Need Seamless transfer to Corel

**monster** · 19 February 2007, 01:01 PM

Hi. I ve learnt to use Xara Xtreme to a safisfactory degree but now an employer wants me to deliver him all artworks in Corel Draw12 file format. While i found it quite easy with Xtreme Pro to export files to Adobe Photoshop it does not work so smoothly with Corel. Firstly Xara Xtreme doesnt want to accept imports from Corel versions above the 6th, however i can copy objects to clipoard in Corel then paste them as Corel exchange presentations in Xara. As for exporting to Corel format , lots of transpancies and fills created in Xara are either lost or distorted. Are there any export filters/converters for Xtreme/Xtreme Pro that can solve that problem? Or shall I start learning Corel 12 as well?

**jamesmc** · 19 February 2007, 01:18 PM

EPS doesn't work?

I would think Corel would have sophisticated PS type imports.

SallyBode will be along as she is our resident Corel Draw Expert.

**Don Lamb** · 20 February 2007, 03:36 AM

Have you tried exporting your file from Xara Xtreme Pro as cmx 5 or 6? This usually works with CorelDraw.

**sallybode** · 20 February 2007, 04:58 AM

Vectors transfer nicely to CorelDRAW, to export from Xara to CorelDRAW 32-Bit Presentation Exchange (6).

As you will note, there are things which work one way but not really well the other. You can for most things in CorelDRAW copy and paste into Xara an it pastes well as the above format, CorelDRAW 32-Bit Presentation Exchange (6).

Embedding a Xara document does not yield a good enough dpi to make it worth the effort. Making .pdf from Xara itself is not importable into either DRAW 12 or X3, but if you print to Adobe Acrobat Professional it is importable. If you change an graphic which has elements which are not importable into DRAW via .pdf, and you have a mixture of vectors and bitmaps, it doesn't work well, if you have to move items around, your bitmaps have been impossibly sliced and diced. Even if you saved them as .png in Xara at 300 dpi, it will come in via the print as Acrobat .pdf at 200 dpi and this isn't very nice and it takes forever to process. You can in advanced settings tell it 300 dpi and it slices and dices the picture up as though it is handling the picture like a .eps file. Even to ungroup or leave grouped in DRAW and change to a 300 dpi CMYK is not good, you see ten gillion seam lines. Best is to use a .tif for bitmaps as 24 bit RGB color and let the color management in PhotoPaint convert it to CMYK, prints much better. That way color management is only being applied once, not twice. Saving as a .tif is also much quicker and you import much faster. Whenever you don't have to compress your .tifs, don't. To transfer from one program to another, don't compress.

Items which are not going to be recognized by DRAW are: fractals, any type, tranparent or fractal fills, any type of transparency is iffy at best. And if you use drop shadows, I'd use .tif or .png for that too, it is more sure. If you bring in a .png from Xara and use DRAW or PhotoPaint the .png vs. the .tif when converted looks washed out.

I encourage you to try this experiment for yourself and see with your own eyes.

So if you do not have to do any future editing you could bring it all in as a .tif 24 bit RGB and then convert to CMYK, I like doing that in PhotoPaint, get better color overall this way. What works best is what I use, that way I have no regrets and no reruns because I got a bit lazy. DRAW is a vector program that does bitmaps on the side, whereas PhotoPaint specializes in bitmaps. Use what is designed to give you the best effect. It is fast, just right click and picke edit bitmap, bada boom, your in PhotoPaint. Change to CMYK, accept the normal profile and save and DRAW is updated. Very fast.

If you need to edit in the future vectors and bitmaps, then you have to repiece it together in DRAW, either using the .cmx 6 exchange format or printing to .pdf. Believe me Acrobat Professional does its job here. And whereas I love Xara dearly, their .pdf's just don't work to import them into DRAW 12 or X3, sorry, that's the truth. I did have better luck before Xara Xtreme Pro but have since taken other versions of Xara out of my machine because I only use Xara Xtreme Pro now. And sorry for test comparisons, I do want to get to bed before midnight.

When I write advice, I test everything I am telling you again as I am writing to be sure I am telling what works and what doesn't.

The reason why you use .cmx 6 32-bit vs. cmx.5 16-bit is that you have more accurate color information, twice the color information. Use what works best.

As a rule of thumb, if it is understood in Flash, it is often understood in DRAW, except that DRAW does understand Xara italic lines and Flash doesn't, have to convert to shapes, which isn't a bad idea anyway.

**Scotty** · 20 February 2007, 05:34 AM

I believe if you save to Corels CMX 12 format it can be brought up in CorelDraw.
Jim

**sallybode** · 21 February 2007, 02:04 AM

When in doubt, read the menu.

However if you are trying to transfer spot color, the way to go is to export to .pdf and then print a X-3 compatible .pdf from Adobe Acrobat Professional. This will preserve spot color and overprints.

It does however rotate the file.

The intermediate step to the .pdf looks terrible until you see the overprint preview. But it import correctly to CorelDRAW so I would assume it would also then to any other application accepting .pdf placement with spot color.