I am starting a personal graphics project, so I recently purchased several Corel graphics products. I now have Photo-Paint X6 and CorelDraw X6. I did some playing around with them to choose my tool and came to the preliminary conclusion that Photo-Paint works better for me. But now I have a huge mystery.
I went online to purchase an official guide to Photo-Paint, but no such thing is available, only Draw X6. So I went to the Corel website to learn more about the difference between these two programs, but under the Products link there is no mention of Photo-Paint X6. I created a test file in Photo-Paint, saved it in its native .CPT format, and then tried to read it into Corel Draw X6. But Photo-Paint CPT was not listed in the CorelDraw read file list as a valid file format. So I forced it to read the CPT file and CorelDraw gave me an error message saying that it could not read the file.
So it looks as if I own and want to use a product that, according to Corel, does not even exist! There are no books available to help me learn it, it is not listed on the Corel products list, and Corel Draw X6 cannot read its files!
I would love a link or more information to help me compare these two products so I can decide which to use for my project. Photo-Paint looks much better to me, but I don't want to commit to an unsupported product.
Thanks!
Tim
Hi Tim,
Clearly you got a lot of learning to do. I started the same way but with v.6 a long time ago. Check out this site for starters, lots of info on both programs and why. http://www.unleash.com
There is a big difference in Draw and PP and together you can do it all, you will find you need both programs. Also plenty of help here.
Timothy Masters said:But Photo-Paint CPT was not listed in the CorelDraw read file list as a valid file format.
There are some "optional" import formats which have to be chosen at install time. But I'm fairly sure that CPT is a format installed as standard.
Easiest way to check is to drag a CPT file on to a CorelDraw desktop shortcut, or into an open CorelDraw window. The CPT file should open. Or, you should be able to do it from the CorelDraw File > Open menu. Drop down the "all file formats (*.*) selector and look to see if CPT is there.
ps -- Photopaint not sold as a product in its own right, so you'll only find it documented as part of the CorelDraw suite.
Thanks folks for the information. I followed that link and did some exploring and learned a lot. I see now that the difference is that Draw is primarily a vector editor and PhotoPaint is primarily a raster editor. Sheesh, you'd think Corel would put something basic like that on their website. It should not require a user to go to a third-party site to find a simple answer like that.
Also, thanks for suggesting that I drag a CPT file into an open CorelDraw window to open it. That works. I did try once more to just filter for *.* (All Files) and force the CPT file to open with File/Open. Once again I just get an error message. Kind of strange that File/Open fails to open a CPT file in Draw, but dragging and dropping works. Oh well.
In any case, now that these things are cleared up, I'm on my way. I bought a huge book on learning these products, and I'm working my way through it. Should be fun. Thanks again for the help.
Timothy Masters said: Kind of strange that File/Open fails to open a CPT file in Draw, but dragging and dropping works. Oh well.
Kind of strange that File/Open fails to open a CPT file in Draw, but dragging and dropping works. Oh well.
Because they are different type of programs, so just opening a .cpt file in draw will not work. You will first need to create or open a .cdr type file in draw, then use "file - import", or as suggested, drag and drop, or, copy and past.
You will first need to create or open a .cdr type file in draw, then use "file - import", or as suggested, drag and drop, or, copy and past.
I'm not sure why it allows CPT files to be "opened" only when dragged and dropped, but there's an alternative if you want to do it from the menu -- start a new document (file > new) and use file > import to bring it in.
There is also a lot of information available via the help menu :