Corel Draw X6 Upgrade Tips

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I thought it best to start this thread now while it's still fresh in my mind and will probably add more issues that crop up as I discover them.

I have Corel Draw X3 running on an older Windows XP computer and have CD heavily customized over the years with macros, tool buttons, saved paper sizes, custom RGB palette, etc. I wanted a clean install of Corel Draw X6, so I installed Windows XP on a new hard drive and installed CDX6 and copied all my X3 data files to the new hard drive. I can now "dual boot" from one hard drive to another and use my old CDX3 or my new CDX6.

Corel Draw X6 requires a minimum Pentium 4 with 1 GB RAM. I am running it on a Pentium 4 with 2 GB RAM with a fresh install of XP that boots fast. Corel Draw X6 runs noticeably slower then my X3 does on the same computer on an 5 year old install of XP with tons of messy software installed on it! Once I install virus scanning software, I would not be surprised if X6 runs even slower.

Please remember my file location descriptions are for Windows XP. If you are using a newer OS, your file locations may be elsewhere.

Saved Paper Sizes
X3 saves them as individual .ptp files in the following directory = [drive]:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Corel\Graphics13\PaperTypes
X6 saves them all in one file = [drive]:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6\Config\PaperTypes.xml
I have not been able to convert my saved paper types. I have had to rebuild them manually in X6 and save them.

Macros (.gms files)
X3 = [drive]:\Program Files\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 13\Draw\GMS
X6 = [drive]:\Program Files\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6\Draw\GMS
Copy your .gms files to the new location

Global Macros you have created
X3 = [drive]:\Program Files\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 13\Draw\GlobalMacros.gms
X6 = [drive]:C:\Program Files\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6\Draw\GlobalMacros.gms
Copy your GlobalMacros.gms file to the new location

Saved Workspace
X3 = [drive]:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Corel\Graphics13\User Workspace\CorelDRAW
X6 = [drive]:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6\Draw\Workspace
You can import your saved workspace into X6, but do this with the knowledge that you can muck things up in X6, but there is a way to fix it. I was able to copy some of my customized data, but I found that many of the common dockers would not open or function and I could not use the new OpenType features. I ended up having to delete all the files in the X6 \Workspace directory so X6 could generate a new generic default workspace. All the dockers worked again as well as the OpenType features. I then manually had to set up all my custom toolbar buttons, as well as set up all my custom "default" settings.

Custom palette
X3 = [drive]:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Corel\Graphics13\User Custom Data\Palettes\*.cpl
X6 = [drive]:\Documents and Settings\[user]\My Documents\My Palettes\*.xml
When I copied the .cpl file to the X6 directory, it automatically converted it to an .xml file. I was able to open it via Window, Color Palettes, Open Palette and my custom colors I added to that palette are still in RGB.

Setting hairline default
See Epilog's article at www.epiloglaser.com/tl-hairline-x6.htm
(http://www.epiloglaser.com/tl-hairline-x6.htm)
Change default CMYK to RGB colors
With a blank (default) document open go to Window, Color Palette and select RGB palette.
Click on the triangle "play" button above the CMYK palette and select Palette, Close.
Click on the triangle "play" button above the RGB palette and select Set as Default. Just to be certain it saves, go to Tools, Save Settings as Default.
I am able to close and reopen Corel and it defaults to an RGB palette and opens my X3 documents with an RGB palette.

Additional RGB color management
Tools, Color Management, Default Settings. On the right side, check mark "Warn on color profile mismatch" and "Warn on missing color profile."
Change Primary Color Mode to RGB.
Go to Tools, Custimazation, Color Palette. Uncheck "Automatically update the document palette."
I'm not sure if these are really needed, but they seem to help.

[Michael Hunter]

Thanks Mike - really useful stuff!

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Adding to the continuing saga of the X6 install on my XP machine...

First off, wow. X6 has some nice features, but it runs incredibly slow on a Windows XP, Pentium 4, 2.8 ghz machine with 2 gb RAM. What used to take seconds to load a file in X3 can now take up to 1 minute to open in X6. I have read that if you have Office 2010 installed on that same machine, it will speed up X6. I do have Office 2010 installed, so I dread to imagine how slow X6 would run without it! Since this is a clean, fresh install of XP, all the rest of my software runs blazing fast....

