Customer supplied vectors not coming into Corel properly

[myront]

Adobe using don't understand how to make a file cross compatible. They assume everyone uses Adobe. DO NOT MAKE AN EPS FILE IF "GRADIENTS ARE USED"
The most cross compatible file to use is pdf. From illy it has to be done a certain way though and not many care to learn the proper way because again they assume everyone uses Adobe.
I use Corel because it's the fastest out there and I've never had a file kicked back.

 

[shoresigns]

Adobe using don't understand how to make a file cross compatible.

Blaming Adobe for incompatibility issues is about as far from the truth as you can get. Adobe designed the EPS and PDF formats that we all use. Both are standardized formats that are open for anyone to use, so in theory, they can all play nice together if they all follow the open standards.

 

[myront]

Blaming Adobe for incompatibility issues is about as far from the truth as you can get. Adobe designed the EPS and PDF formats that we all use. Both are standardized formats that are open for anyone to use, so in theory, they can all play nice together if they all follow the open standards.

I receive pdf's all the time that I can instantly tell are from Adobe. Sometimes I can successfully open them in illustrator and save them out again for use in Corel other times I'm forced to open in photoshop and export as a tiff.

 

[shoresigns]

I receive pdf's all the time that I can instantly tell are from Adobe. Sometimes I can successfully open them in illustrator and save them out again for use in Corel other times I'm forced to open in photoshop and export as a tiff.

Right, so my point was that if you have a PDF or EPS file that originated from Illustrator and you're having issues opening it in Corel, it's more likely that Corel is to blame, not Adobe.

 

[myront]

Corel is to blame, not Adobe

You're misunderstanding. I'm not blaming Adobe, blaming untrained Adobe users. Or they don't care to learn the errors of their ways.

 

[Bobby H]

Most of the time the art files I receive are from customers, not other sign people. They're going to put up with only so much from a sign guy telling them how they should use their software, what kinds of files to supply, etc. You have to walk a fine line getting the right kinds of artwork from someone. As I said before, it solves a lot of headaches (but not all) being able to support both CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator natively. A sign designer choosing the route of using only CorelDRAW or Illustrator exclusively will invite more hassles into his work.

Corel has been making some strides lately with improving its support of Adobe Illustrator files, but it's still falling way too short to be a reliable substitute at opening and editing artwork created in Adobe Illustrator. Support for Illustratror-based gradients is improved (including support for levels of transparency), but it's still not perfect. Some things will open/import in very wacky ways. You'll be able to preview how the Illustrator-based artwork should look within Adobe Reader, but that's only if the .AI file was saved with PDF compatibility intact. Many users disable the PDF compatibility feature in order to make file sizes smaller. There's plenty of Illustrator features, such as gradients on line strokes and various pattern & brush effects, that totally fall apart when opened in CorelDRAW.

It can even be a crap shoot just opening ancient CorelDRAW files in a newer version of CorelDRAW.

 

[Mainframe]

Wanna know a trick? Get your hands on a Mac, open files in Preview and export them in pdf format, then open them in Illy. Works for a lot of files, I get a lot of odds and ends word files etc and use that trick, sometimes I jpg them right from Preview LOL, yard signs and small banners etc.

 

[Bobby H]

There is no Mac version of CorelDRAW, not to mention a couple other applications I use at work. That's a deal breaker for me switching to the Mac platform. Corel tried releasing a Mac version about 15 years ago. It didn't sell so Corel ended that experiment. It's not necessary to run a Mac to use Adobe's applications.

 

[unmateria]

I use Corel since v.2 (that one of the train LOL) and still use It specially for cutting or laser works. From illustrator to Corel x5, x7 or x8, just flatten everything in illustrator and convert fonts to traces and save a PDF. In many works you can even copy and paste as emf in Corel.

Enviado desde mi Nexus 6 mediante Tapatalk

 

[WildWestDesigns]

There is no Mac version of CorelDRAW, not to mention a couple other applications I use at work. That's a deal breaker for me switching to the Mac platform. Corel tried releasing a Mac version about 15 years ago. It didn't sell so Corel ended that experiment.

A lot of good ideas are actually implemented incorrectly.

About the same time that they came out with a Mac version (I think a little earlier maybe), Corel actually had their programs running in their own Linux distro (that's right, Corel had their own Linux distro, called of all things "Corel Linux", later became Xandros before it was discontinued).

That didn't sell to well either (yes, some Linux distros do cost monetarily).

It's not necessary to run a Mac to use Adobe's applications.

