Scanning and Patching Certificates in Corel Photo-Paint 10 or later.

Dont Give Up After the First Try! It will take a long time to patch together your first image. But the more you do it, the better you will get. Step 1: Identify Your Goal If you are scanning certificates for images to put on the web, you will not need high-quality images. In most cases, 72 dpi (dots per inch) will be perfectly adequate. If you are scanning images to print, you will probably need to scan images at 150-200 dpi. Only when you are scanning for high-quality print publications will you need to scan at higher resolutions. You can scan most stocks and bonds in two pieces. Sometimes it will take three or four scans. Here are the rules I have developed for my own scanning. Always scan with the top of the certificate pointing in the same direction. Do this so colors will be uniform, regardless of the accuracy of your scanner. Scan in color. Or grayscale. Not in black and white. The lower the resolution you scan at, the faster your computer will work. Dont scan at too high a resolution if you dont need to. Step 2: Scan in Pieces

Do not waste your time trying to get the certificate perfectly square on the scanner. You will just be wasting time. Almost every low- and mid-priced scanner has rotation peculiarities. Scan against a white or light gray background. Avoid black or colored backgrounds. Black backgrounds make the paper look dark and dirty. Colored backgrounds make the paper look tinted.

Finally, scan the pieces with LOTS of overlap.

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Step 3. Increase the paper size to give yourself working room. Pick one image that will serve as your base. I always use the left half for horizontal format certificates. Or the top half for vertical format certificates. Next, open the canvas size dialog box by picking Image > Paper Size from the menu bar. The Paper Size dialog box will appear. In this example, the original certificate is about 14 wide, so I increased the width of the paper to 15 inches by typing 15 in the new width box. I next told PhotoPaint to put the original image in the Center Left of the new space. Fortunately, Photo-Paint gives you a preview of your choice. Click OK.

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Now you have all the space you will need to the right of the your first scanned image. You will next insert part of the right half into this area. Step 4. Copy part of the second image and paste it into the newly-created space. Select the Rectangle Mask Tool (the rectangle with the dashed lines.) If it is not showing, click the second button from the top and hold it down a few seconds. More tools will fly out. Select the rectangle.

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Highlight a rectangular area that you want to copy into your base image. On horizontal format bonds, it will normally be best to select about half the bond. The trick is to overlap the area covered by the first image by about and inch or two. Do not agonize over the accuracy of your selection. Just make sure you have enough overlap.

Copy the selection by choosing Edit > Copy from the menu bar.

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Click your base image to re -activate that window. Then paste your selection by choosing Edit > Paste > Paste as New Object from the menu bar. The result will look something like this.

Step 5. Make the new part of the image semitransparent. From the top menu bar, select Window > Dockers > Objects.

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A new box will appear that will give you the opportunity to modify your image. Notice that when you inserted the second half of your bond, Photo-Paint automatically created a new layer. By default, Photo-Paint labels new layers Object 1, Object 2, and so forth. Make sure the Object 1 is highlighted. Now click in the white area to the right of the word Normal. Type in 40 as shown. This will make that layer semitransparent. (40% of the layer is visible.)

Step 6: Align the new image in one small area. Using the Object Pick Tool, slide the new part of the image over your base image. Since you can see through the image, you can move it reasonably close to where it needs to go. Now, using the Zoom Tool (the magnifying glass) zoom in close at either the top or bottom edges where the images overlap

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This image shows an extreme close-up of the area just above the vignette. Note the semi -transparent image does not line up perfectly with the base image. Now, use the Object Pick Tool to slide the right hand image until the images appear to merge. The images will seldom be parallel, so move the

transparent image until it overlaps perfectly in one tiny area. I usually line up images in an area with text. I like to use circular designs such as periods, the dots above is, or the circular parts of letters. Always line up the images near the overlapped edge. In this example, I lined up the letter E in Preferred at the top part of the bond. SAVE YOUR IMAGE AS A TEMP FILE right now. This is a cautionary warning, because the next step often causes Photo-Paint to fail on computers with slow processors and minimal memory.

