Search results

"Sandwiching" layers of ink in color-white-color is the best way to keep prints from washing out when back lit. The white ink layer also does a good job of preventing colors from looking too dark. Merely printing multiple passes of color ink just doesn't cut it. We tried that with the thermal...

I have a slightly older Dell XPS desktop system and it has been working like a champ. It sounds really unusual for Dell's support people to be giving you the run-around like that. I thought all these COVID-related supply chain hassles were finally getting solved. Or...I kind of wonder if the...

The What the Font tool at the MyFonts web site does not work nearly as well as it did in the past. The problem: What the Font appears to only display fonts that are available to buy at the MyFonts web site. There is a growing number of type designers and smaller type companies who no longer...

If the Retype beta feature in Adobe Illustrator doesn't work (or if you try Astute Graphics' Vector First Aid plugin and that doesn't work either) you can re-build editable text objects in Illustrator pretty easily. But you have to know what font(s) were used. Not too long ago Adobe Illustrator...

I'm sorry. Pretty unpleasant. I made an alternate version of the client's "logo" substituting that ugly lettering with type set in Amplitude Compressed Ultra. Hopefully they'll go for that.

Yep. Just as I thought: the type was squeezed, but not freshly.

IIRC the 2021 release of CorelDRAW was pretty buggy. The 2022 version was a good improvement; the 2023 and 2024 versions have been very underwhelming in terms of new features and/or improvements, especially when figuring in the cost of the upgrades.

Which version of CorelDRAW are you using?

You can already sort of do that using Astute Graphics' Space Fill plugin. The Randomino plugin can help with the random-ness. But you have to fiddle with the plugin controls rather than merely type something into a text prompt.

The PDF import filter in CorelDRAW has an option to convert live text in the document to curves. But the import filter doesn't provide as much control as placing the PDF into an Adobe Illustrator document and then using the Flatten Transparency dialog box options. I've had to walk customers...

I hate Canva, even when a wannabe-designer using it can manage to generate a PDF that's halfway useable. Canva is the "hold my beer" graphic design program. If you have access to Adobe Illustrator I would suggest using that. CorelDRAW just isn't all that good at opening PDF files, even when the...

I've already been having to deal with some of that crap in customer provided artwork. The generative "AI" stuff in Adobe Illustrator is live-traced from raster-based results. While the stuff might be "vector-based" it sure isn't all that clean, much less production-ready. Worse yet, the "AI"...

Copying>pasting between CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator can work okay, but it just depends on what is being copied into the clipboard. Usually if I'm exporting art from CorelDRAW to Illustrator I'll export a CS6 version AI file (and then repair the usual errors in text objects and some fills in...

I attached a sample image cropped out of some customer supplied artwork. I'm not familiar with the typeface chosen, but it looks like the "designer" squeezed the living crud out of it (along with clipping the tops of some letters). Thanks in advance for help.

What large format RIP application is your shop using? If the RIP has an Adobe PDF print engine it should be able to output PDF files generated by Adobe Illustrator or InDesign without any problem. The PNG format is not a good fall-back option, especially for printing. Yep. One of the reasons...

That doesn't let the city government off the hook. Forcing a company to change its logo colors on a sign would still violate that 1990's legal precedent. Many signs only depict the company's brand.

Yes. Any vector objects containing gradient fills will have those vector fills preserved when exported in PDF format, including fills that contain varying levels of transparency. The default settings in Illustrator also append Illustrator data to PDF files (the "preserve Illustrator editing...

I thought it was illegal for city governments to force color schemes on company branding. There was a law suit in the 1990's involving Blockbuster Video and another video store chain versus the city of Tempe, AZ. The city was trying to force Blockbuster to change the familiar blue and yellow...

PDF files exported from CorelDRAW don't tend to work so well. I have the best luck saving CorelDRAW artwork as Adobe Illustrator CS6 AI files. Still, some objects may import with errors and need to be corrected. Blocks of paragraph text or artist text will often have line spacing all screwed up...

I didn't know that about their clip art. The times I've been forced to mess around with Canva usually involved creating some type objects or creating/editing other non-stock objects and then generating a PDF of the results. Some of the fonts people use in Canva are unique to that application...