Unit 6

Photoshop & Corel Draw — Introduction, features and its applications.

CorelDraw is a software program for editing vector graphics

Vector graphics are created in graphics packages and consist of objects.
Each object can be edited separately, meaning that the shape, colour, size
and position can be changed.

Developed by Ottawa-based software company, Corel, CorelDraw, styled

CorelDRAW, allows users to to do things like add special effects such as
borders to images, in addition to allowing for contrast adjustment, colour
balancing and more.

One of the handy features of the software is that it can also work with multiple layers and multiple.

Coral draw is one of the most important application used in designing through which you can design any
type of picture, logo or monogram. This vector-based drawing program can be used to create an
advertisement for any company, birthday cards, logos, Boucher and newspaper to World Wide Web
Pages. CorelDraw offers a complete set of tools for creating much kind of drawings and multi page
documents. CorelDraw tools are designed to meet the demands of the graphic arts professional. Each of
the tools used in CorelDraw has one special work associated with it. With these tools we can type and
zoom the text, draw objects, fill circles and lines with colors and do many more things.

If you are new to CorelDraw, the program may seem complex at first because it is so rich in features, but
if you take it one step at a time you’ll soon be creating impressive drawings. CorelDraw is windows based
application and it is necessary to have an operating system (Windows 98, Windows XP etc.) installed in
the system. Before you get started with CorelDraw, you should be familiar with the following terms.

Term Description
Object An element in a drawing such as an image, shape, line, text, curve, symbol, or
layer.
Drawing The work you create in CorelDraw: for example, custom artwork, logos, posters,
and newsletters.
Vector Graphic An image generated from mathematical descriptions that determine the position,
length, and direction in which lines are drawn.
Bitmap An image composed of grids of pixels or dots.
Docker window A window containing available commands
/palette and settings relevant to a specific tool or task
Flyout A button that opens a group of related tools or menu items
Artistic Text A type of text to which you can apply special effects, such as shadows,
Blend etc.
Paragraph Text A type of text to which you can apply formatting options like bullets etc.
and which can be edited in large blocks.

The CorelDraw Interface

A program’s interface refers to the way it looks and to the controls, dialog boxes and other components
that enables you to interact with it. When you launch CorelDraw, the application window opens
containing a drawing window. The rectangle in the center of the drawing window is the drawing page
where you create your drawing. Although more than one drawing window can be opened, you can apply
commands to the active drawing window only.
Title Bar
It Displays the name of the program, the name & Location of the currently active word document, the
Control menu icon, the Maximize button, the Minimize button and the Restore and Close button.

Menu Bar
The Menu Bar is positioned below the Title bar. It contains options like File, Edit, View and Format etc.
Each of these menu bar items has drop-down menus.
[Drop-down menu comprises a list of options which drops down when you click on the menu bar
item]

Standard Toolbar
The standard toolbar contains buttons that are shortcuts to many of the menu commands.
It provides access to common windows commands, such as New, Open, Save and Print etc.

Property Bar
This bar has icons and drop-down lists that change dynamically, depending on what is selected and which
tool is active. It displays the most commonly used functions that are relevant to the active tool or to the
task you're performing. Although it looks like a toolbar, the property
bar contents changes depending on the tool or task.
For example, when you click the Text tool in the Toolbox, the property bar displays only text related
commands, such as text, formatting, alignment, and editing tools.

Rulers
These are the Horizontal and the vertical borders that are used to determine the size and position of
objects in a drawing.

Guidelines:
Guidelines let you align and position objects with precision. There are three types of guidelines:
horizontal, vertical and slanted, which you can use by clicking and start dragging from the top of the
ruler.

Toolbox
It is a floating bar with tools for creating, filling, and modifying objects in the drawing.

Drawing page
This is the rectangular area inside the drawing window. It is the printable area of your work area.

Drawing window
This is the area outside the drawing page bordered by the scroll bars and application controls.

Docker window/palette
This is a window containing available commands and settings relevant to a specific tool or task.

Color palette
It is a bar that contains color swatches. You use a color palette to fill and outline objects with color. There
are many predefined color systems that can be loaded into the color palette.

Status bar
This is a bar at the bottom of the application window that contains information about object properties
such as type, size, color, fill and resolution. The status bar also shows the current mouse position.
\
Document navigator
The area at the bottom left of the application window that contains controls for moving between pages
and adding pages.

Navigator
A button at the bottom-right corner or bottom-left corner.

