Prepress production: the perfect combination of coreldraw and pagemaker

PageMaker is a cross-platform professional page design software produced by Adobe. In the field of graphic design, PageMaker has become the preferred group of software for professionals and has been widely praised. However, compared to some other typesetting software, PageMaker only provides a simple graphic drawing. This is undoubtedly a pity for PageMaker, who has a strong ability to make copies. Especially when making layouts with a lot of auxiliary graphics, PageMaker seems powerless.

CorelDraw produced by Corel Corporation is a world-class plane vector drawing software, widely used by professional designers. Its integrated environment provides advanced tools and most convenient tools for graphic design. In particular, its powerful graphics drawing capabilities are highly sought after by designers. CorelDraw itself also has a powerful typesetting function, which is widely used in ad layout. However, if CorelDraw is to take on the responsibility of multi-page typesetting, I am afraid that it is not as good as PageMaker.

Since both PageMaker and CorelDraw have their own advantages and disadvantages, why not combine the two to realize the complementary advantages between software? Here we take the header and footer processing in book layout as an example to explain how to combine CorelDraw and PageMaker perfectly.

First, the needs of PageMaker

In page layout, especially when arranging some pages of books, in order to beautify the layout, the page header or footer is often added with graphics and some navigation text for reading.

If these graphics are limited to basic graphics such as straight lines, simple rectangles, and circles, PageMaker can make it on its own, but if it's a bit more complicated, such as gradient fills, complicated curves, etc., PageMaker may only stop looking!

What to do in such a situation?

Second, use CorelDraw to meet

In practical applications, two methods are generally used:

One is that PageMaker's pages and footers are all given to CorelDraw. CorelDraw according to PageMaker's page needs, set the page size and the margins of the upper and lower left and right, after the header and footer are all completed, leaving the middle of the document part. Directly export the entire page together for use by PageMaker. The advantage of doing this is that you can preview the overall layout of the page in CorelDraw, and can make reasonable adjustments. The disadvantages are also obvious. When you make any changes or adjustments in PageMaker, you have to re-do it in CorelDraw, making the changes inconvenient. Also, when setting the page and margin settings in CorelDraw, it is quite accurate. Otherwise, after you place it in PageMaker, deviations will occur.

The second way is to simply hand over a drawing that cannot be produced in PageMaker to CorelDraw. For example, there are two more complex drawings. After the completion in CorelDraw, each drawing is separately exported as a separate file for PageMaker to use as needed. To make selections and settings. This approach is more flexible. Moreover, many PageMaker-processed objects, such as text, line segments, etc., are handled by PageMaker themselves, and the effect after printing out is better than that given to CorelDraw.

Here, you can combine the above two methods, first set its page size and margins in CorelDraw, complete the header and footer, and preview the overall layout of the page. After meeting our requirements, select the graphics to be created in CorelDraw (in this case, we'd better pull it up), then select the Export menu item under the File menu, and the Export dialog box will pop up.

Enter the name of the exported file in the File Name input box, select WMF-Windows Metafile in the Save as type drop-down list, and select the Selected Only check box. After setting, click the "Export" button.

Third, application in PageMaker

After exporting the WMF file in CorelDraw, PageMaker can be applied.

Open the file you want to typeset (set the page size and margins), and click the home icon to enter the home page.

Select the "File" menu on the "Import" menu item, in the pop-up dialog box, select the WMF file just exported in CorelDraw.

Resize and position it. The rest, such as text, line segments, etc., is directly completed with the corresponding tool in PageMaker.

Draw a page that needs to be created with PageMaker, and input other textual information such as page number. The header and footer design is completed.

Fourth, pay attention

(1) Other graphics in PageMaker can still be produced by CorelDraw, and at the time of export, we can also export images in various formats as needed, such as JPG, GIF, BMP, and so on.

(2) In order to make the printed graphics better, the graphics in CorelDraw are best exported in proportions larger than the actual size, and PageMaker can reduce them after import.

(3) Since PageMaker is still importing "image links", the created graphics must be in the same directory as the PageMaker files.

Reprinted from: Printed in China