the desktop but sometimes they can be done easier in the Object Manager.

Change an Objects Selection Order - One of the things that you can do in the Object Manager is move your objects up or down in their selection order. To do this we need to click on the image and “drag it up or down”. Let’s move up the photo (bitmap) so that it is above the rectangle. Click on the bitmap in the Object Manager and drag it up till a heavy black line appears. When you see this you can let go of the mouse. See Figure 10.

Figure 10

Grouping, Combining, Converting to Curves your Objects – using these commands in the Object Manager is as simple as selecting the objects you want to work with and than right clicking on the selected objects and than to chose the command that you want. See Figure 11.

Figure 11

Selecting Grouped Objects - One of my favorite features of the Object Manager is that I can easily select an individual object in a grouped set of objects. Just click on the object in the Object Manager. You can also do this by holding down the “ctrl” key and clicking on an object on the page but when it comes to tight placement the Object Manager always wins for me.

Creating Additional Layers

Sometimes for additional control of an image you may want to create layers so that you can group certain objects. For example maybe you want to place all your text on one layer so that you can turn it on or off. If you remember my original article on digitizing around a scanned image, I placed the scanned image on its own layer so that I could turn it off or on quickly. By turning off the logo I was able to see clearly how my digitizing was going.

To create additional layers all we need to do is click on the “add layers” icon at the bottom of the Object Manager window or click on the black arrow and chose “new layer”. See Figure 5.

You can also move layers around by clicking on a layer and dragging it to a new location in the Object Manager just as we did with the individual objects.

Note: If you want to enter text into a layer you need to make sure that the layer is active. To do this you need to click on the layer name in the Object Manager. The layer is active when the text for the layer tag is red or there is a blue box around it.

Adding Text in the Text Layer

If you have not created a second layer yet create a new layer by clicking on the “add new layer” icon at the bottom of the Object Manager. Next, right click on the “layer 2” text and select “rename”. Than, type in the word “text”.

Make sure the “text” layer is active. Now, type in the words “black 1”, “black 2”, “red 1” and “red 2”.

Note: I want each word to be its own object so to do this you need to click on the page with the text tool every time you are going to type in a new word. Now select the two words that say red and fill them with red.

Your Object Manager will look like Figure 12.

Figure 12

We have a document that is well suited to be used to explain how the object manager can control the order of engraving.

CorelDraw and the Laser Engraver

As far as I am concerned knowing the order of engraving is more critical with laser engravers than with mechanical engravers. Why is this? Typically on a laser the engraving area is a lot bigger than a mechanical machine. Thus, if we do not optimize the drawing for our machine we could waste a lot of time having the machine travel needlessly to do an object. The bigger an area the more pronounced this problem becomes. It is for this reason that making a conscious effort to optimize your drawing can save you a lot of time, especially on an intricate drawing. Again I will use the file that we generated in the first part of this article.

Before I go on it is important to understand how a laser processes information. The laser machine is actually 2 machines in one. It is both a raster output device (such as a laser printer) and also a plotting device (such as an engraving machine). When looking at the laser system that I sell the machine can process both raster information as well as vector information at the same time. Because laser machines are actually two machines in one it is better to look at raster images and vector images separately as they are processed differently by the laser.

Raster Objects

Raster information causes the laser machine to travel back and forth in a back and forth or linear motion. The machine processes the information and works from the top down. It will process the information until it reaches the bottom of the page. Thus, for raster information I found that for my machine the only way I could control the order of engraving was to use different colours. The machine would process the black information first than the red second. It didn’t matter where the object was in the Object Manager. The machine just works from the top down. Thus controlling engraving with raster images is limited to colours and not the order of the object in the Object Manager. If we look at Figure 12 you will see that I have text that is black and text that is red. I can tell the laser to engrave the black text first and than to laser engrave the red text second.

Vector Images

Working with vector images (typically cut out processes) with the laser is just like a rotary engraving machine. The nice thing about working with the laser is that we do not have to contend with file importing we just go file print and off it goes.

