Can CorelDraw do font hinting on export?

[aboyd]

When I export small text from CorelDRAW (for Web images), it looks quite fuzzy or blurry. The antialiasing smooths things too much, I guess.

I have another (non-Corel) program that not only does antialiasing, but also hinting. The second I enable hinting, the small text clears right up, but still looks relatively smooth. Is there any way to get a similar level of quality in CorelDRAW?

-Tony

[Broacher]

Tony,

Try keeping all your text in a separate top layer. Export the rest as a raster image, and open that in PhotoPaint. Now, with the original file open in CorelDraw, select the text (or any vector object(s)) and copy to clipboard.

Back in Ppaint, click with the text tool to create a text layer and paste in the clipboard. The vector stuff comes in, can be resized, and will display (when you hit Enter after performing a transform) to fit the size. This gives you a good pixel 'preview' of what the type will look like when you finally rasterize down, but gives you the flexibility to go back up again if you need to without losing the vector info. You can save CPT files with these objects in them and copy/paste the objects back into CDraw for future edits. Kind of like what Fireworks and AI (with Pixel Preview on) does.

Font hinting usually refers to appearance on lower rez printers, but not necessarily screens. But there are fonts that are optimized for this. The best are designed tuned to specific fixed sizes. 'Pixel Perfect' is an example of a company that specializes in these.

If I knew the name of the other program you're talking about, maybe I could suggest an easierway to get your Corel work across into it for editing.

[aboyd]

Here are some images. They're not perfect, because I saved 'em as GIF instead of TIFF. But they should give you a rough idea. First is the Gimp with antialiased 9pt text in Arial font:

http://www.outshine.com/aw/gimp_antialias.gif

Next is the Gimp with the same text, but with the "hinting" checkbox enabled:

http://www.outshine.com/aw/gimp_hinting.gif

And finally, an export of CorelDraw text, same font, same font size, exported at 100% to try to keep the pixels happy.

http://www.outshine.com/aw/draw_antialias.gif

As you can see, CorelDraw's text is similar to the Gimp without hinting. For tiny Web graphics, that hinting is really important. I assume CorelDraw can do it, and I just don't know how to enable it.

-Tony

[Broacher]

Coool! I haven't looked at GIMP in years. That definitely is a killer function.

Hey, if you're interested, check out the screen shots here: http://antigrain.com/screenshots/index.html

Makes me wonder why we don't have better Anti-A options in the more popular commercial software yet.

Thanks for that!

[aboyd]

Yikes. Your post makes it sound like Corel can't do this. Not even in a config file or registry entry somewhere? I posted on the official forums, too, but no answer. I guess no answer is an answer, just not the one I was hoping for. :)

I suppose I could export the image as a TIFF, open it in the GIMP, layer on the tiny text, and then save as a GIF.

Hmmm. Maybe there's an update coming with this feature.

-Tony