I don't know if this is a problem or by design. My default color palette is CMYK. When I open the Vignette Effect (both in Draw and Paint) the color palette comes up as RGB. I change it to CMYK, adjust my vignette settings and close out of the dialogue. If I decide to change those settings and open Vignette on that same image, the existing Vignette settings do not come up. Rather, it reverts back to RGB and I have to change to CMYK and choose my correct color all over again.
What is worse is that I can't even tab between the C, M, Y and K to fill in my values. I have to click in each one with my mouse and type the changes in. Normally, in other areas of the program when working with palette colors, I can tab between those values, and when I am done, I can hit "Enter" to complete. Inside Vignette, I cannot hit enter to complete. The only way to get out of the Palette dialogue box is to click the mouse back into one of the values. Then the preview will update with those settings and I can click on the "x" to close the color Palette closes and "OK" to finish Vignette.
This is a tedious process and seems to me like it is not behaving correctly. Has anyone else experienced this and if so, did you find a way to fix it?
This is a known issue
I"m hoping it will be addressed in an update sooner rather than later. Do you know if it's on their radar or if it's a priority to fix?
Yes, finally someone from Corel Support (I could be wrong but it seemed like they were from the UK) who was monitoring these forums contacted me and gave me a new install file - exactly what you described they gave to you. However, all my previous attempts at contacting support on my own yielded absolutely nothing. They wanted copies of my win.ini file and a number of other things, which I sent them. Then they wanted to take over my machine remotely and "troubleshoot" it themselves and I refused so they closed the ticket. But not before trying to tell me that it wasn't their issue - it was my Windows installation that was the issue. When they finally gave me the proper installation file, I was up and running within minutes. What a waste of almost a year!
I'm glad to hear that it worked out for you.
I'm sorry to hear that the standard support process failed you so badly. I'm glad that an "angel" eventually rescued you, but it shouldn't have to come to that!
Did that get your VBA issues sorted out, too?
Yes, with the clean install of CDX8 the VBA issues disappeared.
I'm wondering if any of you can help me. I am designing a trade show media wall or pocket wall that is 10'w x approx. 8' high. This is not my idea for the design but the customer's. He wants the photos in a "vignette" treatment so that the edges fade out in an ellipse. Problem is, the background is not white. I thought I had it figured by setting the background an even 50% black (gray, in effect), and that is the color I set on the vignette. It all looks fine on screen, fine printed to postscript color printer. But the proof has just come back from my supplier and the rectangular edges of each photo is showing. Also, even though I am working in CMYK and 50% black, each time I convert to bitmap (for my background), the CMYK values change and are no longer 50% black. I'm thinking that is why there is a ghost of edges showing in the production proofs. I had to send them a PDF and EPS file to work with. I know I'd be better off editing the images in Paint but it has been so long since I have done any image work with transparency that I completely forget what to do to maintain the feathery edges. What would be the best way to do this so I don't get the boxes showing in the background, even if it is very light? Once this is viewed at actual size I think it's going to be very noticeable. The print process is dye sublimation.PDF
Is transparency an option?
Some discussion of that in this thread recently: Radial Feather on a Bitmap within Corel.
Yes - I think I just found a step by step by Brian from 6 years ago for X3, but it's the same in X8. Thanks guys, you're all awesome.
To be clear, I'm not thinking Photo-Paint, but transparency applied within CorelDRAW.
CorelDRAW has seen some nice changes to transparency capabilities (and UI) since X3.
Are you talking about bitmap color mask?
I'm thinking about transparency as applied using the Transparency tool.
I can't seem to get what I need using Draw's Transparency tool. I'm sure there's a way to do it, I just don't know how and don't have the time to spend learn it for this project. Making a clip mask with a gaussian blur works perfectly in Paint, but in order to preserve the edges and transparency I have to save as CPT file and then import into Draw. Then when I export the entire project file to PDF from Draw the images become exactly the same as if I had done the Vignette in Draw originally. I know this because when I import the PDF file back into Draw to see how it has handled the conversion, I am back to having grey rectangles around each "vignette" which is what I'm trying to avoid. And now I can't export to EPS at all, because the EPS filter doesn't recognize the CPT files that are placed in the Draw file. When they were just plain bitmaps with Draw's Vignette effect on them, they exported, but changed the color values enough so that the "transparent' portion of the bitmap, which was really colored in the Vignette tool to be the same as the background color, show up as "ghosted" rectangles around each image. Now when I try to export to EPS, it vectorizes the images and creates thousands of tiny slivers to make up each picture, and some are not all there. When I try to export to AI, which is what the supplier requested, I get a blank file. Nada. So that filter isn't working at all. I think the best I can do is export the entire background with the images to one, flattened JPG file. But the colors around the feathered edges of each photo goes quite wonky and doesn't look great either. I'm stumped and running out of time.