Black background in Corel

[Doug Fennell]

What's a quick way to add a black background to a photo in Corel in order to prepare it for engraving on black granite?

[James Stokes]

draw a box, send to back, fill with black.

[Doug Fennell]

James, I don't quite understand - I tried that, but I still have the white background of the picture. I want to remove the white background of a picture and make the background black.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Doug, See this thread:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=72466

[Doug Fennell]

Mitchell, I think that's it! Here's a question though, in the video he clicks on the page and then the green color and there is a box around the dog with green on the outside... how did he do that?

[Vicky Orsini]

I may be wrong, Doug, but I believe it's because the picture of the dog is actually a square bitmap image sitting on top of the printed area, so he's working with 2 or more layers. So, when he clicks on the printed area, he's changing the colour of the background of the printed area, not the background of the bitmap of the dog. The rest of the process is showing you how to remove the bitmap's background, or make it transparent. If all you have is one layer which is the bitmap you're working on, you don't need to worry about this particular step as it doesn't apply to you.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Vickie is correct. Don't get bogged down by layers if you don't need them.

[Doug Fennell]

Makes sense, thanks guys.

[Doug Fennell]

Ok - something to add for a technique... I'm used to pohotoshop, so Corel is completely new to me (if you couldn't tell from the questions :) )


Do the bitmap color mask just as stated in X3. If you find that you have a pixilated edge, save the immage as a tiff, then open it in photo paint. Use the magic wand mask tool and apply a mask. Smooth the edges of the mask under mask>mask outline>smooth by about 20 to 30 and then do a flood fill in black. Should leave you with a very smooth edge and no annoying line around your image.

Photo paint is quite diffrent from photoshop, but I'm starting to like it.

[Angus Hines]

You can drop-out the background out in Photoshop then import the picture to X3 and add the black fill box as the back layer. That seems easier to me since you know Photoshop