As we mentioned in our previous tutorial the problem when you receive a photo from a customer is it sometimes does not match up with the size that it is going to engrave at. For example if you receive a 4 by 6 photo and want to engrave it as a 3 by 3 than you will have to sacrifice part of the image when we crop the image down to the size. The Smart Carver can do that for us. The Smart Carver also allows us to do on other function. This is it allows us to remove certain objects from a photo and than resize the image to the size that we need.
Here is Our Original Photo
For this lesson we will be looking at getting rid of the two boys at the right of the photo. Now if we where getting rid of the one boy on the far right all we would need to do is to crop the photo. However the other boy is tucked behind the one girl and a rectangle crop would not work. We could do a clone and that is one option but that would take to long. So I will attempt to use the smart carver tool in Corel PhotoPaint. I would suggest that you open the file directly into Corel PhotoPaint instead of opening it in CorelDraw and than opening up PhotoPaint. It does not matter how you do it.
Open Up Your Image In PhotoPaint
Go to IMAGE (1) SMART CARVER (2). This will open up the command window
Here is the Smart Carver Command
Here are some overviews of the command window. The First Section (1) indicates the size of the image in pixels. I would have liked this to be inches but I can not fine where to change this. The Second Section (2) is the Zoom tools. The Third Section (3) is the adjustment tools for making the image wider, narrower, taller or shorter. The Forth Section (4) is our tools for isolating objects in our image. The Fifth Section (5) is our actual photo. To make things easier I cropped out the boy on the right
Delete Our Boys
It is time to delete the two boys in the photo. To do this requires that I draw a mask on the screen to tell the Smart Carver Tool that I want to delete the two boys. I have two pens in the Smart Carver tool. The first appears red and it is the tool that is for indicating which objects need to be deleted (1). The second tool appears green and indicates which objects I want to keep. The Nib size tells the software what size of drawing nib I need. In this case is 20. The smaller the number the smaller the nib size.
Mask Out The Boy
Because it is easier to crop out the first boy I did that already. Now select the red pen (1) in our our photo. Adjust your nib size so you can brush on the person. I have started to just brush on the red mask isolation only the boy. Try and be as precise as you can so you get rid of only the boy and no other part of the image.
Erase Tool
If you need to get rid of any part of the mask you can use the eraser tool (1).
Create a Good Mask
If you want this tool to work the best make sure your mask is perfect so it does not leave any residual pixels that you do not want
The Mask Is Done
My subject that I want to remove is masked.
Use the Auto-Contact horizontally
I am now going to use the Auto-Correct horizontally to remove red-painted areas to have the tool remove my subject (1). Click on the button.
Our Subject Was Removed
The above image shows that the boy has been removed. However there are still a few fringe pixels that need to be removed (1) and (2)
Extra Pixels
If you zoom in on the image you will see that there is a small amount of red pixels around the edge of the girl. This is the remnants of the T-Shirt.
Remove the Pixels
All I need to do is to select the eraser pen in the smart carver command as I did to get rid of the boy and paint over the excess red pixels. Repeat this for any other left over pixels. Once done select the Auto-Correct horizontally tool and click it.
Our Pixels Are Gone
The excess pixels have been removed
Our Image is Finished
Our Image is now finished and ready to be taken to CorelDraw.
New Width
You can see that our old width was 685 and our new width is 529 (1). The Height has stayed the same. This means that the image has shrunken in size because we have removed the boy from the image.
Go to The Save or Save As Menu
Now we can save the image in Corel PhotoPaint. Go to FILE (1) Save As (2)
Select the *.CPT
Make sure that CPT (photopaint extension) is active (1). Give it a name and remember where you saved it (2).
Select Import in CorelDraw
Go to FILE (1) IMPORT (2).
Select Your File
The file I want is the zooimage.cpt (1). Select Import (2).
Here is Our Finished Image
Here is the image cropped down a bit in CorelDraw. Once we convert it to run on the laser it will be easy to get a good looking image. I am sure my daughter wishes she could get rid of my son this easy.
