When it comes to fashion, my age and Midwestern roots keep me behind the trends. I rely on my wife’s sense of style to help keep me in current clothing—within a decade or so. It is difficult, however, not to notice the ever-increasing trend for customized accessories. Personalized items are becoming more the rule than the exception. And when the weather turns cold, there are still sublimation options for customization!

About 14 years ago, my brother-in-law paid more than $100 to have his handwriting converted into a typeface or “font.” At that time, the concept was fairly new and there were few services available. I wish I knew then what I know now.

As a CorelDRAW expert, I teach users the ins and outs of the program through websites, one-on-one training, live seminars, and more. I led seminars at January’s International Awards Market which let me interact with a lot of CorelDRAW users. One of the great things about being at a trade show is helping to solve the problems these users are having. Some of the solutions require a detailed explanation while others are quite simple.

The projects we all tackle may be quite different, but one commonality is that we are often provided with low-quality artwork that needs to be rebuilt. Recently I worked on just such a project where a number of techniques in CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT were used to create the result. I’m going to go through each of those techniques in this article. You may not have the need to create a boxshot as in my project, but the techniques could be quite helpful in many of your projects.