One can always try to run WINE on Mac (yes it has been ported to Mac) and see if it will run via that platform. That can be better then running a VM on a Mac (I'm not a fan of dual booting, but they all have their pros and cons).

Wanna know a trick? Get your hands on a Mac, open files in Preview and export them in pdf format, then open them in Illy. Works for a lot of files, I get a lot of odds and ends word files etc and use that trick, sometimes I jpg them right from Preview LOL, yard signs and small banners etc.

Or can use Linux and use Evince document reader and do "your" thing there.

At times like this though, I'm glad 99% of my customers send jpgs (I do the same thing regardless if it's a raster or vector file).

 

[Bobby H]

Raster-based files of things like logos, when supplied by customers, often stink. A JPEG is fine if all you need to do is print an image of it at a modest size. For many other sign-making tasks any raster-based file is a non-starter. If the customer wants channel letters made from their logo then vector-based art is absolutely mandatory. Same goes for anything requiring parts to be routed. Neon sadly seems to be a dying art form these days. Nevertheless, vector-based artwork is far easier and faster to use in generating tube bending patterns.

I'm not a fan at all of running emulation programs. Paying a lot of money extra to buy a Mac only to run emulated Windows programs on it seems like a whole lot of extra trouble and expense to go through to avoid running the same program natively on a Windows-based PC. Other people may look at the situation differently, but for my own case I'm sticking with the PC platform for desktop software purposes. If Corel goes out of business I'll even keep a museum piece computer running to keep the software alive. I have one old machine running CorelDRAW 9.0 that's good for opening really old CDR files the current versions no longer open.

I'm not all sour on Apple. I did buy a large iPad Pro & Apple Pencil a few months ago to take advantage of what's available on that platform, including using Adobe's mobile CC apps to their best potential. I think it's a little screwy how the mobile CC apps send artwork to the desktop apps. Apple just doesn't like people using file managers, even if they included the bare bones basics of one in the latest version of iOS. But at least you can send vector art from Adobe Illustrator Draw into Adobe Illustrator CC and keep it in vector format.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Raster-based files of things like logos, when supplied by customers, often stink. A JPEG is fine if all you need to do is print an image of it at a modest size.

I'm not printing with them. I'm digitizing directly on top of them. Vector or raster files are just an intermediary step for me. Nothing more. Downside is if I'm even given a vector, it may not work for what I need, because it wasn't designed for physical production. So really, the only thing that I'm dependent on is good resolution that allows me to work 6:1. Other then that, it doesn't matter. Sometimes raster files work better as I don't have to deal with other issues at all, such as font substitution, gradients etc. In fact, gradients in vector form do not turn out right going through my program at all, it would have to be rasterized (which my program can do on the fly).

I'm not a fan at all of running emulation programs. Paying a lot of money extra to buy a Mac only to run emulated Windows programs on it seems like a whole lot of extra trouble and expense to go through to avoid running the same program natively on a Windows-based PC. Other people may look at the situation differently, but for my own case I'm sticking with the PC platform for desktop software purposes. If Corel goes out of business I'll even keep a museum piece computer running to keep the software alive. I have one old machine running CorelDRAW 9.0 that's good for opening really old CDR files the current versions no longer open.

WINE isn't an emulation program, it transfers Windows system calls to Unix (Linux and Mac) system calls. No emulation. Along the lines of what Windows is doing with the Linux Subsystems, but a little further along. Windows can only translate CLI programs (without doing workarounds that aren't supported), WINE handles GUI applications (since that's what Windows really is now since discontinuing 9x (at least the early yrs of 9x), is GUI).

Now as far virtualizing goes, pretty soon it's going to be hard and harder to source parts for that physical "museum" piece to the point that you are only going to be getting refurbished parts. May or may not last long. With virtualization, I don't have to worry about that. Plus, I've got a smaller footprint to deal with. On my main workstation, I can run 4 OSs at one time, on one computer. Linux host (no Mac cost there to worry about), Win 98, Vista, and Win 7 (sometimes this gets substituted for Win 8.1). All on a computer (at least this particular one) that's just 2 yrs old.

EDIT to ADD: Bare in mind, none of what I suggested is actually emulation in of itself. Most emulators will use software to handle hardware as well. VMs (which would be the closest thing to emulators) do not do this. They pass through the hardware to the VM itself. At least it's identifiers. This is why you can't run ARM OSs on x86 hardware. Or the reverse, run a hypervisor on ARM to emulate x86 hardware. True emulators will be able to do this.

Now, if we were talking about something like Bochs, then I would agree with you, but we are not. Emulators have a much harder performance hit compared to virtualizing the OS.

 

[starprint]

Convert ai file to pdf.