Vectorising calligraphy with CorelDRAW (a tutorial). Questions kindly answered.

[Mosh]

Hi,

I am a graphic designer and I use CorelDRAW for all things vector-related. CorelDRAW is practically equivalent to Adobe's Illustrator but, in my opinion, it typically requires less steps to accomplish the same tasks. Although this software can be used for many, many things, this thread is only a tutorial for turning your calligraphy into vector shapes with it; shapes you can manually and easily edit, clean-up, refine and output for almost any file type you need, be it vector or bitmap. Feel free to post any questions you have and I will be glad to answer them.

What you will need:
A PC with Windows on it (the last CorelDRAW version which was released for the Macintosh platform –version 11– was released looong ago, so currently you can only have a recent DRAW version on a Mac if you have Windows installed in it via Parallels or some equivalent). It is much easier if you have a computer with Windows as an operating system.
A scanner for digitising your calligraphy into your PC.
CorelDRAW. You can install a demo from coreldraw.com. I think you have to register first to do so. It will be good and completely functional for 30 days after installation. For this tutorial I will be using the currently newest version, which is X7. Bear in mind that the sequence in which DRAW versions have appeared is the following: 1-12, X3, X4, X5, X6, X7.
Some capable photographic image editor, such as Photoshop or PhotoPaint, which is installed along with CorelDRAW.

[Mosh]

You can (and on most occasions Should) adjust the contrast of the image with the scanner interface. You can also use your photo-editing software to add, erase or modify your scanned image before the vectorising step. The ideal image to vectorise has a small amount of grey tones and has your scanned letters mostly in black on the whitest possible background. Otherwise, you'll struggle a tad in the following steps. Some people convert the images to Black and White, others prefer to keep it as a greyscale. You can save one in each format and see what yields the best results for you later on. I personally don't use BW because it tends to destroy lots of information if your original letters are not purely black but have many grey levels.


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My text was so small in its physical state (around 2 cms. long) that I enlarged it quite a bit (400% the original size at 1,200 ppi*). The larger your original, the best results you will have.

This is a capture of my scanner's interface. I have not yet touched CorelDRAW. The triangles I circled in red to the right of the image are the sliders which can enhance the contrast and grey levels in my images. This is the best result I could get so far. Bear in mind there's still some greys in my scanned image, but they are nothing critical.

*my scanner shows "ppp" instead of "ppi" but it's because the interface is in Spanish.

[Mosh]

You'd better invest some time in this step. This is actually fine-tuning your scanned image with your image-editing software out of undesired irregularities, accidental dots, splotches, speckles. In this example I darkened up the black parts, painted over some connection strokes which were so thin that were getting broken at some points and corrected minor errors. Be aware that you will be able to refine your image further later on, on the vector phase.

You can see that because my original was small-sized, the contours are VERY irregular, so I will have to edit the contours later on if I wish not to keep this rugged appearance.

The bigger and more carefully-executed your original calligraphy is, the less time you will have to spend in this phase.

[Mosh]

You create a new document either by choosing the interface's "Create New Document" and then choosing the size of it and pressing Enter (I typically choose either Letter or A4) or, if the start interface is not present, just press CTRL+N.

At this moment you can also choose the colour mode of your future document. Choose CMYK colour only if you will be sending something to be printed on traditional offset printers. Almost all other "normal" output will be best handled in RGB colour.

You can then import the image into the document you just created either via Drag+Drop from your Explorer, or pressing CTRL+I and choosing the place your scanned image is in or choosing "File/Import" from CorelDRAW's menu bar. If you find it's too large for your document, you can select the Pick tool (top-most in your vertical toolbox, shaped as an arrow), select your image and then just drag one of the black squares on the corners of your image diagonally towards the insides until you get it the size you want.

You are still dealing with a Bitmap image, not a Vector one, so there's now not much more you can do with the picture you just imported. We will proceed now to the vectorisation process.