Exploring the Tools

The toolbox contains dozens of tools for creating, formatting and editing objects. Each of the currently
visible tools in the toolbox can be selected by simply clicking them. However most of them are actually a
group of related tools. To select any of the other tools in a group, click and
hold the tiny black arrow in the corner of the tool icon.

Flyouts
Flyouts open to display a set of related CorelDraw tools. A small arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of
a toolbox button indicates a flyout:
For example, the Shape edits flyout. Clicking a flyout arrow opens a set of related tools.
Clicking and dragging the grab handles at the end of the flyout sets the flyout in its expanded
form.

The following table provides descriptions of the flyouts and tools in the CorelDraw toolbox.

Flyout Description
Shape edit Lets you access the Shape, Knife, Eraser, Smudge brush, Roughen
brush, and Free transform tools
Zoom Lets you access the Zoom and Hand tools
Curve Lets you access the Freehand, Bézier, Artistic media, Polyline, Pen, 3
point curve, Dimension, and Interactive connector tools
Rectangle Lets you access the Rectangle and 3 point rectangle tools
Ellipse Lets you access the Ellipse and 3 point ellipse tools
Object Lets you access the Graph paper, Polygon, and Spiral tools.
Perfect Shapes Lets you access the Basic shapes, Arrow shapes, Flowchart shapes, Star
shapes, and Callout shapes tools
Interactive tools Lets you access the Interactive blend, Interactive contour, Interactive
distortion, Interactive envelope, Interactive extrude, Interactive
drop shadow, and Interactive transparency tools
Eyedropper Lets you access the Eyedropper and Paintbucket tools
Outline Lets you access the Color Docker window/palette, Outline pen and the
Outline color dialog boxes, and a selection of outlines of various widths
Fill Lets you access the Color Docker window/palette, Fill color, Fountain
fill, Pattern fill, Texture fill, and PostScript fill, dialog boxes
Interactive fill Lets you access Interactive fill and Interactive mesh fill tools.

Features of Corel Draw

One of the major features is that it provides a friendly UI that can be learned to use quickly, so for
beginners can expand their creativity and professionals can make some awestruck designs and layouts. It
has live versatile tools like node shaping and mesh fill etc which come handy almost everywhere in
designing. Being a vector graphics software does not pixilated its designs which guarantees high-quality
printing. Hence many high definition printers are programmed to accept Corel format files for printing.
Other features include accepting many file formats to edit, capable of running on all processors and so on.
PHOTOSHOP
Photoshop is a widely used graphics editing program created and published by Adobe for Mac OS and
Windows. Photoshop is basically a raster-based image editor which has the capability of editing and
composing raster images in multiple layers and supports features such as Masking, Alpha compositing,
Image wrapping tools, fluid camera rotation, file display tools, and much more advanced tools and
features.

The most basic version of Photoshop came in the year 1988. It was developed by Thomas and John Knoll.
Since then, this powerful application has been upgraded and updated with more advanced and robust set
tools and commands. The latest being Photoshop CC version which is a part of the Adobe Creative Cloud
branding. Moreover, Photoshop is teamed with other software such as Adobe Bridge, Adobe Fireworks,
Adobe Camera Raw, and many more.

Photoshop and some other software related to it are collectively branded as The Photoshop Family. This
Family consists of Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop Express, Photoshop Fix, and
other software.

Main Components of Photoshop

In the Above Section, we have learned about the introduction to Photoshop, there are some main
components that one needs. Below are those components:
 Menu Bar: This is the first and most used component of any software. This option consists of
various commands used to edit and compose images in the software. File, edit, image, layer,
select, filter, view, window & help are the basic commands.
 Options Bar: It is a bar that shows several options for specific tools in the tool palette. When the
user chooses a certain tool in the tool palette, the options bar showcases various preference for
that specific tool
 Tools Palette: This palette is present on the left side of the interface. It is a collection of icons
that are used for creating and editing images, page elements, and artworks.
 Document Window: It displays the current status of the file in which the user is working.
These windows can be grouped and docked as per the requirement of the designer.
 Layer panel: This panel is the most used panel by all the editors. This panel helps the user to
stack different items on the artboard on different layers to keep them organized and make editing
more easy and fast.

