Now the Downside...

As with all of DRAW’s effects, transparency can be dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. First off, if you place transparent objects on top of bitmaps, you can end up with gigantic files (particularly if the transparent object is itself a bitmap, as is the case with our dreamy couple). DRAW might lull you into a false sense of security if you save the .cdr files with bitmap compression turned on; when you create your print files, be ready for the dam to burst. Transparency is a complex effect, and aside from large print files, they are a leading cause of RIPing problems at service bureaus. If you encounter this, try converting the transparent effect into a bitmap. This might sound strange—converting a bitmap into a bitmap—and removing the intelligence from DRAW’s tools is not exactly what you had in mind when you adopted the program.

But a little bit of dummying down CorelDRAW can be a good thing. When you convert a transparent bitmap effect into a static bitmap (done by selecting the objects and going to Bitmaps Ø Convert to Bitmap), you essentially freeze the effect in time—you are taking a snapshot of what the effect looked like at that moment. In so doing, you greatly simplify the work; now it’s just a bunch of pixels, and any old Mac-myopic service bureau can RIP a bunch of dumb pixels.

We regularly employ the following routine when preparing print files that might contain troublesome effects:

1.  We save.

2.  We convert any suspect effects to static bitmaps.

3.  We create the print file.

4.  We close without saving.

Now any changes that need to be made to the effect can easily be done, as the effect is still live. Once we make the change, we repeat the four steps.

	NOTE DRAW 9 adds a print option to rasterize an entire page, essentially converting all elements to bitmap. This is more convenient because it doesn’t involve your converting any of your elements (it’s done transparently at print time), but its downside is that it converts all elements, including your text. For more information, see our opus, “Print, Darn You!,” Chapter 26.

The second major risk to all of this is ugliness, and there we have no quick fixes to offer, except to suggest that you try to avoid it. As with all of DRAW’s effects, transparency will haunt you and taunt you into using it just for the sake of using it. You must resist with all your might the use of transparency simply because it’s there.

But when it’s used at the appropriate time, it can be terrific. It is one of the tools that can truly take you to another level of design, as it allows you to create effects that you might have envisioned but never knew how to create.

Now you can...