[Mosh]

This process is basically the same. You right-click onto your recently imported bitmap image and will see that a contextual menu appears. Choose the fifth option, called "Contour Vectorization" (the name might differ a bit: bear in mind I am using the Spanish version, but it will still be the fifth option). From the sub-menus which will appear, you may choose from either "Logotype" or "Clipart". The difference between this two will be mostly the amount of chosen colours or grey values CorelDRAW will try to "milk" from your image. The Logotype option, I reckon, will show fewer, but it's a matter of trying with both and seeing which one serves your image better once the vectorisation is done.

After choosing any of those, you will be presented with the vectorisation interface. From that point on, the ideal parameters you choose will depend on the size, quality, and grey tones of your image, but I will guide you in the next steps so you can experiment and decide which are the best ones for your work.

NOTE 1: If while trying to open up the vectorisation interface you get a message stating that your image is too big for the vectorisation process, just click on the "reduce bitmap" option, so that DRAW automatically reduces its size in order to work in a quicker fashion.

NOTE 2: In older DRAW versions (v. 12 and earlier), vectorising an image was done inside an independent piece of software (included with the DRAW installation) called CorelTRACE. I won't talk further about this because it's long dated but if any of you guys still uses it, I can gladly assist you.

[Mosh]

DRAW will take some time to vectorise your image according to the preset you chose (Logotype or Clipart). The time it takes will depend on both the power of your PC and the size of your image.

Once it's done, you will be able to modify parameters in order to get the best vectorisation possible.

The Vectorisation interface consists of two main parts. One is called Configuration, which is the default open tab in it, and which looks like this:



The first slider controls how much detail in the scanned image will DRAW take into account for its vectorisation intents. The further you drag the slider towards the + sign, the more holes, irregularities and crannies you will end up with. The further you drag towards the - sign you will get a cleaner contour, but you risk losing important details from the original image.

The second and third parameters control how much you want DRAW to soften up the corners. Lower values will produce overall sharper angles in every produced curve and higher ones will produce "puffier" curve angles. I would love to be more precise about the difference among both but I don't have the specific information, so just give both a try.

You have the option of erasing the original image once DRAW vectorises it (first checkbox).
You can eliminate the white background on your resulting vectorisation (second checkbox). You can see in my example image that the background is going to be erased but there are white areas where the counters of the letters are. Don't worry, you can easily erase them later on. You can either let DRAW choose which colour is supposed to be the background (first radio button) or you can use the Eyedropper to choose a specific one from your image.

You could have adjacent objects with the same colour to be fused with each other (third checkbox).

You can automatically eliminate any overlapping objects in the final result. (fourth checkbox)

And you can also make sure that all objects which have the same colour but which are not adjacent to be grouped. This can be helpful with some vectorisations. (last checkbox).

[Mosh]

By clicking on the second tab (circled in red) you will be presented with the second part of this dialogue box of the interface.



The colour swatches show the colours DRAW could recognise based on the preset you chose (in my example, a number 10 is shown: you could edit this field to show more or less colours).

You'll notice that there are two very similar black swatches. You could also reduce the amount of colours by fusing together similar colours. To do this, you CTRL+select the swatches you wish to merge and afterwards click on the Fuse button to the right of the Save icon (below the swatches area). You could do this with all the colours you desire. You will also notice that whenever you click on a swatch, the bottom preview will show where in the vectorisation is that colour located by displaying the area(s) crossed with diagonal lines.

But instead of reducing colours manually, and since this image will be monochromatic, you could also select Black and White instead of Greyscale. This option is available on top of the number 10 in my example. This will re-calculate the vector colours and reduce them to only black and white, as you will see on the next screen capture...

[Mosh]

As you can see, the colours have been greatly reduced. Notice that this time around I intentionally pressed on the Black swatch, so that you can see that the bottom preview shows the black areas crossed with diagonal lines, as I explained in the last post.

