Hi all! I’m having a problem with the gradient fill in draw. If I do a horizontal gradient every thing is fine. It looks fine on the screen, it prints fine and it subs fine. If I do a vertical gradient it has lines across it. It prints that way and it subs that way. I’ve tried changing settings but I can’t get it to stop. Btw...this has been this way in previous versions of Corel draw as well.
What kind of print setup are you using? I've seen banding issues with CorelDRAW gradients from time to time in large format printing, enough so that I have a habit of porting my CDR work over to Adobe Illustrator to create PDF or EPS files to then run through Onyx Thrive or Raster Link Pro (depending on the printer being used).
I’ve been using Epson desktop printers. I honestly don’t think it’s the printing because the lines actually show on the screen in Corel before I print. The lines don’t show when the gradient is horizontal.
Bobby Henderson said:I typically set the number of steps (in the "Flow" part of the dialog box) to the max of 999
Actually, that's not the best solution, as a matter of fact it can ruin the printed result.If you lock the number of steps, you also prevent it from being smooth in some cases.Even though 999 may sound perfect, it can create banding in large format prints, and in some cases also in smaller formats.I remember many years ago when I tried to print vinyl for a sign, and the background had a dark brown CMYK elliptical gradient going from 43, 52, 71, 70 to 43, 52, 71, 90.The only difference was as you can see the black going from 70 to 90.By locking the steps, even though it was 999, I effectively also prevented Draw from creating more than 21 different colors in that gradient, and it resulted in very noticeable banding and an expensive reprint.So leave the Steps checkbox unchecked.The reason is that by leaving it unchecked, you tell the export filter or RIP to create a fill going from color A to color B, and as a result it uses as many colors as it can handle.At least that's what I've been told, and my experience tells me it is (or at least was ten years ago) correct.Give it a try.
The problem is the default setting is a puny 256 steps. And CorelDRAW often tries printing gradients with only 256 steps.
OMG, it looks as they have managed to break yet another feature completely.This is how I believe it should work, and also did some versions ago:There is a global setting in Options > CorelDRAW > Display called "Preview Fountain Steps".This setting controls how fills are rendered on screen but should not affect how they are exported or printed. It should not affect Print Preview either.Then there is the fill specific setting in the Edit Fill dialog that controls how many steps a fill will have when exported and printed, and if this is left unchecked, the fill will be exported and printed with an "unlimited" number of steps.Therefore, leaving it unchecked should, theoretically, always create the best result.(FWIW, the greyed out value in this box seems to be picked up from the "Preview Fountain Steps" setting.)But now, in the last versions, there seems to be a connection between these two "steps" settings, and there is also some kind of lag when a setting is changed, that creates unpredictable results.I have not been able to figure out exactly how it works but I have made prints that showed terrible banding when they shouldn't, and Print Preview is also wrong.
That's why I called it "hit and miss" in another response. I've grown to where I just leave the CorelDRAW fountain fill setting left at their default setting. I don't really care if I see banding in a sketch I sent to our office laser printer to print on ordinary letter-sized paper. But I don't trust the application for creating PDF and EPS files to send to Onyx Thrive or RasterLink Pro (the two large format RIPs we use for our Latex printers and flatbed printer). I tend to have better luck exporting the CorelDRAW artwork in Adobe Illustrator AI CS6 format and using Illustrator CC to make PDF or EPS files to print.
Bobby Henderson said:But I don't trust the application for creating PDF and EPS files to send to Onyx Thrive or RasterLink Pro
I have left the Steps checkbox unchecked since I had the dark-brown-fountain-fill-disaster more than ten years ago, and I can not say that I have noticed any banding whatsoever, neither from RasterLink (used it for many years and until recently) nor Onyx (current RIP). I always go via PDF.My guess is that no matter how screwed up the fill settings may be in the last versions, as long as we send to a postscript printer, the outcome will be as expected.I.e. a fill going from color A to B will be rendered with as many steps as the printer can handle.
What you cannot do is open and print your CDR or exported CDR file to another application. Corel transparency and complex fills will only work through PDF and some as EPS in RIP devices.
Non postscript printers rasterize the content to 96 DPI sRGB, postscript devices need to be true Adobe level 3 devices.