Hello everyone. I started having serious issues with PDF files opening recently. Corel 2019.
If I drag the file now into corel or import in any other way, it wont open it at all, it would however open kind of a low res thumbnail of that file, not usable. Tried everything already, anyone has any ideas of how to fix this? Attaching a screenshot of that mess. I am pretty hopeless at this moment, would appreciate any help.
P.S: This 2019 version has been a disaster in every way honestly, anyone wants to buy my license lol?
I guess you're not on the "upgrade protection" plan? CorelDRAW 2019 was a pretty bad release. CDR 2020 fixed a few things, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.First trouble shooting step I would take is open the PDF in Adobe Reader. If the PDF opens there successfully check the Properties tab to see what application was used to create the PDF. Depending on the host application used to generate the PDF the same application might be able to save the artwork in a format more compatible with CorelDRAW. I tend to send Adobe Illustrator-generated art (or even PDFs opened in Illustrator) over to CorelDRAW as Illustrator CS6 AI files with certain effects flattened or expanded. That usually works reasonably well.
Well, the problem is that PDF is already the most popular document format int he world, and the fact that corel can no longer open new one and they do nothing about it is ridiculous in my opinion. What really sucks is that it worked before but the new format is no longer supported.
I could find a workaround for one time case easily, but I import a lot of PDFs every day and this alone rendered this software useless for me. I am $200 short and stuck with a piece of rubbish software now which is pretty useless. Their customer support is pretty much non existent and they rely on people like you instead of actually provoding a support for their product, which is also wrong imo.
There are two problems, both of which have always existed.
Problem #1: Adobe continually updates their version of the PDF format every year. This goes in line with yearly updates of Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. New features in those applications are often not backward compatible with earlier file format versions. Adobe updates the PDF format to support those new features.
Problem #2: Corel does not release patches for prior versions of CorelDRAW to make past versions forward compatible with new versions of CorelDRAW or new versions of other file formats, including PDF. Further hardly any software developers update old versions of their software. Once a new version is released they move on to only update that new version. In recent years Corel has issued hardly any maintenance updates for CorelDRAW. For instance, CDR 2020 got one single point-release update and one little "hot fix" update. That was it. Now they're working on the CorelDRAW 2021 release, which I assume will come out in late March. Given how little Corel works on current versions of CorelDRAW they're sure not going to spend any time updating older versions.
Whoever created the PDF you're trying to import needs to save it down to a PDF version that can be imported by CorelDRAW, like version 1.6. So many computer users have a tendency to save or export art files in their latest versions without any thought to what software the person receiving the files is using.
If the PDF was generated by Illustrator or InDesign and features new things like OpenType Variable fonts that will force them to save in a later version. OTF Variable fonts are not supported in CorelDRAW 2019. Certain other effects, like free-form gradients, aren't compatible with CorelDRAW at all.
If saving down was an option, I would have done that without going here, trust me. We are talking about multibillion companies, they wouldn't save anything down because Corel is stuck in 90s.... Corel has to do that, and if they can no longer support PDF, thats a loss of initial functionality at a time of purchase. And its 2019 version, I am not talking about anything really old even. For gods sake, even USPS now is already on new format, which is why I was able to show you the problem with their label. As a side note, the speed and performance of this "new" version is super embarrassing, I remember having a very old corel draw 15 years ago which worked noticeably faster on 10x slower PC. This software has to be recycled and redone from the scratch, I wonder when would corel admit that, instead of producing new versions every year.
Your copy of CorelDRAW 2019 can still import PDF files, just not the latest versions of the PDF format. That's just a fact of life running older versions of just about any kind of computer software. Most developers only release updates for current versions of their software.
Compound that problem with the fact PDF was created by a rival developer to Corel (Adobe). That's puts CorelDRAW even farther behind on importing PDF, AI or EPS files. If I create some artwork in Adobe Illustrator CC 2021 and want to export it to CorelDRAW I have to at least save it down at least a couple or so versions for it to be compatible with CorelDRAW 2020 and even farther back for versions like CorelDRAW 2018 or X8. The only way to be able to reliably and accurately open the latest versions of Adobe Illustrator AI files (as well as PDF and EPS files generated by Illustrator) is to use a current copy of Illustrator.
I don't know the financial standing of Corel since the company has been privately owned for many years by Vektor Capital and then sold last year to KKR. If I had to guess I figure the company is likely buried in debt and operating as cheaply as possible. Hence the sheer lack of product updates for CorelDRAW in its last couple or so product cycles. But even if business was booming at Corel I would never expect them to release updates to prior versions of their software to make it more forward compatible at opening certain file formats. It kind of takes away some incentive for users to buy upgrades.