What I found with the laser was it functioned just like the mechanical engraver following the order of the objects as they appeared in the Object Manager. The one difference was that the laser followed the shift tab order in CorelDraw (which works from the bottom up or the first object to be drawn). Again if you wanted to change the order all you need to do is to move an object up or down in the Object Manager by selecting the object and dragging it into place with the mouse.

If we look at Figure 13 you will notice that we have 4 vector objects in the “vector” layer. For our machine the engraver will process the objects in from the bottom up. The rectangle will be first and the ellipse second and so on.

Figure 13

Using CorelDraw’s Object Manager to control you laser engraving order

One of the things that can be frustrating when you are cutting objects out on your laser machine is that the order of your engraving tends to move in a direction that seems beyond your control. Well luckily there is a way to control the way your laser engraver moves. The way we control the laser is the way that the objects are ordered (drawn) in CorelDraw. For example the first object drawn is the first object to be engraved. The second object drawn is the second object to be drawn. The third drawn is the third engraved and the process repeats itself until we have engraved all the objects in our job. The question becomes how can we see which object is going to be engraved. If we have a lot of images on the screen we may not remember the order in which everything was engraved. Secondly, what about if we want to change the order of the objects that we have created in our drawing? Both of these concerns can be taken care of by using the object manager in CorelDraw.

Figure 14

Within my workspace I have drawn 4 objects – a Rectangle, an Ellipse, a heart and a Star. Each one shows up in the object manager. The Rectangle is first, while the Ellipse is second and the Star (Perfect Shape) third and the heart fourth – see figure 14.

If you want to change the order of the engraving than you can “promote” one of the other objects down in the list so that it now goes before the ones above it. To move an object all you need to do is to click on the object in the object manager and while holding down the left mouse button drag the object to its new location – see figure 15. Note; you will notice the black bar line that indicates where the object will be placed.

Figure 15

Figure 16 shows us the ellipse object is now moved below the heart and above the star. It will engrave before the heart but after the star.

Figure 16

If you want to further divide your drawing you can create a second layer. Anything on the second layer will laser after the first layer. Click on the small triangle that is located at the tope left corner of the object manager in figure 1 – red box. Figure 17 shows you are presented with a pull down menu. Select the “new layer”.

Figure 17

Once the second layer has been created you can drag any of the objects into the layer.

Note: a quick way of finding out what items will engrave first is to hold down the shift key and press the “TAB” key. This will cycle through the objects on your workspace.

It is very important that if your drawing is going to be complicated that you break it down into different layers. If you do this than it makes it a lot easier when you need to select certain items that need to be engraved.

Help File – Autolayout

Level – Intermediate to Advanced

For anyone who has owned a rotary engraver the one feature that we miss when we go to CorelDraw is a simple auto layout.

What is Auto Layout? Well basically it is a command that was controlled by one key. When you pressed this key your text and or logos would automatically space themselves out on the engraving plate.

CorelDraw can do this put it lacks the one-keystroke approach that we had in our rotary engraving software.

In this tutorial we will show you how to create a couple of an Autolayout a couple of different ways.

Once we have created the Autolayout we will create a one-button hotkey to activate the Autolayout.

To do this we will need to create what is known as a Macro.

Using Just Text

First of all we need to create some text. Figure 1 shows the text that I will use. This text is artistic text not paragraph text.

Figure 1

Now I know that we can equally space this text out using the shape tool. But there are two problems with this technique. The first is that when you drag down the text it will only go down and not up. Secondly if we have a logo in our layout than it cannot be layout with the shape tool.

For this reason we need to break the text apart into separate lines. To do this requires that we select this group of text and go to ARRANGE | BREAK ARTISTIC TEXT APART – see figure 2.

Figure 2

Once we have broken our text apart each line of text is a separate line object. You should now be able to select each line individually. See Figure 3.

Figure 3

Now we need to create 2 guidelines on our page. One guideline needs to be placed at the top of our page and one guideline at the bottom of our page. These guidelines will signify our top margin and our bottom margin. Figure 4 shows the guidelines placed on our page. I have purposely made the top and the bottom guidelines at different distances from the edges of the page.  The blue lines in the drawing indicate the guidelines.

