My husband and I run our business from our home. (You know that woman with the bunny slippers in the MCI commercial … Need I say more?) Being home-based and
self-emplyed means I'm always looking for timesaves. One of our ongoing projects is to design and publish a local coupon advertising magazine. (http://www.cuttingedgewow.com)
In the course of creating ads for the magazine, I find that many elements of single ads — credit card icons, coupons, disclaimers, etc. — repeat among most of the ads. By organizing these elements together on my hard drive and calling upon the Scrapbook and my own templates, I have been able to cut the time necessary to create ads as well as all but eliminating the time I used to spend searching for one of those repeating elements.
 In this article I'll be creating one of our typical (but fictitious here) advertisements — for a new Italian
restaurant called Carina's. By baring my soul … uh, I mean … hard drive and showing how I organize some of my files, create custom templates, and pull the pieces of ads from the
Scrapbook, I hope to spark some ideas for you to use in your own work.
Template Wizardry
There are six different sizes of ads for the non-glossy pages of this magazine:
one-quarter page, one-third page, one-half page and so on. A full page measures 7.500" x 9.535". So, then the guidelines for a 1/3-page ad would be placed, uh … you do the math — I'm creating a template! By spending some
time — once — creating a template with guidelines for each ad, I avoid going to Layout | Page Setup, specifying a custom page size, and then creating my guidelines each time I create a new ad (and I can continue to let my calculator
gather dust).
Saving a custom template in previous versions of Draw used to be a no-brainer: you have a page size and guidelines you like, you Save As a CDT file With
Contents. It's a bit more complicated now, but fear not! CorelDraw 7 includes a Template Wizard script. The really good part is that you can create templates from files you've already saved, avoiding double work just to create a template.
Note: You can also continue to use CDTs created in previous versions of Draw if you add them with the Template Wizard. So, if you find yourself using the same layout more than a few times, smack yourself on the forehead and say, "I
coulda had a … template!" (Then, do a Save As CDT and create the template.)
If you chose to install preset Scripts during your initial installation, the Template
Wizard script will appear in the Scripts and Presets Manager (Alt+T, S, S). If you did not install the preset Scripts, you can run the Template Wizard script with the CorelDraw 7 CD#1 in the drive by going to Tools | Scripts | Run Script
(Alt+T, S, R) and browsing to the Draw\Scripts\Scripts folder on that CD.) Double-click on the "tempwiz" script icon to begin the Wizard and then follow the instructions for creating a custom template category and adding your own
templates (CDTs) to it.
Now that I've created the templates, I'll never have to create a custom layout again when designing new advertisements for the magazine. (I've backed
 them up in a bazillion different places in the hope that "never" truly does mean never!) Instead, when
beginning a new ad, I choose File | New from Template (Alt+F, T). The Template Wizard opens and I can quickly choose my layout template from my custom category of template files. Choose the With Contents option to open a new file with
predefined guidelines and/or other objects you've saved with the CDT.
Note: Draw 7 ships with quite a few new sample templates, as well as templates for Paper Direct papers. If you're in a hurry, take a look at the
samples for ideas or just adopt them as-is.
Repeat After Me
So, now I've got my spiffy new (but empty) layout in a new Draw file. My
 customer, Mr. Fictitious, has directed me to include in the ad a
photographic background depicting Italian food, three coupons with the standard disclaimer, credit card and Chamber of Commerce logos, the Seniors Discount logo, and the "First Place"
logo from the local newspaper's Best of Brandon contest. Until I unleashed (sorry Foster!) the Scrapbook, I probably would have spent a good chunk of time just looking for those logos, or
scrolling through a list of files in the FileOpen dialog box just to see the previews. Then along came Draw 7 and the Scrapbook. Fig 2.
Let's start with the photograph for the background. Open the Scrapbook (Alt+V,
U, O, B). If this is the first time you've opened the Scrapbook, you'll probably see a nag screen looking for the Clipart and/or Photos CDs. If you choose Cancel, the Clipart tab (balloon) and Photos tab (camera) will default to the
Desktop. (This "feature" is definitely a candidate for an enhancement!) Since I'll be using one of the photographs included with Draw 7, I've already placed CD#2 into the drive and have avoided the nag screen this time.
By right-clicking an empty area on any of the "pages" of the Scrapbook (Rt-Click | View | Thumbnail Size), you can set the size of the preview icons. Each tab "remembers" its most recently used state independent from the other
tabs. I like the preview icons big when previewing photos, and I usually keep them small when previewing the other Scrapbook tabs. Your mileage m
 ay vary.
From the Photos tab of the Scrapbook, I browsed to the Photos | Food folder on CD#2, selected
577054.WI, and dragged it onto my Draw page. After resampling the photo and converting it to CMYK using Draw 7's new bitmap editing tools, I Powerclipped the photo into a rectangle the size of a half-page ad.
