A cool dynamic imaging effect with a reflective image changing scenery while retaining the original reflection. Here’s a trick to help you achieve this in a web-to-print or dynamic imaging template.

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 page size of your template and place it as a bottom layer.
• Import the background image in your CorelDRAW template document.

In a nutshell, we’re going to draw a shape that covers the mirror and use it as a PowerClip container for a variable image field. The reflection is a cut-out transparent image that goes on top of the PowerClip shape giving the illusion that the subject is reflected in the glass.

Inside Photoshop

We’ll need to make two different versions of the background image. One will have the visible part of the mirror cut out and the other will have everything but the mirror part cut out of it (inverted version of the first one). We can cut out the background with Photoshop or any other image editing application.

Import the image in Photoshop, duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J) and activate Photoshop Polygonal Lasso tool. Start clicking along the edge of the mirror to make a selection.

When you’re done cutting the reflection part, press Delete on the keyboard to remove that part of the image. You now have the “environment” version of the image that has the mirror reflection removed.

The “reflection” image is just a few clicks away since it’s only an inverted version of the one you just made. Select the other layer and invert the selection (Ctrl+Shift+I). Hit Delete to remove that part out of the image.

You’re done cutting, all that’s left for us to do in Photoshop is to save the images. Disable the visibility of one layer and save the image in a format that retains transparency (ex. PNG). Repeat this step with the other layer as well.

Inside CorelDRAW

Select the background shape (page frame), move it to the front (Ctrl+Home) and convert it to curve (Ctrl+Q).

Use CorelDRAW Shape tool (F10) to move the corner nodes so that they correspond to the corners of the mirror in the original image.

We now have the shape that will be the container for the variable image. Import a dummy image, turn it into a variable web-to-print image field and PowerClip it inside the mirror shape you just created.

Note. You may need to simulate a perspective effect on a bitmap.

Import the images you made in Photoshop and place them on top of all. The “environment” image should go at the very top of all objects while the “reflection” image should go under it.

Transparency

Select the “reflection” image, activate CorelDRAW Transparency Tool and assign a 50% uniform transparency to it with the Multiply transparency operation.

Your Object Manager (Window/Dockers/Object Manager) should look similar to this at the end.

The result should be similar to this.

All done!

Our web-to-print software can handle this effect easily! Upload the template into your catalog and test it.

Download the FREE CorelDRAW template file.