Corel Draw Crop to Circle

By Steve Bain

With all the diverse ways yous can work with digital images in CorelDRAW, you're eventually going to need (or want) to do a little cropping. Image cropping involves temporarily hiding – or even deleting – portions of a digital epitome. It'south generally done to change the prototype proportions to fit a specific pattern demand and/or delete unneeded pixels and reduce your file size. Yous tin exercise information technology easily with whatever version of CorelDRAW and it'due south a relatively straightforward operation.

In this tutorial, I'm using an older version of CorelDRAW to demonstrate. But you tin can use these same techniques with virtually any version. Earlier we get started though, permit me clarify one potential confusion point. If you're using a recent CorelDRAW version, y'all might understandably achieve for the Crop Tool.

The Ingather Tool provides an automated mode of cropping objects — including digital images. When it was start introduced (version thirteen) applying it to an object essentially deleted all content outside the cropping area you lot specified. Although this meant information technology was a not bad tool for cropping individual objects, it prevented you from cropping objects already inserted or embedded into an existing organization or montage. If you're using version 15 and beyond, you'll discover this beliefs has been fixed. Just wanted to get that off my breast.

The technique I'll cover in this tutorial is the manual method that volition enable you to crop at the vector level past manipulating the invisible path surrounding the digital image using the Shape Tool (F10). The Shape Tool method is more involved and peradventure less user-friendly than the Crop Tool, but it provides more control and gives you the added bonus of being able to custom craft the bitmap boundaries to an unconventional shape if needed.

Unlike bitmap-editing applications, a digital image in CorelDRAW is essentially a bitmap-based object housed inside an invisible container called a as clipping path. This means the clipping path contains the paradigm and its boundaries determine the bitmap's overall shape. Although these containers are inherently invisible, they are an integral characteristic of each bitmap in your document. Command the shape of the container and y'all control the cropping of the bitmap it contains.

To shape a bitmap container, you'll need to use the Shape Tool to modify the position of the path nodes comprising information technology. Let's walk through at a typical rectangular-shaped cropping functioning by following these brief steps.

1. To begin, yous'll need to have a bitmap at the ready. Bitmaps may exist converted from vector objects using the Convert to Bitmap command, or brought in from an external source using the Import command (Ctrl+I). Once on your page, simply click to select the bitmap itself.
2. If you choose to Import your bitmap, you can ingather it before information technology reaches your page by choosing Crop from a driblet-downward carte in the Import dialog (shown side by side).
3. After choosing Crop and clicking OK, the Crop Prototype dialog (shown side by side) volition open enabling you to either use the Hand-style cursor to interactively set up the rectangular cropping, or by entering values in the Top, Left, Width, and Acme boxes followed past clicking OK. Doing this will enable you to place a permanently cropped re-create of your selected bitmap onto your page.
4. If the prototype you wish to crop already exists in your certificate, and you wish to crop information technology, choose the Shape Tool (F10) and click to select the bitmap. Notice four nodes appear at the corners of the prototype (shown next). Dragging these points will crusade the bitmap'southward clipping path shape to change, enabling you to hide portions of the bitmap from view withoutdeleting the pixels.
5. Using the Shape Tool cursor, click one of these nodes and drag it toward the center origin of the image. Notice that subsequently y'all release the mouse, a portion of the epitome is hidden (every bit shown adjacent).
   
6. Drag the same corner node back to roughly its original position and notice that the hidden portion of the paradigm is visible again. You have merely performed the most basic of cropping operations.

Well-nigh digital images are usually cropped either vertically or horizontally to fit a square or rectangular space. This requires moving the corner nodes while maintaining their alignment.

To perform a side, top, or bottom cropping operation on a bitmap, you'll need to have at least two corner nodes selected at 1 time, and they must be moved either using nudge keys or by dragging. The dragging operation is a little trickier than yous might think, since it involves selecting and moving ii corner nodes while holding a modifier key to constrain the elevate motility.

To ingather a bitmap by dragging, follow these steps:

1. Using the Shape Tool, click to select the bitmap. Determine which side yous wish to crop, and select both corner nodes on the side by property Shift while clicking once on each node, or click-drag to select them with the marquee.
2. One time the nodes are selected, concur Ctrl as the modifier key while dragging both nodes toward the middle of your bitmap. Holding Ctrl constrains your dragging movement, which keeps the sides in vertical and horizontal alignment.
3. Continue cropping any of the sides using this same procedure until the cropping operation is consummate. The instance shown adjacent illustrates typical results of cropping.
4. As a terminal optional step, y'all can eliminate the hidden portion of the image using the Crop Bitmap control either by choosing Bitmaps > Crop Bitmap or by clicking the Crop Bitmap button (shown next) in the Property Bar using the Pick Tool and while a cropped bitmap is selected. Doing this will permanently remove the image portions which are hidden from view enabling you to reduce your document file size.
   

Keep in mind that y'all can also employ this cropping technique to create non-rectangular cropping shapes by adding nodes to the bitmap container and manipulating the curve properties as shown below.

The next two examples illustrate the benefits of careful photo cropping. In these examples, a photo montage has been laid out without cropping and then improved through careful cropping and re-arrangement.

For more data on the pattern and aesthetic aspects of cropping images in different ways, see my tutorial on improving epitome impact.

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Steve Bain is an laurels-winning illustrator and designer, and author of nearly a dozen books including CorelDRAW The Official Guide.

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Source: https://coreldesigner.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/how-to-crop-bitmaps-in-coreldraw/