Because this is a new restaurant, Mr. Fictitious hasn't yet called upon Mr. Maven to (re)design the logo, and will have to make do with what I've got in mind. I've decided a simple logotype set in Bickley Script with a bit of kerning
adjustments works nicely. But now that I've seen it, I think it still needs something. How about a hint of Italian flag, using a custom fountain fill I just happen to have waiting in the Scrapbook? Perfecto!
 Usually, I would just delete the Preset fountain fills and outlines that ship with
Draw 7 as I never use them, but I've left them in place so you can see that they do appear by default on the Favorite Fills and Outlines tab of the Scrapbook. You can also see that I've added my own folders of
my really favorite fills and outlines. Fig. 5. (You're probably also noticing that there's a Scripts folder there as well — I'll get to that later.) Once you've created an object with a fill and/or an outline you'd like to
keep, drag the object onto an empty area on the Favorite Fills and Outlines page of the Scrapbook. You'll then be presented with a dialog box for choosing those properties of the object you wish to save to the Scrapbook. A default icon is
created automatically, but you can substitute a custom icon by right-clicking on the default icon and choosing Create Thumbnail. A new icon will be created from whatever object(s) is currently selected in the Draw window. You can
also decide to change the icon in later sessions of Draw.
 Time to get back to the ad. After adding a Linear Fountain Transparency from my own favorite fills
entry in the Scrapbook to the Italian flag graphic, I Powerclipped it into the same container holding the photograph. The type is now on top and needs a bit more definition. Looks like it's time to call upon the Scrapbook
again for my basic drop shadow script. (I told you I'd get to it!) I've created a "Scripts" folder as a subdirectory of the Corel7 | Draw | Fill_Out directory and save my favorite
scripts here. By doing so, I save screen real estate by not having the Scripts and Presets rollup open and I can still view thumbnail "previews" of scripts to help jog my memory. I just plain work better with pictures than with filenames.
The script runs when I drag it onto the selected object in the Draw window, or by double-clicking the icon in the Scrapbook.
Note: Auto-generated preview icons are only generated when a script is under
the Presets or Favorite Fills tabs of the Scrapbook rollup.
What a Drag
I've added a few lines describing the restaurant's features as well as its address
and telephone number. Now it's time to complete the ad by dragging those elements that seem to repeat from ad to ad in from the Scrapbook. This is one of my Scrapbook favorites.
For good use of Draw 7's Scrapbook for your own files, create a new folder on your hard drive which contains the files you frequently use. You can organize these files into subdirectories by client, by job, whatever works best for you. For
example, I've categorized files related to the coupon magazine into four groups: CECM(current issue), Drafts, Repeats, and Miscellaneous, which I then pl
 ace into a top-level folder named "!!Magazine." (The double
exclamation marks are so that it will be at the top of Explorer's list of folders for that hard drive.) When working on ads, I point the Browse tab of the Scrapbook to the !!Magazine |Repeats folder for
fast and easy access to those bits and pieces I use a lot. Fig. 7. When I switch projects, I just point the Browse tab to the appropriate location on my hard drive. The Scrapbook remembers the most recently used (MRU) folder.
 What the Scrapbook doesn't do is allow the user to save objects
or files directly to it as CDR files. You'll have to select the object and File | Save As (Alt+F, A), Selected Only, to the folder you created for your repeating files. If you do drag an object to the
Browse page of the Scrapbook, a "Scrap" file will be created. This is actually a Windows Clipboard item, but it can remain in the Scrapbook and be used in future files and/or sessions of Draw.
The Scrap can be renamed, but it will not generate a preview thumbnail.
Hmmm … what did Mr. Fictitious want in the ad again? Oh yeah. Credit card logos, 3 coupons
with the standard disclaimers, a Chamber of Commerce logo, Seniors logo, and the Best of Brandon logo. Drag, drag, drag, drag, drag, drag, DONE!
Photo-Paint 7's Scrapbook is a lot like Draw's, but I haven't found a way to bring in favorite scripts or to create custom icons. It does have the same
"Browse" page as the Draw Scrapbook, which is extremely handy for storing polygons and dashed lines created in Draw that are impossible to create in Photo-Paint. PP7's Scrapbook also has feature sorely needed in the Draw
version: One can create additional Browse pages with a click of the mouse. To create additional Scrapbook pages in Draw requires diving into the INI file. It can be done, but it isn't pretty.
The Scrapbooks are new features in Corel's current graphics and word processing applications and the more I use the Draw and Photo-Paint's Scrapbooks, the more I really like them — and the more I wish for additional
features. I've been putting together a "Scrapbook Wish List" for the next release and will have forwarded my suggestions to Corel by the time you read this. Maybe some of them will have made it into CorelDRAW! 8.
Debbie Cook is a self-employed graphic artist in Brandon, Florida. She is a Corel Certified Instructor, and also provides technical support for Corel Corporation as a C-TECH Support Partner on Corel's Compuserve forum and newsgroups.
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