long printing times in coreldraw X3

**1953morgan** · 04 June 2007, 09:29 PM

have been using coreldraw 9 for years but have changed to x3 i am having to save files to 9 as the printing times in x3 are much longer, anyone got any suggestions thanks

**sallybode** · 05 June 2007, 01:48 AM

Yes, it takes a long time in some cases to print, particularily if you are printing to a non-postscript printer.

I have found it is often quicker to make a .pdf and print that way.

Do be sure and get the Hot Patch and the Updates from Corel. It does remidy alot of that. The other thing you have to understand is that DRAW X3 thinks everything is a portrait press. Many high end presses consider all jobs as portrait, so unless it is a portrait job, you have to put in your height and width as a custom job, even though you may be using standard size paper.

Although DRAW understands on its own end transparency, drop shadows, scripts, etc., especially when using overprints with spot color if printing to a copier, it can take a real long time to print. It is because the device which is taking the data is not post script, send the same file to a digital platemaker, and it goes over quite nicely.

If you can afford to add RAM, it is a good thing to do. And assign as much to DRAW as you can spare from the rest of your system.

**dogbone23** · 11 June 2007, 05:00 PM

I have also noticed longer print times with X3, and that would include making PDFs with Acrobat 8.

I am also not able to always print multiple up documents.

Does anyone know what the latest build version is? I couldn't find a reference to it on the corel site.

**sallybode** · 11 June 2007, 10:11 PM

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...=1151092456309

Patches and Updates are found under the Support tab, then follow the menu to the version of the software you need to update.

Older versions of DRAW will not be found here on their FTP server:

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/

Then look in the CorelDRAW folder for the version you are updating.

Do your updates, the printing speed will improve. Also note, you are printing postscript language, don't print to .pdf from CorelDRAW let DRAW make its own .pdf, it is really an excellent .pdf altogether and let's you control easily everything about the publish to .pdf. The only time I'd print to a .pdf is if I had to output signatures and did my layout in facing pages.
In which case you are dealing with a portrait output with your print drivers, you will have all custom page sizes unless it truly is portrait.

If you have Acrobat Professional, use that for checking the output to .pdf and run preflight and look at your output preview, be sure you have spot color separations or CMYK separations depending upon what you have designed.

Rarely do you ever need to print separations to a .pdf. It destroys the visual. The printer will send the .pdf to his platemaker and make his own separations anyway. It is beneficial to him to know what the printed piece will look like.

**dogbone23** · 12 June 2007, 03:27 AM

I downloaded both sp1 and sp2 just after I installed X3, but neither one of them would apply. Seems like they gave me an error, that this was the wrong version.
That's the reason I was wondering what the last build is. Maybe my CD is a version with the service patches already incorporated.

It's unlike Corel to do that. Under About, my build number is 13.0.0.739

I use the corel engine for quick proofs to send the client. Rarely use them for output to print, magazines or newspapers. The corel engine does support special effects better, transparency and so forth than Distiller. But when sending a final output file I always used distiller and manually flatten any effects that may cause problems. I hate getting deadline calls that my file is choking the RIP.

The other reason actually has nothing to do with whether corel makes good pdfs for not. You get some moron on the receiving end of a pdf, he checks the doc info and sees that Corel was the creator then starts *itching at me right off! So, I just eliminate one potential issue and send them all out with Adobe signatures.

**sallybode** · 12 June 2007, 05:35 AM

When you install the hot patches and the updates, they must be in sequential order or it won't happen. Go from the top to the bottom and in the order they are given, look to see you are running the English ones. Make sure you have the original install disc as you will need to put it in your CD tray.

As far as the fella on the other end who is giving you a bad time, no one gives me a hard time and I do all my work out of CorelDRAW, and I don't mince words about it. But my measurements are dead on, and there is never any problem with my files because I am accurate. My work folds where it is supposed to fold, the images are the right dpi, etc.

On the other hand, I get in work turned into .pdf from Illustrator, hate to tell you that is no guarantee it is right. I get work in from ad agencies which are supposed color separations, and they are not even from a spot color palette, or bleeds that they did not turn on when they made the .pdf, but I am not supposed to tell them. Well I do. But we are told, that they are suffering under the influence of a pig head and must be humored. Good Grief. If I do something wrong, I fix it, fixing problems whether I made a mistake or it is someone else's is part of my job. These Adobe users are not premadonnas. CorelDRAW and Illustrator are just tools in the artist's toolbox. If you couldn't draw or paint before, a computer's tools aren't magical, they don't produce the artistic concept when it isn't there. If you don't know how to do drafting, if you thought it was just a cool job, there is a lot more too it. I know how to do full drafting, use templates, use AutoCAD and do architectural rendering. I worked for Lockheed as a technical illustrator when all the drawings were drawn by hand.
I also have a full fine art background and can match anything in my portfolio up against anyone. DRAW works faster than Illustrator due to the way it is constructed. If DRAW is so lame then why are nearly all of Illustrator's newest additions adapted almost without change from DRAW? I started out using Illustrator and had the same ridiculous brainwashing pushed on me.... "The Industry Standard". Let the work speak for itself. It is so standard then it isn't deluxe enough to have multiple pages, standard, just basic, that way, you know. I'll keep my standard money in my standard wallet so I can afford food and clothing and continue with DRAW as it works. There are things DRAW can do that Adobe does not, and therefore these things don't translate whether printed out with Distiller or as a .pdf made out of DRAW, for these I merge and make my own bitmaps. There is no apparent difference if you have your adjustments the same between CorelDRAW generated .pdf and Adobe's except that it says it was made in DRAW. And I might add, and proud of it. If you know what your settings mean, they are explained a lot more in real English and not "legaleese". It is fast and easier to understand. Since when is getting more done not been a boss pleaser?

