A graphic is a digital representation of drawing, chart or photographs. It can also be called a picture or image which contains no motion or animation. Graphic package is an application that can be used to create and manipulate images on a computer.
Computer graphics are used in many applications including science, engineering, advertising, multimedia production etc. They are related to all activities where static and animated pictures and images are created, processed, manipulated using specialized hardware and computer software. Data in form of images are easy to understand and interpret.
Uses of graphic package
- Desktop publishing
- Large industrial processing monitoring
- Technical drawing
- Satellite imaging
- Making Movies
- Plotting data for visualization
- Cartography (maps)
- Multimedia etc.
Types/examples of graphic and image processing packages are:
- Core Draw
- Paint Brush
- Photoshop
- Gem Draw
- Harvard Graphics
- Logo graphics
- Instant Artist
- Microsoft Paint
- Corel Paint
- Print Artist. Etc.
COREL DRAW
This is a graphic package usually used in carrying out graphic designs. It comes in many version such as Corel Draw 8, Corel Draw 9, Corel Draw 11, Corel Draw 12, Corel Draw X3, Corel Draw X5, Corel Draw X6, etc.
Features of Corel Draw
- The title Bar: This is the bar that show the name of the program as well as the file name. it is at the topmost part of the screen.2
- Menu Bar: This is the bar that contains the pull down menu option.
- Tool box: A floating bar that contains tools for creating, filling and modifying objects in drawing. It is a detachable bar that contains shortcuts to menu and commands.
- Property Bar: This is a bar with commands that relates to the active tool or object e.g. when the text tool is active, the text property bar displays commands that create and edit text.
- Rulers: These are the horizontal and vertical borders that are used to determine the size.
- Drawing Window: This is the area outside the drawing page, bordered by the scroll bar.
- Drawing Page: This is the rectangular area inside the drawing window. It is also called the printable area.
- Document Navigator: This is the area at the bottom left side of the application window which contains controls for moving between pages.
- Colour Pallete: This contains several colour, which can be selected from the objects.
- Status Bar: This is the area of the bottom containing information about object properties. It also shows the current mouse position.
Starting Corel Draw
- Click start button
- Click All Programs
- Click Corel Graphics Suite
- Click Corel Draw.
After the above steps, a new dialog box conataining the following option will show
- New Graphics
- Recently used
- Open etc.
Tools in Corel Draw
- Pick tool: This selects objects or group of object you can use the pick tool to move scale, rotate and skew objects.
- Shape tool: It enables one edit the shape of the objects
- Ellipse: It draws ellipses and circles
- Rectangle tool: This draws rectangles and squares.
- Graph Paper tool: It draws a collection of boxes that simulated a sheet of graph paper.
- Freehand tool: It is used to draw lines and curves.
- Zoom: It changes the current view of the drawing
- Smart Drawing tool: It converts the freehand strokes to basic shapes and smoothed curves.
- Text tool: It adds either artistic or paragraph text to your drawing
- Interactive Blend tool: It allows one to merge objects together through a series of steps. The fly out gives access to several interactive tools.
- Eye Dropper tool: It allows one to select a colour within an object. The flyout gives access to paint bucket that applies the colour.
- Outline tool: Its sets outline style of an object or a line. This includes the line type, ends, colons and weight. The flyout gives quick access to some changes.
- Fill tool: It assigns the fill style of any object. Fills are only visible on closed object. The flyout gives access to control dialogs for each type of fill.
- Interactive tool: It allows one to apply fountain (gradients) using the mouse.
Evaluation
- Define graphic package
- List the uses of graphic package
- Define Corel Draw
- Mention five (5) features of graphic package
- Mention five (5) tools in Corel Draw.