With CorelDRAW® X3, you can use Corel® PowerTRACE™ to trace bitmaps and control the colors used in the traced result. For example, if you're tracing a bitmap with more colors than necessary, you can use PowerTRACE to edit and merge the colors in the traced result, which reduces the colors in your output. For this tip, we'll import a bitmap, trace it, and reduce the number of colors used.

1. Start CorelDRAW X3, and click File > Import.
   
   
2. In the Import dialog box, select a bitmap, and click Import. The following grayscale logo was used for this tip. To follow along, you can use any two or three color bitmap image.
   
   
   
   
3. Click and drag to resize the bitmap, or press Enter to center the bitmap on the drawing page.
   
   

1. With the bitmap selected, click Bitmaps > Trace Bitmap > Clipart.
   
   
2. In the Options area on the Options tab of the PowerTRACE dialog box, enable the Delete original image, Remove background, and Remove color from entire image check boxes.
   
   
   
   
3. In the Color area, choose Grayscale from the Color Mode list box.
   
   

To control the colors used in a traced bitmap When a bitmap is traced, Corel PowerTRACE generates a color palette for the traced result. By using the Colors tab, you can control the colors of a traced result. For example, due to soft edges on a bitmap, it's possible that multiple shades of a single color will appear in the color palette. To reduce the number of colors in the traced result, you can combine multiple shades of similar colors by using the Merge command.

For this tip, however, we'll use the Edit command to control the colors used in the traced result. Corel PowerTRACE will reduce the logo to the appropriate number of colors.

1. Click the Colors tab, select the first, darkest gray color, and click Edit.
   
   
2. In the Select Color dialog box, click the Palettes tab, and then click OK. Pantone 445C is the active color swatch and appears in the Name area.
   
   
   
   
3. Select the second gray color, and click Edit.
   Pantone 7540C is the active color swatch and appears in the Name area.
   
   
4. Select the color swatch immediately left of Pantone 7450C, and then click OK.
   
   
   
   Pantone 7539C is now the active color swatch and appears in the Name area.
   
   
5. Click OK to return to the drawing window.
   
   
6. To ensure that the colors have been reduced to two, click File > Print.
   
   
7. In the Print dialog box, click the Separations tab, and enable the Print separations check box.
   
   Note that there are only two colors for this print job.