Since later on I will delete the white areas, I chose two options in the tab I discussed first:

I checked the "Group objects by color" option, so that selecting all white objects will be done in a cinch, just by clicking one of them, and then deleting all will be done in a second.
I also maintained the option of removing overlapping objects as checked. If I didn't, the white objects would be sitting on a black surface so deleting the whites will leave no counters in the letters. Removing the overlap will cause that once the whites have been deleted, holes (counters) will be left, which is what best serves our project.

The only left thing to do is hit the OK button.

[NikkiB]

Waaaaahhhhh! You are awesome Mosh, thank you!

Lots of Karma coming your way....

[Mosh]

Now, after some steps that take longer to read than to put into action, you have a more or less fair conversion of your scanned letters to vectors. If your original was of a big size, then the next steps will be very easy to tackle. If your original was as tiny as mine, you will see that there a lot of rough edges to be polished.

There are four stages at which you may consider the task over. If you wish to maintain the rough aspect of vintage calligraphy, you can either leave the vectors as you got them or you can smooth them just a bit.

If you want to completely cleanse and sanitise, then you will have to invest some time smoothing nodes, adding some and eliminating most of them. That would be the second stage.

The third stage would be if you wanted to add extra ornamentation such as patterns, colours, material-simulation, etc. to your letters. That can be performed with DRAW but it would need for you to know how to use all the other drawing tools, effects and workarounds, which is far more than the scope of this thread.

A fourth (and quite more time-demanding) stage would be if you'd wish to export your vector calligraphy as a font. DRAW is quite capable of exporting your vectors as a TrueType, Type 1 or OpenType format, which is ready to use, but on most cases you would need software such as FontLab to really spice the font up. DRAW lacks the important font export feature of kerning, so on most cases, if you stick only to DRAW, your resulting font would be poorly spaced among letter pairs. That stage also exceeds by far the intention of this tutorial, so I am not going to go any further with it. Just know that there's still much to do with this software.

But anyway, if you want to cleanse up your resulting vectors (what I called the second stage), you will need to be familiar with some basic DRAW tools and concepts, which I will explain over the next posts.

[Mosh]

I have already talked about the vertical toolbox to the left of the screen. Since the software interface is almost completely customisable, you might find that some people have different tool arrangements on their PCs, but as a default you will see that the first two, topmost tools are the ones you will use almost all of the time.

The first one is the Pick tool, which has the icon of a white arrow. This tool you might use for selecting any object, rotating, re-sizing or moving it around.



Whenever you select a vector object with the Pick tool, it will be surrounded by eight black squares called Handles. If you click and diagonally drag on the corner handles, you will resize the objects. If you click and drag on the middle handles, you will elongate the objects.





If you left-click twice on a vector object, the handles will appear as arrows. The corner ones will now serve to rotate the object and the middle ones to skew it.



Clicking another time will get the handles back to normal. To deselect the object, click on another one or press ESC on your keyboard.

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The second important tool, just below the Pick tool is the Shape tool. This tool is the one we are going to use the most to cleanse and modify your resulting vectors. If you select any vector object or group of objects with it, you will see that several small squares along their contour(s). This small squares are the ones responsible for the shape of objects, depending on their position and type along the contour. This squares are to be referred as Nodes.



Clicking on a vector object with the Shape tool will show the nodes. They were also visible with the Pick tool; but the difference is that with the Shape tool you can select and edit them.



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Now, there's a catch to this tool with some objects. If you use any other drawing tool that produces perfect shapes such as circles, rectangles, polygons and so on, the Shape tool will not permit that you alter their actual shapes as you could do with things you drew "manually", UNLESS you select them with the Pick tool and press CTRL+Q, which performs an operation called Converting to Curves, which is non-reversible but gives you the option to play around with their shapes. That means that you could draw a perfect circle, convert it to curves and then distort its shape in any way you wish with the Shape tool.

