Mask All

Double-click any of the mask tools and you instantly mask the entire image.

Now You See It...

If the marching ants are bothering you, turn them off at Mask Ø Marquee Visible (or Ctrl+H). The mask still functions. To remove the mask altogether, go to Mask Ø Remove Mask (or Ctrl+Shift+R).

Quick Copies

A masked area can be easily used elsewhere—a click and a drag is all you need. Just make sure that the mask tool—any mask tool—is still active, and drag the mask to another area. The hole left behind will show through to the paper, taking on whatever color is defined for Paper.

If you want to copy the masked region, hold Alt as you drag. To turn it into a floating object, you can either use the Object Ø Create command, or just do as we do and copy it to the Clipboard and then paste it right back down. As we did with the dog and the lady, you can also switch to another image and paste.

If you want to move a mask but not upset the image underneath it—in other words, adjust the mask boundaries—then use the Mask Transform tool.

Bézier Drawing in PAINT?

Yes, it’s true—the third icon on the toolbox is the Path tool, and it functions just like DRAW’s set of Pencil tools. You can create paths with the BÄzier tool or the Freehand tool. Once you create a path, you can convert it to a mask.

The two primary advantages to drawing paths instead of creating conventional masks are precision and editability. While you forego the intelligence of the color-sensing mask tools, you get inordinate control over where each node goes—just like in DRAW. And once you place the nodes, you can do anything with them that you would in DRAW. You can relocate them, convert them to and from lines and curves, change their direction, everything.

How would you like to mask this face?

No thanks—this is a job for the Path tool, and you can see that we are well on our way to a precision mask around this unruly pup.

Out the Door

We conclude this chapter with the assumption that many of you, perhaps most, will head for PHOTO-PAINT to create an image that will then be used elsewhere—DRAW, Ventura Publisher, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft PowerPoint, or of course, a Web page.

We have good news for you—Export has grown up. In earlier versions of PAINT, the Export command ranged from useless to frustrating. In PAINT 7, exporting required special plug-in filters, and almost nobody used it. We had to use Save As all the time, and then try to remember (or decide arbitrarily) which image was the original.

Later, in PAINT 8, you could only export to a file format if the elements on your screen could be supported by that format. We developed a deep loathing for the error message: “Image must be converted to 8 bit [sic] or less before saving as GIF.” So save the &%$#@ thing as 8-bit for me!

In version 9, Export is as robust as it is in DRAW, and that has many positive implications for you. Now you can (and should) save your work in PAINT’s native CPT format, knowing that you can export it to another format at any time. CPT tracks all of your nonpixel elements, like masks, paths, channels, and objects—elements that the conventional bitmap formats would not hold onto. And if you need a quick GIF file for a Web graphic, when exporting, PAINT offers you palette choices for the 8-bit conversion that must take place. You can keep the original image at full fidelity.

This will prove of particular interest to those who regularly handle JPEG files. With a compression scheme that results in the elimination of pixels, saving JPEG files repeatedly results in gradual image degradation. Much better to save your image in a nonlossy format—again, CPT being the best—and then export it as a JPEG file when you are ready.

One more advantage of using Corel’s CPT format: using floating objects in DRAW. When you bring a CPT file with separate objects into DRAW, they come in as a group. When you ungroup, each object is its own bitmap, and the background is a separate bitmap. This is the easiest way to bring an irregularly shaped bitmap with a transparent background into DRAW.

After having made it through this chapter, we deem you officially armed and dangerous. For our part, we deserve something, too. It’s not easy covering in one chapter a topic that needs an entire book. We think a vacation is in order...