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Corel Draw Tutorials

See Through Text Tutorial - Corel CorelDraw 9 Tutorial

Creating "see-through" text on images can be a stunning effect and is really simple to accomplish in most image editing applications. Although the steps to achieve the effect are different for each application. As you will see below this affect is easily achieved in CorelDRAW 9.

For this tutorial I used a JPG image 250 X 166 pixels in dimension. After opening CorelDRAW 9 I set up my canvas and CorelDRAW 9 as follows:

Tools>Options>Edit Uncheck - Auto-Center new PowerClip centers

Set the canvas size to custom

Set the width of the canvas to 1.11"

Set the height of the canvas to 0.737"

Now I'm ready to start working. Import the image you want to use (Fig. 1) - File>Import. As you can see it doesn't cover the whole canvas but that is not an issue. I set the size of the canvas to save memory as I worked.

Fig. 1

Deselect the background by hitting the escape button.

Select the text tool. For the text I used Bauhaus 93 set to 14. It doesn't matte

r what color the text is. Position your cursor over the image and type the textyou want on the image (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Select the Interactive Transparency Tool and set it to Uniform>100% (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Now the only thing showing to let you know your text is there are the handles surrounding the transparent text.

Deselect the text by hitting the escape button and select the background. Remember where your text is. Then go to Effects>PowerClip>Place Inside Container. Whenyou do this a bold arrow will appear when you place your mouse over your image.Place that arrow over where you text is and left click. You should end up withsomething similar to Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

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We need to "raise" the flat text from Fig. 4 to add some dimension to it. This is easily accomplished using the Drop Shadow tool.

With the text still selected, select the Interactive Drop Shadow Tool. With yourmouse on the left side of the text, hold down the left mouse button and drag tothe right side of the text. While you are doing this you should see an outlineof the text move across the original text. Line this up with the text as you drag the mouse.

I used the following settings for the shadow:

Angle - 0

Feather Direction - Average

Perspective Type - Left

Feathering - 10

Opacity - 100

As you implement the above settings you can see the shadow adjust. I didn't feelthere was enough depth so I copied the altered text a couple of times to darkenthe shadow more and add depth. To do this all you need to do - making sure the

text is still selected - hit the "+" key on the numeric keypad twice. Each timeyou hit the plus key on the numeric keypad you will see the shadow darken. Onceyou have done this your text should appear something like Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

We don't have to move the text at this point but it does make it easier. Becausewe want to move it and we want all three layers of text we just created to moveat the same time, we need to group them. Go to Edit>Select All>Text. Then go toArrange>Group. Now we can drag the text to the bottom of the canvas or even offthe canvas temporarily. Next I imported the background image again and then moved the text back up where it belongs. When you do this you will notice that you

can't see the text. The reason you can't see it is because it is behind the background layer. With the text selected go to Arrange>Order>To Front. That will move the text on top of the background and your image should now look similar to Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

I felt I could leave the image as is but I wanted to lighten up the text a little bit. To do that, deselect the text and select the Text Tool. Select white as the color for the text and type your text again. Align the newly typed text on top of the original text. Your image should now be similar to Fig. 7.

Fig. 7

With the newly typed text still selected, select the Interactive Transparency Tool and set the transparency to Uniform. It automatically sets the transparency to 50%. Your image should now be similar to Fig. 8.

Fig. 8

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You can now set the transparency to whatever you want to get the desired effect.You don't have to use white for the text. You could use any color that would give you the desired effect. I felt the white was blocking a little too much of the background image so I set the transparency to 75% to give me the final image below.