Figure 4

The next step is to move the top text to the top guideline and the bottom text to the bottom guideline. This has been done in Figure 4.

Note: make sure that your text is centered horizontally if you want it in the center of the page.

Doing an Autolayout

Creating an Autolayout is easy. First of all you need to select all the text in your drawing that you want to include in the Autolayout.

Next go to ARRANGE | ALIGN AND DISTRIBUTE | ALIGN AND DISTRIBUTE – figure 5.

Figure 5

Figure 6 shows the Align and Distribute dialogue box come up. Note: the one nice thing about the “align and distribute” box is that it is not modal. Thus you can select text or objects while the box is active. So with all the text that you want to align selected, click on the “center” check box as per the red box in figure 6. As we want the distribution of objects to be based on the selected objects make sure that you have the “Extent of the Selection” checked. Now click on the “APPLY” button.

Figure 6

Figure 7 shows the text evenly spaced out between the two guidelines.

Figure 7

• Low quality gif and jpeg files (images from the internet)
• “Faxed” artwork – the ones with the “jaggies”
• Business cards
• Full colour images

The list goes on. So what can we do? Typically what I see is that dealers scan the bad image into the computer, vectorize the artwork and then sometimes spend hours “cleaning” up the logo. This may be a suitable way of doing artwork for some but not me. I would rather spend my time doing something else. So let me offer you an alternative that will give you a good clean vector image and hopefully do it in a lot less time.

To do this article we will need a logo. I happened to be on The Microsoft Network and saw a logo that would be perfect. It is the common red ribbon.

So here is our order. A local organization wants a couple of plaques done quickly for a corporate recognition program. They want their logo (the red ribbon) on each plaque. The problem is that the only artwork that they have is a jpeg file from a web site. With this logo it would be useless to scan and vectorize it because not only is it in colour but also the logo is of low quality. So what do we do? The answer is to scan the image and digitize around it. Sound hard. Not really once you get used to it is actually easy. This article will show you how we accomplish this technique. We are working in Corel 10 for this article. However all versions since Corel 4 support what we will show you today.

The first step is to open CorelDraw. We will then import our sample image into the program. Looks a little bad. Do not worry all we need is a good approximation of the image.

Figure 1

Now that the logo is on the screen we will need to go and open the “object manager”. This is found under the “Tools” menu. See Figure 2. * For Corel 8 this is in the “Layout” pull down section.

Figure 2

Your screen should look like Figure 3. The object manager will “dock” with the drawing window on the right side of the screen.

Figure 3

You will then need to left click with your mouse on the arrow at the top right side of the object manager window. See Figure 3 – blue box. Select the “New Layer” command. See Figure 4.

Figure 4

After you have clicked on “New Layer” a new layer will be added. Its default name is “layer 2”. If you want you can type in a new name. So lets do that and call it “vector”. See Figure 5. Once you have done this press the enter key.

Figure 5

Next click with your mouse on “Layer 1” below “vector”. Once it is selected you can right click on the “Layer 1” and a pull down menu appears. Select “rename” and call it “logo”. See Figure 6.

Figure 6

There is one thing to point out at this time. If you look beside the two names “vector” and “logo” you will notice an “eye” icon, a “printer” icon, and a “pencil” icon. The purpose of these icons is as follows:

Eye Icon – Hides or shows the layer

Eye Icon

Printer Icon – Disables or enables printing of that layer

Printer Icon

Pencil Logo – “Locks” the layer so you cannot select anything in the layer.

Pencil Icon

*  Note if the layer is gray you cannot do anything with the layer. If it is not grayed you can do what you want with the layer.

Next you will need to click on the Pencil icon  that is to the left of “logo” (the first layer) in the object manager. See figure 6. It will then become “grayed out”. This means that the layer that has the scanned image will be inactive and cannot be selected (this is important). Now if you try to click on the logo it cannot be selected. This is what we want. Now click on “vector” (the second layer) so that its text is red. It is now the “active layer”. See Figure 7.

