Corel Photopaint 6
Corel Photopaint 6
This short article on deepetching with Corel PhotoPaint 6 is the final in our deep etching series - the others covered Photoshop and Corel PhotoPaint 5.
PhotoPaint 6 is a much improved product over 5 and allows you to perform deep etching in a more controlled and precise fashion, although the principles of what you are doing are exactly the same.
The manual includes a set of tutorials which are a good introduction on how to use the program, although the manual does not include a full command description (you have to use on-line help for this!) If you own Corel 6 but have not tried PhotoPaint try running through these tutorials when you have a few spare hours as they are an excellent introduction to the program.
PhotoPaint 6 includes an anti-aliasing feature which makes deep-etching photographs that are not being used with clipping paths a bit easier and slightly better quality, although you may well need to use feathering as well as anti-aliasing - experiment!
Once you have defined your mask using the selection tools, there are a few extra possibilities to enhance it with 6. You can choose various options from the Shape submenu, Smooth is very useful, and Anti-alias will reduce the jagginess of a selection. To remove the background with 6 simply invert the mask you have defined, apply feathering/anitali-asing as desired then use the floodfill tool to fill the background with white (set tolerance to 100 to remove the entire back-ground in one go).
PhotoPaint 6 also includes a way of saving paths within the PhotoPaint file, which allows you to adjust a path before using it as a clipping path. This is very important as too many nodes may cause printing problems later.
To get 6 to define a path from a mask you have to use a quite different method than 5. First make sure the Tool Settings roll-up menu is closed and your mask is visible on the screen, then double click on the path Node Edit tool, this will open the tool settings window with the Mask to Path button highlighted, clicking this button will invoke an auto trace of the mask. You can then use the path editing tools to reduce the number of nodes and adjust the shape of the path until you are happy with it. You then have to save the path file for later use in saving the EPS. If you are proficient with the node edit tools you may prefer to draw your own clipping path from scratch.
When you are happy with the path, you can save the image as an EPS, you will be prompted with three possible ways to save it, select Enclosed by Path and choose the path that you saved earlier.