Characteristics of Photoshop
After going through the Introduction to Photoshop and the Components of Photoshop, There are some
Characteristics we need to learn which are as follow-
1. Smart Object
Smart objects are one of the most powerful features in Photoshop. These smart objects are non-
destructive in nature. The user can edit them, create multiple copies of the object which are interlinked
with each other. These smart objects are pixel independent and it allows the user to scale it without
getting blurry. Moreover, any normal layer can be converted to a smart object layer by just right-clicking
on any layer. With this technique, the user has the advantage to apply various filters and edit them
whenever needed.
2. Adjustment Layers
These layers are another mode of non-destructive editing with Photoshop. With these layers, the editing
applies not on the actual layer, but it creates a new adjustment layer right above the pixel layer. This
feature works in favor of the designer as, the designer can change the blend mode or apply filters, change
the opacity, or even get rid of this layer anytime he feels so.
3. Camera Shake Reduction
This feature works great for photographers as well as editors. It works well when the user is working with
some shaken shots or some blurry images. It analyses the graph and restores the sharpness of the image.
4. Content-Aware Move
This feature of the software works wonders for editors. It lets the user select an object in a single layer
image and move it elsewhere as per their wish in the same picture. Moreover, Photoshop does its job
amazingly by filling the gap made by moving the object.
5. Camera Raw
It is the most commonly used plugin which helps in the processing of raw images without using
Lightroom and other file formats. This plugin allows the users to add grain, performing post-crop
vignetting and remove noise from images.
6. Brushes
The upgraded brushes in the program offer the users to create sharper and clearer lines and smoother
brush strokes. When the users work with the pencil, eraser, mixer brush or brush tools they get the benefit
of controlling the smoothing of the brushes. They get the opportunity to enter the value from 0 to 100 for
the smoothing of brushes.

Applications of Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is not just software, but it a full industry or the powerhouse of editing, composing,
drafting, sketching images, and artworks. Today, Photoshop is not only used by professionals or
experienced editors but it has become a daily requirement for even a layman. Presently, Photoshop is
even taught in educational institutions and colleges. Product design, website designs, various digital
contents, branding and marketing material designs, business card designs are a common application of
Photoshop in our daily life:
 Adobe Photoshop is used for e-commerce websites and online shopping portals. These portals use
the application to edit their product and branding images. We can also design maps, environment
views, image showcases, satellite views. These are commonly used in gaming apps.
 Flyers, book cover designs, business cards and other materials for marketing and publicity can
also be designed on Photoshop.
 Website layouts, website logos, and other pages used on the website can also be designed with
this program.
 UI and UX can also be designed using Photoshop. The interior and exterior photos and
architectural visualizations can also be achieved using Photoshop.
 Product packing designs and 3D mockups can be created in Photoshop.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Photoshop

As we have studied about the Introduction to Photoshop, Components, Characteristics, and Application of
Photoshop and as everything has its own pros and cons.
Below are some of the pros and cons.
1. Adobe Photoshop offers a wide range of tools that have the capability to edit or design anything.
The software is upgraded so much that it is not only used for images only. The program can also
be used to work on video content and edit them with great efficiency. It is the best platform that
supports a robust set of tools for video editing
2. Photoshop allows the editing of all popular and available image file formats without requiring
any extra plugin.
3. Numerous small changes can be made to an image such as alter skin tone, fine-tune the
brightness, red-eye removal, retouching, and other modifications that can be done with great ease
in Photoshop.
4. The learning curve of Photoshop is steeper for freshers.
5. Small-time users and beginners may find Photoshop a bit expensive.

Adobe Photoshop vs CorelDraw Comparison Table

Sr.n Adobe Photoshop Corel Draw
o.
1. This software is pixel-based and creates raster images This software is vector-based and creates images
that are used by professionals. using a mathematical equation.
2. It is developed by Adobe and it’s the extended version It is developed by Corel Corporation so it’s
of it. Corel’s graphics suite.
3. It read a pixel from the image following layers which This software converts the images to vectored
are used for detailed manipulation of images. form as it doesn’t understand the concept of
pixels.
4. This software is mainly used for editing, cropping, It is used for illustration and for creating business
resizing, manipulating, and giving special effects to cards, barcodes, pamphlets, banners, logos, etc.
the images.
5. This is expensive than Corel draw by some amount. The price of this is a bit lower than Photoshop.
6. Adobe Photoshop is nearly the world’s leading Its graphics suite 2017 is industry-acclaimed
software for the design and development of images. design software used for quantity-based work.
7. This is available in English, Dutch, Turkish and It is available in English, China, Germany, Spain,
Swedish languages. Japan, France, Italy, Dutch, Portugal, and polish
languages.
8. In this only one page can be formed not like Corel This software allows you to make multiple pages
Draw. in a single file format.
9. In this, we can’t put the barcode in between the image While editing the image we can insert the
editing. barcode in between.
10. Most images for web presentation are used from this Mostly the images for banner printing are used
software. from this software because once the image is
been converted to vector for it doesn’t give blurry
look.