Figure 7

The next step is to now start digitizing. When you are drawing the easiest thing to do is to zoom in on the logo using the zoom tool.. It is easier to digitize around the area when you are zoomed in. So lets zoom in on the top third of the logo. See Figure 8.

Figure 8

The next step is to select the bezier tool by clicking on the icon. It is on the tool bar at the left just below the zoom tool. It is the tool that has the dashed line and the arrow. If the bezier tool icon is not on the tool bar go to the little black arrow beside the icon that is there (blue box) and hold the left mouse button down. A tool bar will expand out. Move the mouse till the bezier tool is selected and let go of the mouse. See figure 9.

Figure 9

The next step is to go to the logo and start drawing out the image. The best place to start is at the left part of the logo. Work yourself from left to right. See Figure 8. The one thing to remember is that you do not need to be exact. A lot of times I will draw the lines and then zoom in on the image and move the lines so they are at the exact spots that I need.  One note: If you use the pan tool (select the hand tool in the zoom fly out menu) you can move the page as if you we sliding paper along the table. This is easier that using the magnifying glass when you are moving to new areas in the logo. To access it hold down your mouse on the magnifying glass in the left hand tool bar just above the bezier tool. A bar will expand out and you can select the tool.
Now you can continue drawing the lines until you have outlined the image. When you get to the last point which is you first point click inside the first point and the line will become a closed contour. See Figure 10. Please Note: I have used a thick yellow line to show the trace so that it is easily distinguishable from the logo.

Figure 10

Once the logo is done as per figure 10 you need to select the node edit tool  from the tool bar on the left (just above the magnifying tool. You will then go over and click on the line image you have just created. See figure 11. The whole contour becomes selected. If you want you can click on the node (the little black squares). It will now become selected. If you want you can drag it (by holding the left mouse button down) around or delete it. Play around with it if you want. You can always click the undo button – it’s under the “edit” menu. Please Note: I have turned off the logo so you can see the contour and what I am doing with it. You may want to leave the logo in the background. To turn the logo off you click on the “eye” icon next to “logo” in the object manager.

Figure 11

Next. While holding the left mouse button down click and you will draw a box so that it encapsulates the top two nodes (these are the two black squares at the beginning of each line that we created. A node signifies to the software a change in direction of a line and also a new line attribute. Once you have selected the box your logo will look like Figure 12. You will notice all the selected nodes are darker. This indicates that they are selected.

Figure 12

The question here is why have we only selected the top two nodes. Well if you look at the image in Figure 10 you will notice that the only line that is not right is the top line. The others are fine. The top line is a curve not a line. We need to turn the top line into curve.

The next thing you need to do is look at the tool bar that had “activated” above the drawing (it becomes activated when we selected the node tool). See Figure 13. This bar does a couple of things. It indicates what type of line you have. In the bar the straight-line tool is grayed out so these nodes are lines. This bar also allows you to select another line type or add nodes or delete nodes. You need to click on the curve icon outlined in red. The selected nodes in your drawing will now become curves. This is important, as we need to “shape” the line up to correspond with the curve in the logo.

Figure 13

Now if you click on the middle of the line (remember the node tool is still active) and hold the left mouse down you will be able to move the line back and forth. See Figure 14. This only works with curves. “Lines” can only be moved by clicking on the actual nodes and moving them. Please note: I have turned off the logo so you can see the line move. Usually you would keep the logo on the screen.

Figure 14

If you turned off the logo you can reactivate the logo by clicking on the eye icon on “logo” layer. You can now move the line so that it follows the shape of the logo. If it is hard to see the line against the logo then select the line and right click on the colours on the left hand side of the page. This will make the line a different colour.
If you would like to move a “line” then select the node you want to move and holding down the left mouse button drag the node where you want. See figure 15.

Figure 15

Your contour is now finished. See Figure 16.

Figure 16

Repeat and do the inner part of the logo. See figure 17.

Figure 17

There your logo is complete. You may now send it out to your engraving software and fill it if you want. Please note: I have simplified the logo. Some of you may what to bring more detail out in the logo. For this lesson I tried to keep it simple.
For finer tuning of the logo and more on node editing you will need to read the Corel manual on node editing and line types. Many computer stores sell books on CorelDraw for around 40 to 60 dollars.