It is not better because it has the "Adobe" name on it. That is just hype. I do not have work being printed that is wrong. Or I wouldn't keep my job, you know.

The first thing before one is an artist, is that they ought to be a human being first before anything else. If an argument holds water, I'm for it, if it makes no sense but a lot of money for someone, excuse me, I can think for myself.

There are Adobe users which are very nice people, like there are MAC users which are as well, then there are the insufferable ones. That is because they are insufferable as people goes. I use Illustrator when I have to and I am very good at it too. I also use MAC. I need to use it and understand how to use it for both my own personal enrichment and for job security. I may change jobs in the future. So I know both even if I like working on one more than the other, and that is mainly because two of the programs I like to run have been PC only, but now MAC runs Windows, I can do that too.

All in a days work, I probably create from scratch five business cards, edit about twice that many, build one brochure, do half of a twenty page book in building the adds, scanning the photos, etc. I send at least half of my work out in .pdf format. And send out the rest for proofs in .pdf primarily, people now prefer that to a fax. You have to tell them that it has more than one page. I have had customers insist I must send them each separate pages because they are not able to figure that out. Am I having a blonde moment because I understand it? Of these business cards, I am also doing not only designs but also impositions, I am building booklets in facing pages and creating signatures, sending work to digital platemakers. BTW Illustrator at times crashes our digital platemaker. I speaks PostScript, the language Apple wrote and it crashes the platemaker, I use it's ability to make .pdf so to avoid a platemaker crash. Never do I ever have that problem with CorelDRAW, I do not have to have DRAW make a .pdf to run the file to the platemaker. Never. And I often have to fit in a funeral folder. I do not use Photoshop, I use PhotoPaint for my retouching and vignettes, it does superb work. And it is so fast to go between DRAW and Paint. Much faster than Illustrator and Photoshop even with using the Bridge even on a MAC, DRAW is just fast. So long as you are an accomplished user, use scripting and are an experienced graphic artist.

Colleges often do not teach DRAW, DRAW users are frequently self-taught and know where every forum is they can get an answer from and where to find tutorials for DRAW on the web. As many print shops use DRAW, this is not really preparing people for the real world. Large Service Bureaus that we deal with accept work in even the native .cdr format as well as .ai, .psd, .qxd, .tiff, .jpg, .indd, .pdf. So I use them all. I could not get as much done using another program.

The college sends us work to print done out of Photoshop as a two color separation as spot color and it isn't right. Nearly everytime I have gotten a color separation from an outside firm in Photoshop, it has been wrong. I is possible, I can do it. And it can also be done in PhotoPaint as well. It is sad that work done by a college instructor isn't pressready. How can a student learn how to do it right? When we have hired a student from the college, they do not know the difference between RGB and CMYK black. They are not using guidelines and if if looks centered, that is good enough. I build books, all my headers and footers line up and my page numbers are right in alignment. We build right up to the printer's gripper margin. And I do not have to remake many plates because I missed my margins. I rebuilt an entire book from a former student at the college who worked for us for awhile, I had to do a four up imposition by hand and none of the pages lined up, they did when I was finished. Color separations had to be reworked. I check print preview alot to view my separations. If I don't have something right, I know which script to run to fix it and if I need to, I can hunt down the errand object in Object Manager. Corel is built to function in the print industry. To be fair, there is one instructor which sends us work which is correct. One. And we have an ad agency in town which designs work in QuarkXpress and sends us the .pdf files as printed separations as they cannot get their spot separations to work. The do never use overprints so if they have a dark opaque ink overprint a 20% screen of the other spot color, they do not bother to tell it to overprint, which is useful, no misregistration on the press. They are used to CMYK, and you want it to knock it out then. This is lame. There is a trememdous advantage to letting the printer see your full intent so that your work prints correctly. Discipline. Work Ethic. Where is it?

DRAW can make things very accurate just like AutoCAD. however, there are settings that are not very intuitive in Illustrator to do the same thing.

I also print out everything I do so that I have a visual. This is important too. You see things you just don't otherwise.

Perhaps you don't feel confident enough with DRAW. DRAW can do the job. Really.

