“I have a question. I have attached a logo.
Will it engrave properly on the encore gold and black, the logo is coloured and if I convert it to b & w it looks awful, am I doing it right
Chris”
This is a pretty standard question that I get from customers. So let us go through the techniques to engrave this logo. I am going to show you how to change the colours in a vector image.
Here is the Logo
Here is the original logo
Open up the Convert to Bitmap
I need to convert this image to black and white to see how bad the logo is. Select the BITMAPS (1) | CONVERT TO BITMAP (2)
Use These Settings
Set the Resolution to 150 (1). The colour mode to black and white (2). Turn off all the others, including Anti-aliasing (3).
Not Good Enough
You can see that the logo is probably not going to be good enough engraved like this. There is a some pixelation here – blue arrows. This would not be too bad if it was going onto wood but it is going onto gold engraving plastic so it will show all the imperfections in the logo.
How About Gray
If we send a coloured logo to the laser the laser converts it to gray. I have converted the logo to gray and it is not good enough.
This Image is Actually a Vector Object
Instead of converting the image to bitmap you will notice that this image is a vector image. This means that it is easy to change colours. If you have the logo selected and you look at the bottom of the page you will see that it is a group of 42 objects. This typically is an indicator that the image is a group of vectors.
View WireFrame
If you want to see if it really is a vector image go to VIEW | WIREFRAME. This will show you that the image is made up of lines and thus is a vector object. However, this is not a very good vector image as it is broken into a lot of smaller objects that may make it harder to change their colour as it is hard to select each one of the vectors. To be able to select the individual objects I need to ungroup the objects in the logo.
Ungroup the Image
Go to UNGROUP (1) | UNGROUP ALL (2)
Change the Brown Colour
There are a couple of ways to change colour in a Vector Image. One way is to select the objects and just select a new colour. We will do that later. Another way is to do a Find and Replace. This is very helpful if you have a lot of objects with the same colour. Let us look at this technique. First of all select the colour that you want to change. I have selected the brown colour that is in the face of the cat (1). Next look at the bottom right side of your screen. You will see that the colour is listed. In this case it is R=207 G=186 and B=105 (2). This is the 3 RGB numbers that make up this colour. Write this number down. Note: if you keep the objected selected while you do the next steps the numbers will stay displayed.
Open up The Replace Objects Command
Go to EDIT | FIND AND REPLACE (1) | REPLACE OBJECTS (2).
Select Replace a Colour
Select Replace a Color (1) then click next (2).
Select Other
We want to find find a colour so that Corel can select all those colours at once. Once selected, we can replace the old colour with another colour. Click the lull down arrow in the Find box (1). White is the default and we do not want this. Click the down arrow and you will have a a colour fly out. As the colors we are looking for is not a standard color selection “Other” (2).
Input the Colour that we want to find
First select our colour model as RGB (1). Next input the numbers of the selected colours (2). Notice that the numbers are still displayed at the bottom right corner (3). Press OK (4)
Select a Replacement Colour
We now want to replace the selected colour with white. So click on the down arrow (1). Select the white colour (2).
Select Finish
Select Finish (1).
Select Replace All
Select “Replace All”.
Click Ok
Corel will replace all the colours. Click ok (1)
The Cat Face is White
You can see that all the colours that had the selected colour have now been replaced with white.
Open the Object Manager
In this next step I will start selecting individual colours and change their colour. To make selections easier I will use the Object Manager. Make sure that it is open by going to TOOLS (1) | OBJECT MANAGER (2).
Select the Red Tongue
I want the red tongue on the top (1) to be black so I select it. Notice that I can see it in the object manager it is red with a yellow outline
The Mouth is Black
The top of our mouth is now black.
Change the Tongue to White
I have now selected the tongue and I want it to be white. Notice that is has a red fill and a yellow outline. I will need to change both of these to white. You can see the object manager has listed the object is red with a yellow outline.
Select the Two Eyes
Hold the Ctrl Key down and select the two yellow eyes by clicking on each eye. If you hold the Ctrl key down you can select multiple objects.
Select White
Select the Eyes and then left click on the white swatch in the colour palette. Left clicking on the colour fills in the colour. Because there is also a yellow outline you can now right click on the white swatch. This will change the yellow outlines to white. You could also right click on the “X” at the top of the colour palette (2) this will get rid of the outline.
Change the Yellow Whiskers
The outline of the whiskers is yellow so we need to make these white. I have selected all the whiskers in the logo. Notice that all of them are together in the object manager. Right click on the white colour swatch in the colour palette as we did earlier and the outlines will turn white. The fill is black so we can leave them alone.
Now Select the Yellow Text
Click on the yellow text. Luckily it is all joined. Click on the white colour swatch.
Now Select the Yellow Text
Click on the yellow text. Luckily it is all joined. Click on the white colour swatch.
Our Logo is Complete
Here is our logo it is now complete. This job took less than 5 minutes
Traced Logo
I did try a trace on the logo, but it did not turn out too well as you can see