Although this was a drawn out example, when I did this logo myself it took under 5 minutes to complete. With some practice you to could achieve this.

Now in my estimation the above technique is one of the most important techniques you can learn. I do not care if you sublimate, laser engrave or mechanically engrave – this technique will help you. It will get you out of a lot of jams when it comes to reproducing artwork. Learn this technique now.

When we are looking at using CorelDraw we have to start some where. For most of us this means creating some sort of layout. When you are working in CorelDraw everything you do is a layout. In this section we will look at creating two different products. These exercises are intended to be easy and straight forward. The first product will be a basic 3 line engraving name plate. There will be no logo just text. The second lesson will deal with creating a laser engraved plate which incorporates a logo and some text.

Creating a Layout for a plastic Lamacoid (Engraving Plastic) plate

The first thing that we need to do is to setup our plate. For this example our customer requires a 1 by 3 inch engraved plate. Thus we need to create a plate / page that is 1 by 3 inches in CorelDraw.
Figure 1 shows us the easiest way to do this. To reach this menu go to LAYOUT | PAGE SETUP.

Figure 1

Within this menu you can chose your plate / page size that you want to use. Type in a 1 by 3 size. Click okay.
Note: An alternative way to create a page size is to enter the dimensions right into the property bar that is located directly above the page layout. Figure 2 shows that I have entered in the 1 by 3 plate size. You will also note that there are two icons to the right of the page size input boxes. These tell CorelDraw whether you want to use a Portrait or a Landscape setup (blue box).

Figure 2

Once the plate has been setup the next thing that we need to do is to create the text that is needed for the job. Typically I will place in my guidelines at this point. However I will save this for when I setup my plaque layout.
To activate the text command all we need to do is to click on the text icon that is located on the tool box to the left of our page. Figure 3 blue box, shows the text icon that we need to click on.

Figure 3

Figure 4 shows us that our cursor has changed to the letter “A” and a “+” symbol.

Figure 4

Now click on the page in CorelDraw where you want the text to start. You will be presented with a flashing cursor. Before you start typing I suggest that you make your text “center justified”. To do this you can use two methods. One is to click on the justification icon located on the property bar located at the top of your page. Figure 5 shows the different justifications. The second way is also listed in Figure 5 is to press the ctrl key and the “E” key together (Anytime that you see a command with a letter or say ctrl and the letter this is a hot key and can be pressed at anytime within CorelDraw so that you can activate the command with out having to go to the menu) or better yet the ctrl key and than the “E” key. Let go of the “E” key and than the ctrl key.

Figure 5

If you want more information on text than I suggest you read the section on text. Once the justification is changed we need to change any of the other font attributes that we want. For this example I would suggest that we change the font to Arial. Click on the font list and you can move down the list to select the font that you want. In this case I have selected Arial – see Figure 6.

Figure 6

Change your font size to 18 point text as per Figure 6.
Now start typing. I want 3 lines for this job so press enter when you get to the end of each line. Figure 7 shows my text. Do not worry about where the text is on the page as we will correct this later on.

Figure 7

Click on the Pick tool located at the top of the toolbox see the blue box   in Figure 8. Your text will be selected. If it is not than click on it to select it.

Figure 8

Now we need to place our text in the center of the page. There are a number of ways to do this. For this exercise let us identify two ways. The first entails the “place by eye” method. This tends to be the method for most new users. For this example the better way is the second method which is use the align command. This command is located in the ARRANGE | ALGIN AND DISTRIBUTE | CENTER OF PAGE. Figure 9 shows us the command location. You will also see that the hot key is “P”. So instead of migrating all the way up to the menu you can just press the “P” key – make sure that you are not in Text mode.

Figure 9

Your image is now in the center of the page and you can now send it to the laser. Because most of the laser manuals are quite good at explaining how to print from CorelDraw I will end here. If you need more information on printing to your laser than I suggest that you reference your machine manual.

