Raster Images in Corel Draw

[tbarnes]

Greetings all,

We have a shop that is doing some affiliate work for us that uses Corel Draw, my shop only uses adobe products and our clients send us raster images almost exclusively. We look at our seps in photoshop to make any adjustments, and then we link it to an illustrator file where our art boards are made for determining placement. We then use that file to output to our RIP software and then the DTS machines, pretty standard stuff.

We send said illy files to this affiliate for them to output, but they crash the Corel Draw program. When I send them over as PDF's (what they requested) they show up as bitmapped images, and he said he is unable to output them as is. He claims that only vector files are compatible with Corel. I did a google search, and it looks like you can use raster images with Corel, but I have never used it and am not well versed.

Does anyone have any experience converting raster images made in adobe software into something compatible with Corel Draw without totally recreating the artwork?

Thanks in advance

[Frog]

Greetings all,

We have a shop that is doing some affiliate work for us that uses Corel Draw, my shop only uses adobe products and our clients send us raster images almost exclusively. We look at our seps in photoshop to make any adjustments, and then we link it to an illustrator file where our art boards are made for determining placement. We then use that file to output to our RIP software and then the DTS machines, pretty standard stuff.

We send said illy files to this affiliate for them to output, but they crash the Corel Draw program. When I send them over as PDF's (what they requested) they show up as bitmapped images, and he said he is unable to output them as is. He claims that only vector files are compatible with Corel. I did a google search, and it looks like you can use raster images with Corel, but I have never used it and am not well versed.

Does anyone have any experience converting raster images made in adobe software into something compatible with Corel Draw without totally recreating the artwork?

Thanks in advance

Hopefully someone much more knowledgeable than me will step in as well.
Although a CorelDRAW user, I don't have a specific answer to your question. However, some things in your post kinda' confused me. If these files are sent as raster in the first place, they must be raster even when played with in Illy. How are the pdf files much different?
New Illy files don't always work for me either, but CorelDRAW can import PS files usually fine. However, since these are seps, you probably need to make each one it's own file. I've used that technique in the past a bunch. Probably do something similar with the pdf conversions.

[MotionTextile]

It has been a long time since outputting with Corel but one work around we have used is splitting your channels in PS.  You can then save individual files for each separated color and import into Corel to output

[tbarnes]

Frog,

I'm not sure why they would be different, they just requested PDF's. After resaving as PDF's and resending they still didn't work, so the answer to your question is probably nothing lol I don't think it was different at all.

It sounds like you guys have essentially the same work around that we can use. I think that will work as a bandaid but is not viable as a long term option, it just takes too much time to go over each file and resave each channel as its own file.

If anyone else has any input or work arounds I would love to hear them, I think I am going to try and convince this shop to just make the jump to adobe. If we give them enough work it should justify the cost.

[royster13]

For as long as I have been a "dedicated" Illustrator user (20+ years) there have been issues with Corel importing Adobe files 100% correct....There has long been chatter in various forums saying Adobe dedicates resources on every upgrade to making Adobe files hard to export to Corel....While at the same time Corel works hard to overcome such problems.....The "cat and mouse" game will continue....

[Dottonedan]

I just had this exact same experience with another customer of mine who got seps from someone and they sent them to their outside source, who only has Corel, and always prints DPF’s.  Sounds oddly familiar, but your Co is not the same name.


The art was great!  A Front and a Back. Strangely, the back art...was showing as being done in same file as the front and I would ope as SHOW ALL but only one side would open.


In those, were a FUBAR group of sep files..
I as a favor, re-opened the files in Illy, and found that the art was done in raster, even though what my customer sent me...were .ai files. Apparently, the artist was not being very helpful and probably because he/she didn’t have experienced in any other option. My sep customer said his printer source  required PDF and tried pdf with these files with no luck.  I think tried to SAVE AS PDF on my end and gave them back to my customer...and was then told “ It worked” or last I heard.




The trick, is that the printer you are using with the Corel has to be savvy enough with their Corel to receive outside files and print to film. It’s done every day, but not everyone knows all of the various way there are to imprint and print files. Additionally, I am 100% POSITIVE that their CTS, no matter wax or wet ink, or even Laser can take the other file types. Perhaps they just don’t know how.


So,   I do Photoshop seps for Corel users a lot. Like 10% of all of my customers are on Corel. That’s a lot.


I will usually make it as simple as I can and SPLIT the seps up. Another method is to (from Photoshop, seps, save the file as a DCS2, single file with color preview).  Little do they know, they can also just import the psd file and print the greyscale seps with the custom colors in Corel also.


The problem I had, with my customers file the separator sent him...was that this person who did the seps didn’t do them (as I would have) and for me to do the SPLIT method for him, I would have to reengineer the files (FRONT and BACK), 3 files for each opening each, removing all of the extra junk that doesn’t pertain..and bring each one back into Photoshop.


The artist made a BASE file..but it had other colors in there with it.  Then they made a “Colors” file and they had the BASE and TOP white with it. Then there was a TOP WHiTE file...and it had the colors with it.  So it’s no wonder why they ran into issues with printing from the PDF. Their Rip was probably seeing all of these other separations in with each file it was just too confusing.


Are you my sep customers printer source?

[tbarnes]

Dan,

No I am not your customers printer (though I could be tell them to hit me up lol). My shop utilizes adobe software, we just started working with a new shop and sending them work and they only use Corel.

I tried resaving the files as PDF's but they still had no luck. Sounds like it worked for you, not sure what they are doing wrong exactly, was hoping somebody had an easy work around here.

The shop we sent it to recreated the art as vector art and wants us to send everything as vector, but a lot of our art is supplied and is made as raster to begin with. Hoping if we send them enough work it will justify them upgrading to the adobe products.

[Dottonedan]

Sounds like a need for a good instructional tutorial for people to send others when they run into this stuff. I’ll put one together. Another on my list.

[inkman996]

Strictly Corel here for two decades. Any seps I recieve from an adobe user I ask for in .tiffs. Easy as that.