Using the Clipboard

If you have a graphic in another program that needs to make its way to DRAW, another viable option is to employ a copy-and-paste maneuver across the Clipboard. Our chart in PowerPoint once again serves as a good example. We had great success selecting the objects in PowerPoint, copying them to the Clipboard, and switching to DRAW for the corresponding paste. First, we used the Edit Ø Paste Special command and chose Enhanced Metafile as the format. (That is our standard operating procedure for pasting graphics. In fact, we redirected the Ctrl+V hotkey to be Paste Special instead of the straight Paste command that carries out the default choice without presenting us with the other options.)

Much to our surprise, the results were awful. So we tried it again, this time choosing the standard Metafile format, and the results were dead-solid perfect. (Again, we aren’t even bothering to show you the picture; it’s identical to the source.) We had figured that Enhanced Metafile would do better than Standard, and have no idea why that wouldn’t be the case (in fact, like most users, we really have no idea what the Metafile format is all about). But again, the moral of this story is to go to Paste Special and try all the choices there, in the hopes that one of them will produce a winner.

WARNING While we are fans of the Clipboard, we are not so keen on the use of hot-linked graphics across the Clipboard. We used to wax on about the potential of creating live links with graphics files, but we have crashed too many times, run out of memory too often, and encountered too many instances of inaccurate renderings to recommend the use of linked graphics. We know how cool it would be to include a pretty chart from your spreadsheet program that includes live links back to the original data, but we just don’t trust the process. We prefer to keep our data dead but accurate.

Slow, Bitmaps Crossing

DRAW can import many different bitmap formats, including the heavyweights: TIFF, PCX, JPEG, and Kodak Photo CD. In addition, DRAW can handle the popular online formats GIF, JPEG, PNG, and a list of other specialized formats such as Scitex, Targa, and MacPaint. Color, black and white, gray—DRAW doesn’t care. For the most part, DRAW treats these formats as it does EPS files, simply passing them on to the printer.

But DRAW does speak a bit of bitmap. It can show your imported images in considerable detail. If an imported bitmap contains 16 million colors, DRAW will show you an image with an impressive range of life-like colors and fine detail. It also allows you to apply untold special effects to imported bitmaps, details of which can be found in Chapter 23. Many of the caveats that we have issued in past editions have been eliminated with recent versions:

•  We used to warn you about rotating bitmaps, because redraw time would slow to a crawl, but that is no longer the case. Output will slow down, but on-screen rendering does not.

•  We used to point out that bitmaps could be overlaid onto other objects, but not layered. Well, not only can bitmaps be made gradually transparent, but PHOTO-PAINT (and, yes, PhotoShop) images that are saved with layers will import to DRAW that way.

•  We used to warn you about scaling bitmaps, and we still will! Bitmap images are made up of dots, which are quite size-sensitive. Although you may get away with reducing a bitmap, enlarging a bitmap could be hazardous to your career.

Lots of Dots, Lots of Data

Imported bitmaps can get big—in a hurry. Even if the file size isn’t large, DRAW might need to move a mountain or two to import and display certain bitmap images. For instance, a TIFF file stored in the now-common compressed format might take up no more than 100K on your hard drive. But when you import it, DRAW uncompresses it, and the space requirements balloon to many times the original size. The CDR file containing this bitmap will grow quite large, and DRAW will swipe an equally large chunk of space from your Windows Temp directory. Here are two functions that speak to that.

Cropping upon Import

As we touched on earlier when describing the Import dialog, you have three options when you import a bitmap. First, there’s Full Image, which does nothing to your file. This is the default. Next is Crop Image, which, when you select it, will open the dialog box shown below. Here you’ll see a preview of your image and you can enter the crop amounts numerically or use your pointer to drag the bounding handles interactively. The Select All button will reset the dialog.

NOTE Cropping upon Import is different from cropping a photo in DRAW (done by using the Shape tool and dragging the corners in). When you crop while importing, you are determining the final size of the bitmap; cropping within DRAW does not actually eliminate those pixels—it just eliminates them from view. The exception, new to DRAW 9, is if you go to Bitmap Ø Crop Bitmap—that actually throws away the part of the image that has been cropped.

Also, remember that you can apply a powerclip to a bitmap, essentially stuffing it inside any other object. Powerclipping a bitmap inside of an irregular (nonrectangular) shape or inside of a piece of text is an effective cropping effect, and you can see it in action in Chapter 10.