Creating a Basic Plaque Layout

This section has been written to help you setup a basic plate layout. We will be creating a plaque layout for a 5 by 7 plaque.

When you open up CorelDraw it typically will open up to provide us with an 8.5 by 11 page size. We need to change this to a 5 by 7 page size.
There are a couple of ways to tell CorelDraw how big you want a plate. Let us look at two ways.
The first entails going to the property bar and typing in the page size that we want. Note: make sure that you have nothing selected. Figure 10 shows the plate as it is placed in the property bar. When you are done press the “enter” key.

Figure 10

The second way and the one we discussed earlier is to can change the page size is to go to LAYOUT | PAGE SETUP.
Figure 11 shows you the dialogue box that comes up. Type in the plate size here adjusting for Portrait or Landscape.

Figure 11

If you use this size all the time you can save it as a custom size. To do this click on the “Save Custom Page”. Figure 12 shows you the dialogue box that comes up.

Figure 12

Click “okay” and exit the dialogue box.
If you would like to access this custom paper size in the future all you need to do is select the paper size pull down menu located in the property bar – see Figure 13.

Figure 13

Placing in your guidelines

I always feel that it is best when setting up a job that you place guidelines in your layout to show you where the margins of your plaque should be. Although you do not necessarily need them they act as a visual guide for your job layout.
What are guidelines? They are lines that you can use to align items in your drawing to. These lines are visible to you but will not print by default.
To access a guideline all you need to do is take your mouse over and place your pointer on top of the ruler in either the top or left side ruler. While holding down your left mouse button drag the guideline out to the desktop.
For beginners I suggest that we do it another way.
Go to TOOLS | OPTIONS or ctrl j see figure 14.

Figure 14

You will be presented with a tree look. Move down and find the section entitled “guidelines”. See figure 15. Click on the horizontal section.

Figure 15

For this job we need to create a guideline for the four sides of our job. For our plaque the first thing that we have to consider is the 3/8 inch border that is around the plaque. Also we want to add a .5 inch border to the left and right margin (my choice). With the top and bottom border I want to add a .75 inch border (my choice). Thus when we are adding our guidelines than we need to create our vertical guidelines at .5 + .375 (3/8) = .875 (left) and .5 + .375 – 5 inches = 4.125 (right). The vertical will be at 1.125 (bottom) and 5.875 (top). Adding in guidelines is easy. In Figure 15 we have typed in one of the Vertical guidelines and than clicked the “Add” button. Than added in the second number and clicked “Add” again. Repeat for the Horizontal guidelines.

Figure 16 shows the page with the guidelines added.

Figure 16

Creating the Job

For this job we are going to bring in a logo and some type and lay them out in the plaque.  For this job we have scanned a logo and we need to bring it into the job. Open up the import command – Figure 17 shows how you access the import command.

Figure 17

Figure 8 shows the import command dialogue box.

Figure 18

In Figure 18 there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Make sure that the “Preview” box is selected as per the green box. This allows you to see the logo coming in. If you only want to see files of a certain type – tif for this example than your “files of type” should be tif – blue box. You can either, click on the file name and than click import or just double click on the file name to bring in the logo.
Once the logo has been imported into CorelDraw you will see your cursor change to a sideways “L” with the logo name attached – see figure 19. If you want the logo to come in at the size that it was created than just click on the page and the logo comes in size as – for a bitmap image I would suggest this way. If the image is a vector image than you can drag the cursor to size the image – see figure 20. The red box in figure 20 indicates the size the logo is coming in.

Figure 19

Figure 20

For this setup we want the logo to appear at the top of our plaque setup. Now drag the logo to the top of your page see figure 21. Do not worry if the logo is centered we will do that later on.

Figure 21

Now we need to type in the text for the plaque. To access the text tool click on the “A” that appears in the toolbar – see figure 22 or you can just press the F8 key.

Figure 22

Your cursor will turn into a plus sign and an “A” – see figure 23.

Figure 23

Click on the desktop and type in your text. When you want to go to the next line just press enter. Once you are done you can click on the pick tool – see figure 24.

Figure 24

Click on the text with the pick tool so that it is selected (the black squares around the object indicate that it is selected) – see figure 25.