Step 7. Anchor the new image in one spot and rotate the rest of the image into place. You have now accurately lined up one part of the image. Use that point as an anchor and rotate the rest of the image around that point. Photo-Paint will allow you to do that easily. Imagine the rotation process as the electronic equivalent of sticking a pin through the top image and rotating the picture around the pin. To start the process, click once or twice within your new image until a rectangle appears with eight small arrows around the outside. Do you see a circular target in the center of the box? That point is the rotation point. You can move it around with your cursor.

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Grab the rotation point and move it into the spot that you just matched up. In this case, I used the E in Preferred.

Using your scroll bar, pan to the opposite side of the image. (In this case, the bottom of the bond.) Since the images were scanned at a slightly different angles, the letters at the bottom do not quite line up.

To rotate the image, move your cursor over the arrow in the bottom corner. Your cursor will turn into cross-hairs. Click and pull the arrow either left or right to rotate the image around your rotation point.

Go slow. Be patient. This is a numerically complex process because millions of dots need to be recalculated. Photo-Paint sometimes bogs down with large images during this step. When you have matched the images properly, double click within the image to accept the new rotation.

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Step 8. Change the opacity of your top image back to 100%. Go back to your Objects Docker. Object 1 should still be highlighted. Change the opacity back to 100. By now, your certificate will look nearly perfect. Step 9. Merge your images. While your certificate will look good, it is still in two separate layers. Merge your images by going to the top menu bar and selecting , Object > Combine > Combine Objects With Background. You now have an image of the entire certificate. Save your image again.

Step 10. Crop and rotate the image. Photo-Paint allows you to crop and rotate images in one operation. This step is a little tricky the first time you use it. First, zoom into an area of your certificate that has horizontal features. Often, bottom margins or lines of text work well. Next, select the Deskew Crop Tool from the toolbar. Draw a box two or three inches long near that horizontal element. Page 9 of 12

In this example, the deskew crop box is not quite parallel to the bottom border. Click once or twice inside the crop box and rotational arrows will appear like they did earlier. (They are hard to see.) Using your cursor, rotate the box with one of the corner arrows until the box is parallel with the border or text. Click inside the crop box one more time to get rid of the arrows. Use your F3 button (not the zoom tool), zoom out so

you can see the whole certificate. Then, by grabbing the small boxes around the crop box, expand the crop box until the highlighted area shows the entire certificate. In this example, because scanning was not perfect, the crop box appears tilted. As soon as you hit ENTER, everything outside the highlighted area will disappear and your image will rotate into its final alignment.

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Step 11. If necessary, resize your image at your intended resolution. In Step 1, you determined your target resolution. If you scanned at a higher resolution, you will want to adjust your resolution for your final product. As mentioned before, if you are publishing for the web, a resolution of 72 dpi ought to be sufficient. Often I will scan at a 200 dpi resolution so I can print a copy. Then I re-size the image to 72 dpi for the web. Open the Resample dialog box by clicking Image > Resample from the top menu bar.

In this example, I set the resolution to 72 dpi. At the same time, you can resize the image so it will fit on a web page or a printed page. I find it easier to adjust the longest dimension, and let the shorter dimension take care of itself. Generally, when I intend to print a certificate, I set the long dimension to 6 or 7 inches at 200 dpi. For web images, I usually keep the size to about 4 inches at 72 dpi. Experiment at various sizes to see what works best for you.

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Step 12. Save your image. Saving in Photo-Paint is easy. Choose File > Save As. If you are saving for your own use, use the default CPT format. If you are going to use images in other programs, or if you are going to send them to other people, save as TIF, JPG, or GIF. Most programs handle these formats reliably. TIF images are very large in comparison to JPGs. Generally, I save in JPG format if I do not intend to re-size the image later. If I expect to alter the image at some later time, I use the TIF format which is more forgiving when an image is resized.

When saving to a JPG format, a new JPEG Export dialog box will pop up. This allows you the option of saving high or low quality images. (High quality = large files.) I have tested JPGs extensively and suggest that you will rarely need image quality higher than 30. Photo-Paint also allows you to save your images in a special interlaced GIF format. This format, when used on the web, allows grainy images to appear on the screen very quickly. Gradually, as the file loads, the image resolves into better and better resolutions. The interlaced GIF format is very good when you think viewers will be impatient. File sizes, however, tend to be much larger than JPGs. To save in this format, select File > Export > GIF and follow the directions. Near the end of the process, select Interlaced from one of the check boxes you will encounter.

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