Corel 16 vs 14 and 13 engraving quality

[Kev Williams]

My BIL who works with me has Corel 13, 14 and 16. He LOVES working with 16, but it won't render decent engraving. I'll cut to the chase:

Below is a picture of two identical graphics, on identical pieces of Rowmark, lasered at identical settings. The only difference is the top was sent to the engraver using Corel 14, the bottom sent using Corel 16:


http://www.engraver1.com/erase1/Corel14-16.jpg


--We have no clue why this is happening or what to do to fix it, and I guess neither does anyone at Corel CS. While this grid pattern may work great on glass (haven't tried it yet) it's terrible on pretty much everything else!

All prior versions of Corel engrave fine, it only does this with version 16...

He has a Gravograph LS800 at his home, and I think it does the same thing on that machine too, which tells me it's not a driver issue. Haven't tried it on my LS900.

Is there some secret to this we're not finding?

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Check your colors in 16 vs older versions. When I upgraded from X3 to X6, I had problems engraving due to my files opening in CMYK instead of RGB. (As well as lots of other little issues that I posted about in this forum. I don't think this forum will let you search on words only 2 characters long (X6) so try a search on Corel Upgrade and you can find various posts we X6 users have run across.)

[Dan Hintz]

Agreed, this looks like a color dithering issue.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'll be # 3 on the list to say that's a color problem. One is RGB and one is CMYK or something along those lines. Looks very much like something that was CMYK black, which converts over to RGB at something like RGB 37,37,37.

Make sure it's RGB black in X6.

[Glen Monaghan]

Yep. X6 is notorious for changing from RGB to CMY when opening files from previous versions. RGB black (0,0,0) is converted to CMYK black, which is NOT the same thing, so a dithering results when sent to the laser. IIRC, this is primarily the result of a change in how Corel handles color spaces starting with X6. You can find instructions on the web for how to "properly" adjust X6 settings to minimize effects of these changes. Also, once you have restored all your colors to true RGB values, you probably should save as X6 version to make sure they don't revert again later.

[Kev Williams]

His palette is, and always has been set to RGB. Why would Corel switch to CYMK on the printer output? Whatever the problem, what we need is a solution, like how to change settings? We haven't found any solutions anywhere yet, even Corel customer service doesn't know how to fix it. They've sent him several "patches", nothing has worked. Pretty frustrating.

[Mike Null]

I suggest you have a look at this link. Just changing the palette will not achieve the results you want.

http://www.engrave.ca/archives/5318

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?188760-Corel-Draw-X6-Upgrade-Tips (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?188760-Corel-Draw-X6-Upgrade-Tips&highlight=corel+upgrade)

[Dan Hintz]

Have you actually selected a color and verified it is true black in RGB (i.e., 0 0 0)?

[Glen Monaghan]

As I recall, the problem wasn't that the palette was changed from RGB to CYMK, but rather some of the individual colors used in older files were changed. I had to change some color space settings and save as an X6 version.

[Kev Williams]

THANK YOU MIKE (Null) for the archive link- I changed the settings in the color customizations and ran the train and it came out beautiful! Grid's gone!

Mike Chance, I'll pass along the upgrade tips-- Don is gonna be SOOOO happy! :)