Figure 25

The first thing that you need to do is to make the text center justified. Figure 26 shows the tool bar where you can adjust text attributes. Select the center icon in the pull down list.

Figure 26

Figure 26 shows us that this toolbar allows you to change the font and the size. I have changed the font size from 24 to 18
Next we need to space out the text. We can do this a number of ways but I will suggest that you break the text group apart. Select the text and go to the ARRANGE | BREAK ARTISTIC TEXT APART.
You can now select each line of text by itself – see Figure 27. Thus you can resize the text or change the font etc.

Figure 27

Drag your text to where ever you want it.
If you want to center your text on the page you can go to ARRANGE | ALIGN | CENTER TO PAGE VERTICALLY. This will center you text left to right on the page.
Figure 28 shows the finished plaque. Notice the text is inside the guidlelines.

Figure 28

First of all we need to scan our item. Now there is two ways that we can do this. The first way will be do the operation in Corel.

Open up Corel and import the scanned item into Corel. For this lesson we use a logo I received from a customer that was having the same problem. See figure 1.

Figure 1

Draw a yellow box as I have done in Figure 1.

Drag the logo onto the yellow box. See Figure 2.

Figure 2

Next we will go to the “Bitmap Menu” and select the “Bitmap colour mask”. See Figure 3.

Figure 3

If you look over to the right of the screen where your “Docker” window is, you will notice that you now have a new command window. See Figure 4

Figure 4

Next we need to select the logo. See Figure 5

Figure 5

Next we will need to go to back to the bitmap mask command window. Here we will select the first box by clicking in the square to the right. See the red box in figure 6.

Figure 6

Make sure that the “Hide Colours” is selected. See the green box in figure 6.

Make sure the “Tolerance” setting is set to “0”. See the maroon box in figure 6.

Next click on the eyedropper tool. See the blue box in figure 6.

Now we will go over and click on the “white” area that surrounds the logo. See Figure 7. Notice that your cursor has changed into the “eyedropper” – green box.

Figure 7

After you click in the white area (a check mark will appear) if you look back at the “colour bitmap mask” command window you will see that the area in the box that we selected is now white. See Figure 8 – red box.

Figure 8

Click “Apply” in the “Bitmap Colour Mask” command window.

The white box should have disappeared. See Figure 9.

Figure 9

Now we make look like we are done but there is a check we need to do. Zoom in on the top left side of the “Y” in “York” and lets see what we have. See Figure 10. You will see what I refer to as “chaf” (a word taken from my days on the farm) or different coloured boxes (See insert in Figure 10). This is interesting. The text looks blue on the screen. Why do I have these little boxes of different colours (white and light blue)? Can be two things. A scan that was not done right (settings were not right or the original artwork was not good) or Corel is not selecting enough of the image to get us to the dark blue edges. Now if I were sublimating this image you would get a faint gray line around the logo. This is not good so we need to clean this up.

Figure 10

Now if we go over to the “Bitmap colour mask ”command window” we will now work with the “tolerance” tool. The tolerance tool  allows us to select more colours that we can on this case hide. In our original example we select just white. As the tolerance tool was at “0” we only masked (hidden) only the white. If we want to include more colours we will increase the tolerance which will hide more colours. So in the tolerance setting change it from 0 to 22. Click “Apply”

Now look at Figure 11. You will see that we have “lost” some more colours. There are no more white blocks. What we have done is started to take away blocks that are not pure white. If we increase the number you will eventually remove the light blue colour blocks. Try it. However be careful because you could start removing colours from other parts of the logo. Take it up to 70.

Figure 11

If you want to include another colour just click in the white box below the first box and with the eyedropper tool go out and select another colour (a check mark will appear in the box). Then click on “Apply”. If you want to delete a selected colour click on the box and uncheck mark it. Then click on “Apply”.

There you have it. Pretty simple. The trick is to make sure your scan gets as clean an image as it can. Try to get the edges as solid as possible. It will help you in the long run.
My next article will follow up on this technique by accomplishing the same results but in Corel Photopaint