Blending a photo

Design techniques, Blend, CorelDRAW Tutorials, Effects, Overlay, Transparency

19/02/2009

User images uploaded into a web to print template can be blended with the rest of the design in a very creative manner. This posts explains how to use CorelDRAW transparency to blend a user photo with background

Before you start

Web-to-print before you start

Add a page frame (Layout/Page Setup/Add Page Frame). This will create a rectangular shape with the exact same size as the paper size of your template and place it as a bottom layer.
Import the image that you will use as the overlay and place it on top of all the objects.
Import the placeholder image, turn it into a variable image field and place it as the bottom layer.

In a nutshell, we’ll use a pattern image to overlay a variable image placeholder by assigning a custom transparency operation to it.

Overlay

First we need to assign the custom transparency to the overlay image.

We used this flower photo as the overlay image.

We used this photo as the image placeholder.

Select the overlay image and activate CorelDRAW Transparency Tool from the toolbox menu on the left.

Web-to-print uniform transparency /

In the top settings bar, choose Uniform transparency as the Transparency type.

Web-to-print divide transparency operation /

Choosing the Transparency operation is important for achieving the desired Overlay effect. We went with Divide as the transparency operation.

Web-to-print overlayed image /

The result should be similar to this.

Frame

Let’s add some fun frame to our template.

Duplicate the bottom background rectangle shape, assign a No Fill to it and a small hairline outline.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Q to convert the outline to a object. Select the shape and activate the Artistic Media tool (I) from the toolbox menu on the left.

Use these settings as reference.