Frustrating problem that I can't seem to solve, despite reasonable expertise in pre-press.
Whenever I drop a bitmap photo on top or nearby a vector, or type, the bounding box of the bitmap distorts the type around it when exporting to PDF for prepress (x-1 or x-3). Tried every setting, but something is doing this in the conversion. Any drop shadow does the same.
To date, I've had to close-crop the bitmap bounding box so that it is no longer square shape, but rather follows the exact outline of the bitmap...very time consuming and it means I can't use a drop shadow.
I didn't manage to reproduce that. Perhaps you could you upload an example CDR file to illustrate the problem?
If the file is under 256Kb you can do that in the options tab when you reply. If it is bigger than 256Kb you will need to save it to a public server such as dropbox and paste the URL here instead.
I've uploaded both the original Corel X6 file (latest service pack) and the PDF x-1A made from that file.
There are three bitmaps in crossword puzzle; a car, money bags and a Go Pro. These graphics also have drop shadows that have been broken apart (though I find that makes no difference). You will notice the type and crossword boxes are distorted where ever the bounding box of either the bitmap or the dropshadow (also a bitmap) touches a vector graphic or typeface.
Here's a google docs link to the two files. https://drive.google.com/?urp=https://www.google.com/&authuser=0#folders/0BxbUH1RqOA3Ud1ZCZmlqaGplNG8
Thanks, Lorne
Had a look at that URL, but I'm getting a request for a user name and password. I'm not sure how google drive works, but you probably need to create a separate folder and mark it as public to make it visible to others.
try this link,
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxbUH1RqOA3Ua09iNTdvd2RsWm8/edit?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxbUH1RqOA3UemwzMzdfSVFWTTg/edit?usp=sharing
I also made it public, so anyone on the web can view, so hopefully that works?
OK, I now see what you are describing.
What happens is that Corel is not allowed to put transparent bitmaps in PDF-X/1 or PDF-X/3 files, and therefore must do the best it can by replacing each of them with an opaque bitmap. Consequently, it has incorporate everything immediately behind the transparent area into the opaque bitmap.
You can see exactly what it has done if you import the PDF into a new CorelDraw document. Ungroup the objects and move the moneybags aside. You will see it has created two bitmaps, both opaque, which together represent the original transparent bitmap, its drop shadow and their immediate background:
This doesn't really work, because the opaque bitmaps gets created at 300dpi but the vector objects behind it, if printed on an imagesetter, will be rendered at maybe 1200 or 2400dpi. Consequently, the line thicknesses do not match.
You can probably improve matters by increasing the rendering resolution (in X6 it is configured at tools > options > document > page size > rendering resolution but this may not completely solve the problem. Even if you choose a high enough resolution to make the thicknesses look the same, there is a danger that the image could be rendered as RGB and the background as CMYK, or vice-versa. So the possibility is that you will notice a colour change even if you manage to fix the line thickness.
The way I would deal with this is to selectively create my own bit images.
Now you have everything rendered as a bitmap, except the text which will be rendered at full imagesetter resolution -- so the printed result should be more like what you now see on the screen.