Ai files to Corel Draw

[RRP]

We design all of our our artwork in Adobe Illustrator. Some designs we will use fills like brushed aluminum or multi lens. But when we send them to the sign shop to be printed they use corel draw and the fills do not print. What are we doing wrong? is there a way we can lock our fills to the design? We have also saved them as a pdf file and it does the same thing. Please any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

 

[Biker Scout]

Rasterize the file to a .tif at full size.

Corel and Illustrator still don't play nice together.

One trick that I do from time to time in order to simplify some fills, gradients and stroke effects is to back save the file to Illustrator 3 .eps. Then re-open the file and remove any double strokes, or other randomness. That should do the trick.

 

[Rick]

You can expand some of them or rasterize others, but that is problematic too. I would find a shop that uses Illustrator.

 

[signmeup]

Switch to Corel.

I have a buddy who does all my printing on a Roland 540 something or other. He has a copy of Corel just for me.
Maybe you could get them to install Illustrator just for you?

 

[SSG_SIGNS]

You could always switch to Corel..
Unfortunately adobe and Corel have never talked to each other very well. I tell anyone that is using Ili to just rasterize it if it has anything like that so we don't have any issues, corel x5 has made great improvements with reading Ili files but there are still a couple issues. It is a problem I don't see going away anytime soon.

 

[jc1cell]

•Save as jpg with proper resolution.
•Paste as smart object in a photoshop file with the proper resolution. Save as jpg.
•Save as eps and open in Photoshop. Save as jpg.

In short. Rasterize with the proper resolution and send.

jc

 

[Biker Scout]

.jpeg is a dirty word in my shop. We don't use no stinkin' .jepgs!

 

[signmeup]

Jpegs don't scare me. I bet they would be some big a$$ files though!

 

[oldgoatroper]

.jpeg is a dirty word in my shop. We don't use no stinkin' .jepgs!

+10

jpgs are evil....


TIF image saved either with no compression or LZW compression (non-lossy) -- can't go wrong with that....

 

[Biker Scout]

That's because you probably didn't know that a .jpeg recompresses the pixels and resamples every time you open and re-save them. That's why it's garnered the term "Lossy" file. A .png is still a low file size raster image but is considered "Lossless" in terms of recompression.

Yes, a .jpeg image loses image quality over time. That's why I refuse to use them or give them to a client. We have a sign with a pixelated .JPEG word and the international "NO" sign over it... under it says, "Friends Don't Give Friends JPEGS"

Even Apple has adopted .png as their defacto raster image of choice when you take a screen shot. That, and there's actually the potential for licensing issues with .jpeg, since the word J.P.E.G. actually stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. Same way .GIF wanted to pull some crap a few years back and charge everyone for using .gif as a standard web image. Since the .gif protocal is owned by Unysis, and they wanted to pull some patent licensing nonsense, developers and OS creators are steering clear.

Order of file importance in the Printing/Graphics World:
.EPS
.TIF
.PDF
.PNG
.BMP
.WMF
That's it. (Even the last two are marginal at best, but a lot of regular PC users can open and view them with standard Microsoft documents)

 

[jc1cell]

That's because you probably didn't know that a .jpeg recompresses the pixels and resamples every time you open and re-save them. That's why it's garnered the term "Lossy" file.

Yes, that is so true. Which is why I export as a jpg from Illustrator or save as jpg from a psd with smart objects. All needed changes to files are done to the smart objects or within Illustrator and any jpg files are replaced with brand new ones. No continuous loss of pixels going on.

Any files purchased as jpgs are saved as psd files when they are used. Changes are made to that and saved as jpgs if needed.

You do have valid point though and this is why strategies around the issue need to be devised. I had to explain this to an old boss that was afraid of using jpgs for print.

jc

Hate to sound like a broken record...but read the sig.

 

[Tim Kingston]

I'd say raster it too, but watch your color space for issues. You could give .EPS a try. I use it to steer clear of problem in Flexi ( with PDFs usually). I save it as an older version (10) and check the compatible gradient mesh etc.

This way, if it works, you can keep your vector data intact.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Rasterize the file to a .tif at full size.

Corel and Illustrator still don't play nice together.

One trick that I do from time to time in order to simplify some fills, gradients and stroke effects is to back save the file to Illustrator 3 .eps. Then re-open the file and remove any double strokes, or other randomness. That should do the trick.

Don't save files with gradients to version 3. Gradients are not supported in v3 files so a nice smooth gradient gets converted to 100s of individual boxes in successive colors to attempt to match the gradient. I save all my ai/eps files with gradients to v8, but not any lower

 

[Biker Scout]

Try a print at V3 and V8... I realize that they get broken up way beyond the usual 256 gradient coding that V8 employs. But sometimes when having to work with Corel you have to get down and dirty. I've opened up some Corel created .eps files in the past in Illustrator and witnessed the exact same phenomenon but in reverse. Yet, the print still looks the same.

Let's be real here, this shop is using Corel to output. It's not going to be perfect anyway. I kinda like another user's suggestion here: Use another shop that has Illustrator.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

True it does work in a pinch but I wanted to caution people into thinking that it was always an ok solution. I received a file once that had 50+ shapes with gradients saved down to v3. Needless to say it was a mess in outline view

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Don't forget also that clipping masks aren't supported in version 3.

I have to use EPS 3 for the two embroidery software that I have and it's always a mess getting gradients and clipping makes when they are saved as EPS 3.

 

[signswi]

I don't think I'd trust a print vendor that didn't have Adobe CS. That's just basic. It's like not having electricity. Not to mention they should be able to load up an EPS/PDF/TIF/JPG from you in their RIP without having to go through Corel in the first place.

Find a new print vendor.

 

[cdiesel]

Why switch to Corel? Your printer should be able to print what you give them. If they're bringing your files into Corel, there's more of a chance of something weird happening to the files. Bad idea.

 

[oldgoatroper]

I don't think I'd trust a print vendor that didn't have Adobe CS. That's just basic. It's like not having electricity. Not to mention they should be able to load up an EPS/PDF/TIF/JPG from you in their RIP without having to go through Corel in the first place.

Find a new print vendor.

hmmmmm.....


I find that the only PostScript files that my Onyx RIP will rip reliably are EPS files exported from Corel. Everything else that I get, whether it be EPSs from some CS app, PDFs from any source -- I have to check carefully for any hiccups. PDFs made from MS products, especially MS Punisher, are the worst, but PDFs and EPSs submitted by professionals, I still have to check carefully.

Lately, I just take PDFs, AIs and EPSs and render them in Photoshop first... faster and easier...

 

[GAC05]

Good points raised here.
If you are sending final artwork that does not need to be edited any more a flattened bitmap of the layout would be the most bullet-proof way to do this.
There is nothing wrong with jpgs saved at 100% if they are just going to be printed.

Even if you send it to a shop that does use CS, good pre-flight practice would be to simplify the file as much as possible to avoid issues that will crop up.
The printer's CS installation may not have the same assets the designer's copy has, i.e.. fonts, plug-ins, 3rd party fills, custom presets, newer or older version, etc....
All those things need to be expanded or flattened prior to sending it out.

As for the sign shop using only CorelDraw this sounds wrong.
Corel does not offer a rip program that will drive a wide format printer as far as I know.
They may be opening your ai files to check them but I don't think they are printing from Draw. See if you can find out how they do their work and it will make it easier for you to get what you expect from them.
If they are printing directly from Draw then the advice of finding another printer sounds like a good idea.

good luck

wayne k
guam usa