The same thing happens with typed text. You can type up any text string you like, then convert it to curves and use the Shape tool to do any shape alteration you wish to it, but then the text loses its text properties. That means that you can no longer edit it by typing, so plan ahead.

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[Mosh]

Each node / node handle controls the line segments to each of its sides.

In this example you can see the node and the two handles associated to it, represented by blue dotted lines with arrow heads. With the Shape tool, you can modify the line segments to which this node is attached by a) grabbing and dragging the node or b) grabbing and dragging the node handles. Doing the latter does not affect the position of the node, but the way the line segments attached to it get shaped. Try this with the nodes in the calligraphy you just vectorised: remember there's always a CTRL+Z to undo your changes.




See how are those line segments changed just by dragging the node handles:



You can also add or erase nodes. To add, select the Shape tool, select a vector object and double-click at any point of its contour where no node previously exists. To delete, double-click on an existing node. Doing the latter might drastically change the appearance of the contour. With practice, you will have a sense of how drastic the change will be before deleting.

NOTE: There's also a Zoom tool which you can use to your advantage. Invoke it pressing Z or by selecting the Magnifying Glass icon on the main toolbox. To zoom in, right-click or click-and-drag a rectangle-shaped marquee with it. When the mouse button is released, you will zoom in to the area enclosed in that marquee. To zoom out, left-click.

In order to edit the contour of any given vector object (for special shapes, remember what I posted previously about converting to curves), you should understand the different line objects and the different curve types which exist in DRAW (some of them are similar to Illustrator's). Each one has their own characteristics and you can change one to another so that the line segments associated with each node best suit your needs.

[Mosh]

These are the two line types in DRAW: straight and curved.

[Mosh]

And among the curves, you have three types. You can always change the type of every node by selecting it with the Shape tool and clicking on the appropriate icon on the top icons bar.

[Mosh]

The vectorised calligraphy you are working on may have lots of nodes. We'll edit them. But first get rid of the white shapes which might have appeared after the vectorisation work (if you haven't already). Since you had two colours (black and white), all of them appear grouped in your document. Select them with the Pick tool, hit CTRL+U to ungroup them, then hit ESC or click on any empty area of the document to deselect everything, click on the white objects (you won't be able to see them because the background is white but if you click on where the counters are supposed to be, you will see the eight black square handles around them. That will mean that you just selected them) and just hit Delete.

Now, the next steps are tricky because what you do will depend on the kind of letters you were left with and the degree of cleansing you want to achieve. I would suggest as a first step to select with the Shape tool (remember that's the one you use to edit nodes) all nodes in your text and converting them to curves by hitting the Curve button on the top icons menu. (It's the second one on this icons row).



How do you select all nodes? Select your letters with the Shape tool and either click and drag a marquee which encloses all nodes or by selecting one and then hitting CTRL+A.

You won't notice a change but now all nodes which might have been interpreted as straight lines will be able to be curved (only if you choose to do so). Converting all of them at once is far easier than one by one, since you will be modifying many of them.

Then it will become a matter of deleting nodes. The less nodes you have, the smoother your lines will be. With my particular vectorisation I ended up with 2,053 nodes. Way too many. They are all needed to preserve the nooks and crannies of my original, but I don't need them so I will have to get rid of them. You can do it one by one or you can do an automatic smoothing and then get rid of the other ones you don't need, which will be significantly less.

You do the automatic smoothing by using the Shape tool to select all nodes in the letters and first hitting a big button on top called Reduce Nodes. This might do either a big or a small node reduction, depending on your graphic. After that, use the slider in the Curve Smoothness tool (on the top icons row). How much you slide it towards the right will affect how many nodes are disposed of. Be careful: you don't want to reduce the quantity so much that your letters lose their primary shape!

This is the Curve Smoothness tool:




This is what my original node count looked like at first (2,053 nodes). Looks like an ant picnic:



And this is its appearance after automatically reducing the node count (381 nodes).



Now you can start fine-tuning.