Comments

Former user wrote on 10/14/2008, 2:03 PM
Robert,

Please be more specific when you say "poor image quality". Are you talking about on the timeline, on final output, on preview?

Standard def or high def?

Etc.

Dave T2
richard-amirault wrote on 10/14/2008, 2:30 PM
"Resolution" in only one thing. What are the *size* of the images your are working with (in pixels horiz x vert)?

ALSO what is the compression setting you are saving these JPG's at? If you save them at "low" quality .. not matter what the "resolution" is .. they are not likely to be very good.
johnmeyer wrote on 10/14/2008, 4:03 PM
I used to deal with Corel Draw quite a bit (my first company's product is still sold by them). As I remember, it was very much a "printing" application, meaning that its UI was oriented towards prepress and final output on paper (as opposed to video or computer screen).

Thus, when you say 300 or 600, that probably means DPI (dots per inch) which has absolutely no value whatsoever for the video world. You need to find out how many pixels it is creating, and the results must be at least as large as your video (e.g., 720x480 for SD NTSC video).

You say your are "creating still images from photos." A photo IS a still image, so I assume that what you are doing is tracing the bitmaps in order to create a "cartoon" version of the photo, or something similar. I don't have Corel Draw installed on any of my computers, but I have a lot of copies lying around. I found on page 330 of my manual that when exporting to a bitmap you can specify size and resolution. It says: "The choices of size you can specify in the Size field are: 1 to 1, 640 by 480, 800 by 600, 1024 by 768, and custom sizes from 32 to 4800 pixels wide and high."

It also appears that you can set resolution by specifying DPI. Thus, if your more modern version of Corel Draw still offers both of these options, you want to ignore the DPI way of setting resolution and instead specify using pixels.
rmack350 wrote on 10/14/2008, 11:19 PM
It's been a long time since CorelDraw could be purchased outside of a suite, and that suite has always included a bitmap editor. I see that currently it's PhotoPaint, maybe it always has been.

The information about ignoring DPI still stands. You should edit your images in PhotoPaint rather than Draw. Maybe that's what you're doing and just miss-spoke about using Draw for this, but if you're using Draw it doesn't surprise me that your images look bad. It's the wrong tool for the job.

CorelDraw used to be a favorite of mine, especially when it was the only vector drawing tool available for Windows 3.1.

Rob Mack
Soniclight wrote on 10/16/2008, 3:41 PM
Ditto on PP, yes, Draw, no for your purposes.
Now, since I have both...

Being a poor s.o.b. (read: no dough for Photoshop though I studied it in school), I've been using Corel PhotoPaint since 1997. Upgraded to Suite 12 a few years ago -- really just for PP -- and still use it. Saw no need to upgrade.

Sure, PP may not be PhotoShop, but it's very versatile and I've worked on small stuff such as icons, avatars to huge Hubble photos, used brushes, masks, etc. In fact, I've gotten pretty good at looking like I've got Photoshop - lol.

As for PP (or any other photo/image editor) for use in Vegas 8, my rule of thumb is always make your still images larger resolution--at least double-- than the project and/or render output. If they are to take up the entire screen area.

I.e. if project is 720x480, stills should be at least 1440x960.

Make things crisper, clearer.
And if needed, one can also do pans and zooms.
Roughneck wrote on 10/16/2008, 4:52 PM
Hi,
Appreciate if someone could advise whether to use the same dimensions for Pal.
Thanking you in advance.
rs170a wrote on 10/16/2008, 6:59 PM
Since standard definition PAL is 720 x 576, the dimensions should be at least 1440 x 1152.

Mike