Using The Smart Carver Tool In Corel PhotoPaint

Here is our image that we will be cropping down to a 12 by 12 size. We want to place this image on a 12 by 12 inch granite tile. Our property bar indicates that the size of the image is 16.087 by 12.07. So if we want to place this on the 12 by 12 tile we need to keep our height of 12 inches and we need to shave off 4 inches off the width.

In this example, I have found that my crop can only go to 13 inches. So I have created a crop that is 13 by 12 (1).

You can see from the property bar that the photo is not 13 inches by 12 inches (1). We still need to remove 1 inch. How do we this. We need to go into PhotoPaint and use the smart carver command.

With the Image selected right click on the image with your mouse and a pop up menu comes up. Select the “Edit Bitmap” command (1). This will open up the image in PhotoPaint and keep a link to the original file in CorelDraw. Thus, any changes done in PhotoPaint can be saved automatically back to the original image in CorelDraw.

We need to open up the Smart Carver command which can be found in IMAGE | SMART CARVER in PhotoPaint

With the image in the Smart Carver dialogue box we are presented with a number of commands. Section 1 (1) is our zoom tools. Section 2 (2) allows us to undo or redo or reset the image back to its original state. Section 3 (3) shows us the existing size of the image size in pixels. This is difficult for us that want to work in inches. You could convert your rulers to pixels to allow us to know the exact size. However, in our example because the height is the same size as the width we can take the height, which is 3600 and use this same number in the width. Section 4 (4) allows us to adjust our size in small increments by clicking on the arrows. We can increase or decrease the size. Section 5 (5) is a set of brushes that allow us to draw on a colour to tell the software what to keep and draw in a different colour that tells the software what to get rid of. The eraser allows us to fine tune our drawing of colors.

If you are familiar with the CutOut Lab in Photo Paint than using the Object Removal will be straight forward. If you want to keep an object in a photo, in this case the people, then you need to paint on a colour so the software knows that any object with that colour on it needs to be kept. In this case the colour is green. The tool is marked (1) in the above photo.

If you want to remove an object from a photo, then use the second tool. This brush paints with a red color (1). If you make a mistake the third tool is an eraser (2) and it deletes any of the colors that you run over it with. Note: The Nib size will increase the brush size. To do this requires you to increase the number. To make it smaller requires us to put in a smaller number (3). In our image we do not want to get rid of anything so we will not be using this tool.

The green colour is telling the program that this is the area I want to keep. You can see the image will be fully green when I am done

We have added in the rest of the green and this is the area we will be keeping.

Now that we know what we want to keep we can resize the image. Right now our width is 4050 and the height is 3600 (1). We know the image is already 12 inches so we know that the width has to be 3600 because our job is going on a 12 by 12 tile.

Type in the 3600 and using the Tab button tab to the height. The Image will resize to 3600

There is minimal distortion

If you want to see the image with no green mask check the Hide Mask and this will hide the green mask

Here is our finished image. You can see there is little distortion in the image but not much and this will be better than just dragging the selection handle inwards from the side

If I open the resample command in PhotoPaint, you will see that it is 12 by 12 (1).

To save our changes back to the original file in CorelDraw go to FILE (1) | SAVE (2). Next, you can close down PhotoPaint.

Here is our finished image in CorelDraw. We can now place it on our 12 by 12 tile

Here is the final image on granite.