Once you solve the problem you are currently having it will make it that much easier for you to find the problem yourself on the next job. When I had the slow printing in DRAW, I had to figure it out myself. I made sure DRAW is assigned 60% of available RAM and has the scratch disk set up correctly and I turned off display fonts on your font dropdown menu, it is a memory hog. I use Font Navigator. On some jobs which are large, I break down the file into smaller units. I do not use bitmaps larger in dpi than I need to use and when necessary I link my files so that they download to the digital platemaker when I send the files. All these things impact printing performance. But #1 above all else is DRAW is designed to print PostScript. If you are not printing to a postscript printer, you may experience a slow down especially if you have node heavy work. Take the time to reduce nodes if you have a lot of traced work or clipart, frequently has too many nodes and this can slow your work down.

Don't give up.

Be proud, you can do it, you are a DRAW user.

**dogbone23** · 12 June 2007, 01:13 PM

ouch! Didn't mean to rub salt in an old wound.

I've used Draw for years, started on V4 when the powerclip was new. Man that was great. I agree with your synopsis, and have had similar conversations with AI and other users over the years. Particularly mac users. I usually end up telling them I don't have any problems with mac computers, it's the users that are are always the problem.

If you tell them that with a straight face and with eye contact, it sort of shuts them up

I've been asked to teach a class on design several times, but have been reluctant to do so. Not because of the time crunch, but simply because I wasn't sure whether teaching Corel was best for the students. I believe in it and have used it for everything. Bz cards to annual reports and everything in between. But, I doubt if you're going to get a job with Draw on your resume.

I just upgraded my main workstation, hence X3. I had been on V12 for some time. I also decided to upgrade to the full CS3 suite. Thought maybe I'd try and expand my abilities with indesign and Illustrator. Well, it's difficult to even make myself give them a spin when I can do the same thing in Draw in less than half the time. Maybe I'll keep at it.

you never did tell me what version your X3 shows. I did try and apply the patches in order. Neither one would work. I may have applied the hot patch first, maybe that's the problem.

One thing I thought would have been fixed in X3, and one of the reasons for my upgrading, still does not function properly. The color shown for an object whether it be the fill color or outline color is still not always correct when shown in the status bar. The eye dropper will pick up the correct color, but the cmyk mix shown is not always correct. I have to do a shift+F11 to check it and make sure. Do you have that problem?

**sallybode** · 12 June 2007, 08:52 PM

I never had the problem you have had with installing updates. But I keep abreast of what are the updates by checking the Corel site about once a month.

I have had the problem of updating my CorelPainter 9 for MAC, however, because the update they are offering is the second update and you cannot get the first which you need to install the second.

Perhaps they have changed the updates with DRAW as well.

There is also time when things go wrong for no apparent reason.

I have not had any trouble with colors not reading right in the color wells on the status bar in the lower right corner. I also keep Object Manager always on so it is easy to check out what a color is or to find a problem.

The problem is that a little bit of knowledge hurts everyone. And most people will not check out what they are told no matter what subject it is. They assume, despite evidence to the contrary, that the authority knows more and therefore is right. If the authority is a just authority, this may not be a problem. When corporate boards are looking to only drive a profit larger, who ethical does this make companies?

What serves the public best? Is is fair for people when they are just starting out to pay through the nose for what they do not need and not be trained in what they can afford when the cost of living is so high? Right now there is getting to be a glut of graphic artists and even really good ones may not be making much more than minimum wage because they have a graphics arts program, that does not mean they really are a graphic artist.

It is high time both companies and individuals start with one thing, and that is the truth. People cannot make an honest choice when the do not have the correct information.

I can go next door by walking next door, or I can also get there by walking around the block.

Every day we are confronted by people who have a vested interest in keeping things from changing, such as biofuels and hydrogen powered cars because they represent the oil industry.

Fair starts when each individual has ethics.

You decide. What is ethical?

**dogbone23** · 12 June 2007, 09:06 PM

colors also read incorrectly in object manager

a dark blue that's actually 98/91/0/0 reads: 38/36/0/0

**sallybode** · 13 June 2007, 06:38 AM

I just finished installing CorelDRAW X3 into my new MAC running Parallels and so I just did what I recommended to you and it installed without a hiccough.

I am curious from where you purchased CorelDRAW X3? Yes, you can try the tried and true, hold down F8 on boot up and have it reset to default. If you do not have color management properly set up, it is possible that you are not getting correct colors and your eyedropper is reading your RGB screen and giving you an odd reading. If you have a bogus CorelDRAW X3, it could be that you have a version which updates will not work on because the DRAW downloads are not recognizing a supported version. If you did purchase the copy in a legitmate fashion, I'd ask to get a different copy from the supplier becasue something is wrong. It is not the first time that I have heard of this happening, it is a form of software piracy and the consumer pays full price and gets ripped off because they cannot get updates. If you have your original sales receipt, I'd complain. When X3 just came out, I purchased their special upgrade edition via Amazon.com. I had bought a student version when I had 12 and it qualified for getting the upgrade edition. It, however, installs as a full version, so I don't have to install 12 to put it in.

Good luck.

If it is legitimate software, I'd let Corel know in a heartbeat and have them troubleshoot this for you. There is too much going wrong for you.