For those of you who are using X4 or older Corel, you may run across the same problems I am having now. Like many others, I have files set up to engrave by color to speed up the engraving process or improve the way it engraves a certain graphic. While I have the color palette docked on the side of my workspace, I regularly look at the lower right of my workspace to verify what colors & outline width I have set up on a selected item. I can quickly see that a selected item is white with a .5 80% Black outline while the next selected item has no fill and a Hairline Black outline. X6 has changed this and now shows the RGB and Hex values such as the Fill has "R:255 G:255 B:255 (#FFFFFF)" and the Outline as "R:76 G:76 B:76 (#4C4C4C) 0.500 pt" instead of showing "White" or "70% Black" as the values. Some values are so long I can't view what outline width I have! (I can't move that toolbar either ....)

I have corel files that I still use on a regular basis that I created using versions 8, 12 and X3. These files may contain bitmaps, artistic or paragraph text, and lots of vector graphics filled or outlined in black, white, blue, green, red and shades of black such as 70% Black or 40% Black as well as 2-color fountain fills and pattern fills using white & black colors. Many of my files are saved so that I can engrave by color. I have many matching "print" files so that I can quickly engrave that item by pulling up the saved settings.

All these years, I have had no problems engraving by color with those files. Now that I am using those files on X6 and have to apply a color profile when I open the file, I am discovering that somehow I have mixed colors in my files. What I mean by that is I may have a graphic that has RGB black, blue, green and red colors, but the white was actually CMYK. Now that I open that file in X6 and engrave by color, SOMETIMES it sees that CMYK white and engraves it as black while other times it will not engrave it. There has been no rhyme or reason to why my print driver will SOMETIMES pick one of the CMYK white graphics and engrave it while it will ignore 15 other graphics with CMYK white in that same file. For example, I engraved 1 plaque just fine, changed the name and sent the next job to engrave without changing any settings. Just as it was about to finish engraving the 2nd plaque, it started engraving the white part of a graphic that had CMYK white in the 2-color fountain fill.

Another thing I have discovered is that my RGB Grayscale shades are different then X6 RGB Grayscale shades. This took me a while to figure out. My previous versions of Corel had 70% Black with RGB values of 76 while X6 has RGB values of 77. The old 10% Black is RGB 229 and X6 is 230, the old 20% Black is RGB 204 and X6 is 204. The odd numbers (10, 30, 50, 70 & 90) are all 1 digit off in values while the even numbers (0, 20, 40, 60, 80 & 100) have the same values. Since I engrave by color, my 70% Black color was not engraving properly.


So ... if you run across any similar problems while using your older corel files, here are some of the things I have done to partially resolve these issues. (I still need to do more tests engraving older files to see if I have fully resolved the issues.)

Tools, Color Management, Default Settings and change Default Color Setting Color Profiles RGB to "Adobe RGB 1998," change Color Conversion Settings to None and make sure Map gray to CMYK is unchecked. I also have Preserve Pure Black checked. Just to be certain it saves, select Tools, Save Settings as Default.

When I imported my old color palette from X3 into X6 I didn't know it, but I also imported the color names with it. When I hover my mouse over the color palette on the side of my screen, I see both the color names and the RGB values. While searching online for solutions to display the Fill & Outline colors in the lower right of my workspace, I have seen lots of issues where people cannot see color names on their palette. For those of you who want to see color names on your palette try this solution http://www.corelinsight.com/library/videos/ColorPaletteManager.swf This did not solve my problem with viewing color names in the lower right...

Any new graphic or text item I create, I can view both the color name & hex value in the lower right part of my screen, but any file I have saved in previous versions of Corel will not show the color name until I physically select it and then select the same color on my palette and save the file. Otherwise, I only see the RGB & Hex values. This becomes quite a challenge when I need to verify what grayscale I am using ... hmmmm... is RGB 102 60% Black or 80% Black???

To make certain I do not miss changing a CMYK white fill or outline and having another oops engraving, I am using Edit, Find & Replace, Replace Objects and having Corel search for a CMYK white (C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:0) fill and replacing it with the RGB white (R:255 G:255 B:255) fill and then repeating the process for the outline.

Another setting I tried, but didn't save was Windows, Dockers, Color Proof Settings and I checked "Preserve RGB Numbers" but I honestly don't know if it did any good. I'm just throwing that option out there for others to try if you're fighting with colors...