CorelDRAW Help | Applying special effects in bitmaps

Quick links to procedures on this page:

•

To apply a special effect

•

To add a plug-in filter

•

To inflate a bitmap manually

Applying special effects in bitmaps

You can apply a wide range of special effects to bitmaps, such as three-dimensional (3D) and artistic effects.

Special effect category	Description
3D Effects	Lets you create the illusion of depth. Effects include Emboss, Page Curl, and Perspective.
Art Strokes	Lets you apply hand-painted techniques. Effects include Crayon, Impressionist, Pastels, Watercolor, and Pen & Ink.
Blur	Lets you blur an image to simulate movement, speckling, or gradual change. Effects include Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Smart Blur, and Zoom.
Camera	Lets you simulate effects produced by various camera lenses. Effects include Colorize, Photo Filter, Sepia Toning, and Time Machine, which lets you walk your image back through history to recreate some popular photographic styles from the past.
Color Transform	Lets you create photographic illusions by using color reduction and replacements. Effects include Halftone, Psychedelic, and Solarize.
Contour	Lets you highlight and enhance the edges of an image. Effects include Edge Detect and Trace Contour.
Creative	Lets you apply various textures and shapes to an image. Effects include Fabric, Glass Block, Crystalize, Vortex, and Stained Glass.
Custom	Lets you apply a wide range of effects to your image. For example, you can transform your image into an artistic media painting by applying brushstrokes (Alchemy effect) or add texture and patterns to an image (Bump-map effect).
Distort	Lets you distort image surfaces. Effects include Ripple, Blocks, Swirl, and Tile.
Noise	Lets you modify the graininess of an image. Effects include Add Noise, Remove Moiré, and Remove Noise.
Sharpen	Lets you add a sharpening effect to focus and enhance edges. Effects include Adaptive Unsharp, High Pass, and Unsharp Mask.
Texture	Lets you add texture to an image by simulating a variety of surfaces, such as cobblestone, elephant skin, plastic, and relief sculpture.
Plug-ins	Lets you use a third-party filter to apply effects to bitmaps in CorelDRAW.An installed plug-in appears at the bottom of the Bitmaps menu.

Adding plug-in filters to CorelDRAW provides additional features and effects that you can use to edit images. You can add plug-in filters, and you can remove them when you no longer need them.

CorelDRAW automatically inflates a bitmap so that a special effect covers the entire image. You can disable automatic inflation and manually specify dimensions for the inflated bitmap.

The Time machine effect recreates photographic styles from the past.

To apply a special effect

1 .

Select a bitmap.

2 .

Click Bitmaps, choose a special effect type, and click an effect.

3 .

Adjust any special effect settings.

To add a plug-in filter

1 .

Click Tools

Options.

2 .

In the list of categories, double-click Workspace, and click Plug-ins.

3 .

Click Add.

4 .

Choose a folder containing a plug-in.

5 .

Restart the application.

The plug-in appears in the Bitmaps

Plug-ins menu.

To remove a plug-in filter, click a plug-in folder from the Plug-in folders list, and click Remove.

To inflate a bitmap manually

1 .

Select a bitmap.

2 .

Click Bitmaps

Inflate bitmap

Manually inflate bitmap.

3 .

In the Width and Height areas, do one of the following:

•

In the Inflate to boxes, type the number of pixels that should make up the dimensions of the inflated bitmap.

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In the Inflate by boxes, type the percentages by which to inflate the original bitmap.

4 .

To inflate the bitmap proportionally, enable the Maintain aspect ratio check box.

To automatically inflate the bitmap to cover the entire image, click Bitmaps Inflate bitmap Auto inflate bitmap.

Left to right: Add noise effect, Zoom blur effect, Solarize color transform effect, Edge detect contour effect, Sharpen effect

Left to right: Original image, Emboss effect, Cubist artistic effect, Mosaic creative effect, Distort pixelate effect

Smart blur

The Smart blur effect smooths the surfaces while keeping the edges sharp.

Camera effects

Original	Colorize	Photo filter
Sepia toning	Time machine	Time machine

Custom effects

Original (top), Alchemy effect (middle), and Bump-map effect (bottom)

Texture effects

Original
Cobblestone	Elephant skin	Etching
Plastic	Relief sculpture	Stone

Not all suite components documented in this Help are available in our Trial, Academic, and OEM versions. Unavailable components may include Corel applications, product features, third-party utilities, and extra content files.

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