"How to - with outdated Corel Products - Grunge Guitar Player" Corel

Grunge Guitar Player

I took this photograph at a Taylor Guitar Show at Motor City Guitar quite a while ago. I decided to work at this piece in a way I have not worked in quite a while. First I opened in Corel PhotoPaint 12 and used the Posterize tool set on 4 on it. This gave me plenty of color to work with for the next step.

I saved that file and opened it in CorelTRACE 12 and Traced it into a Vector file with the Advanced Outline tool. I saved this iteration as a native Corel CMX vector file. I then opened it in CorelDRAW 12, here I Ungrouped all the traced Vector elements of the image. I began to play with downsizing by eliminating some parts grabbing them with the selection tool and deleting them. I then selected some of them and changed the colors with the Gradient (using both Radial and Linear gradients) and Fill tools.

Taking the selection tool I grabbed what was left of the image and Grouped the entire Vectored pieces back into one Group. I Converted it into a Bitmapped file and copied it to the clipboard. I reopened PhotoPaint and opened the New File from the Clipboard, at 300 dpi. I then adjusted some of the other parts with the Wand tool to select, and the Fill tool for colors and textures. I applied myself to this until I was satisfied the image no longer looked much like the original photograph.

I used, next, Filter Forge's Frames for a Grunge look and feel to the image. I selected a setting after trying out different variants of a Grunge frame, settled on one and applied it. I saved the image with my signature added. I resampled for a display size.

My recent disappointment was to find out that the Corel Products I use to create much of my Digital Visual Artwork is NOT compatible with Windows 10, my reserved package of Windows 10 will not even download onto my computer. I checked and it indicated that it was my Corel Products that were stopping it. I did want to try Windows 10 later this year before the free version is turned off, but it won't download.

I even went to the point of uninstalling all my Corel Products, but with Windows 7 hiding someplace in the Programdata folders were pieces of Corel still there. Windows 10 would not download! I know this is the problem, it is not a hardware problem, it says I meet that standard easily.

Lets face it I am a Disabled Artist on a very tight budget. I am not able to upgrade my Corel Products at this time. So I am continuing to use Windows 7 Pro and my Corel arsenal of graphics programs.

So I suppose that sometime in the future I will have to find those remaining hidden files and folders, uninstall my prized Corel programs and maybe be able to download my copy of Windows 10!