Can anyone tell me how to make the white background on a drawing transparent so that when I overlay it on a coloured picture the white background does not show as a block on the background picture.
I am using corel draw 9, and have a nice picture of a map as background. Now I want to import various old-fashioned things like mermaids, sea-dragons, sun icons etc and paste them on the edges of the map. When I import a picture, the white background is showing up on the coloured map as a white square. I just want the drawing itself to appear.
Panache, I have several programs where I can outline a drawing to eliminate the background around the item, but I want to
change the white background completely so that the coloured map background will show through the drawing lines of the imported picture.
if they are bitmaps (ie jpg, gif, bmp, tif) you will need to edit them externally to Corel Draw (Corel Photopaint may help if you have it) to enable transparency (saved as gif) on the white sections of the file.
if they are vector files (cgm, wmf, cdr) you may be able to modify the fill colour to be transparent.
Use your node edit tool, and add nodes right on the edge of the border between the white and the object. You will either have to add many nodes or curve the lines.
The problem is that bitmap images have static colors. In other words, white is white. When you lay a bitmap down in front of another image, the white parts stay white. They don’t suddenly become transparent.
Imagine what would happen if you wanted to overlay a picture of a polar bear onto your map and you could turn the white in your image transparent. You’d have a bear tatooed with images of Siberia!
So, to have truly transparent bitmap images, you need to edit it externally, as si_blakey describes above.
On the other hand, there is a trick you can use with Corel Draw that may work for you. It’s called “Power Clip”.
First, draw a circle (or oval or square or any vector shape). Then, paste your bitmap image onto the drawing surface. Click on the bitmap. Now, select the “Effects” drop down menu and choose “Power Clip”. Then, click on the circle. Notice that your bitmap has been clipped to the shape of the circle. Right click the circle and edit the contents. You can now rearrange and resize the image within the circle.
It’s not quite the same as making parts of the image transparent, but it will have a similar dramatic effect for your map.