I've been using CorelDraw since Version 3, about 1995 or so. Since 2010 I've been on Version X5, which was doing everything I needed it to do, so no need to upgrade. In February 2019, I got an email from Corel stating they thought I was using an illegal version, and offered to sell me the current version for 1/2 price. I stated my copy was legal and tried every way to prove it was. The final message I sent included pictures of the DVD case, the DVD, and the serial number stickers. Not good enough. They wanted the receipt. I challenged them to find a receipt for everything they had purchased in the past 9 years but didn't get an answer to that. Their final message to me was to say that they would disable my program and I would be able to view files, but not modify or print. That never happened. Every time I launched the program the window popped up saying it was illegal but I could still do everything. Just this week I had to replace my hard drive. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to reregister the program so I went out to look for a replacement and found this. Imagine how delighted I was to be able to open my Corel files. There will be a huge learning curve to learn Inkscape, but Corel is out of my life now. Thank you, developers.
You are not alone in the "You have an unregistered copy of Corel" diaspora. A large number of new Inkscape users are migrating from Corel for that reason, the trend towards subscriptions, and the incompatibility of older versions with Win10.
If you can get back into Corel, I suggest saving all your work as SVG files, there should be a batch conversion macro to make it less cumbersome. Inkscape can open some Corel files, but the svg format is native and more reliable.
I am like JerryK. I have had every version up the X8 AND not going to go any further. Having used CorelDraw every working day for about 30 years I have a fair understanding of how it works and still learning.
However with Corels push to annual subscription we won't be going any further so they have lost another client. Have installed Inkscape and now the learning process starts again. In Inkscape can you modify keys eg in CorelDraw F2 is zoom in and F3 is zoom out - just what I am used to. Also does Inkscape have any Macro ability please.
Macros can be approximated by the use of custom Extensions and/or command line operations. Not the same as recording keystrokes, but there are 3rd party programs that can do that also.
Yes I used Corel Draw! when I was on Windows. Every version from 1 to 13 (X3). Then I switched to Linux and the'yd stopped making the Linux version. I quickly got used to using Inkscape. And I don't miss anything fromCorel Draw! (apart from customisable toolbars).
Corel is a very different company culture than when they were founded. They contacted me by phone after stopping at their booth at a computer graphics conference in Chicago in 1989. They gave me a beta of their new graphics program for Window and I remember it coming with software like visual basic or something to customize it. By the second version of CorelDraw, I was able to create some respectable graphics for the various newsletters I was doing page layout for, but until I discovered the AmiPro WordProcessor for Windows Corel was my only Windows app.
At the time I was running Dr DOS with the GEM GUI by Digital Research. DRI DOS/GEM ran faster, managed memory better, and so was more stable than Microsoft DOS/Windows GUI. At the time I didn't think Microsoft had their act together because they didn't even have a Windows version of their own word processor available, just weird.
Besides Ventura Publisher was a full-featured Page Layout program which ran beautifully in GEM, with more features than Aldus Pagemaker running on Apple gear. I had found a Postscript emulator named Freedom of Press that ran great with a few scripted memory swaps combined with the Intel Edge Memory card upgrade increased print resolution to 600 x 1200 on my HP Laserjet for stunning printouts, equal or better than the Mac fanatics at fraction of the cost in hardware and software.
Anyway, I still use Corel for print work and causal sketching mostly because after all these years its interface is so familiar that it is invisible to me.
However, I really hate what Corel the company turned into and to be honest they haven't had an original thought for improving their software in decades.
The garbage code Corel exports when saving to any flavour of SVG makes it useless. Anything I need to do, for example, creating touchscreen interfaces for Open Stage Control, Inkscape is my exclusive go-to for creating clean code that I can easily parse through by eye and hand tweak using a simple code editor. This latest update is just amazing, so I am more motivated than ever to invest more time really becoming fluid in creating with it.
I have been using Coreldraw since 2006 but I do not like being held hostage to a company that adds one new color to their palette and says it's an update.
I have been using Corel X-8 since 2018 but once again I thing either you upgrade and then pay monthly or your program gets turned off.
I like InkScape and have been practicing using it for a while now and I like it.
I have a website with almost 1,500 CDR images and I want to do a batch transfer to ether SVG or PDF format and was wondering where to store the files and is therre a macro for bathch transfers. I use Window 10 now.
I use a Roland printer to produce the images and I send the images from Coreldraw in a EPS format and I was wondering it that would still work in InkScape?
Well the only thing holding me back is first I must figure out how to send my 1,500 images from CorelDraw to InkScape and if I should use SVG or PDF format to do it.
I also must find a place to store my images since I don't think I can do that on InkScape.
Then I will try and an image from InkScape to my Roland SP-300V printer and see if it works.
Thanks for creating such a wonderful graphics program.
Take it one step at a time. Not every CDR version is compatible with Inkscape. That may be why it boils down to PDF. @TylerDurden uses and has more experience with CD. I´m on macOS only.
At least you´ll store the files wherever you want - internally on your HD or externally on flash-drives etc.
I tried exporting the CDR images in Inkscape to see if it would work but the results were not good.
I will convert a few images from CDR to SVG and see if that works better.
I have been using Inkscape all day getting used to it and I really like it. I find everything that was in Coreldraw is in Inkscape just in different places.
I have now tried converting my CDR images into SVG images and importing into Inkscape but none of the images look correct and all of them would need to be fixed in Inkscape.
Not sure what to try next!
Since my images are only used for a website I design in CYMK colors and save has a CDR images but when I upload to my website site all of the images are converted to JPEG images and the color value is changed to RBG colors for the internet.
The reason I design in CYMK colors in my Roland Printers uses CYMK ink cartridges. I know that is what Rip software in for but the colors never would print correctly when I designed in RBG colors. After a great deal of trial and error I consuled a friend with a Degree in Graphics and explained my problem and he told me just to design in CYMK and it worked fine until now when I want to use Inkscape but unless I can figure out a way to import my images into Inkscape I may be forced to stay with CorelDraw.
This method has worked for many years with no problem.
Maybe provide sample images in CDR and SVG converted by Corel.
Inkscape can use CMS settings (there are some bugs), and that may help get the conversions to look correct in Inkscape, but further conversion/output to RGB might not look right due to differences in gamut.
I use Inkscape almost exclusively, but myself and others here also use Affinity Designer, Illustrator and Corel (mostly for testing and conversions).
Not to muddy this thread, but I just wanted to chime in and also say I've made the choice to move from CorelDRAW to Inkscape. I've used Inkscape in the past to open SVG files and save them in a different format that CorelDRAW can open, as CorelDRAW tends to handle SVG's really poorly. 🙄 I, like others, have been using CorelDRAW for a long time. My first version was CorelDRAW 3, which came on a stack of floppy disks, and I was still using Windows 3.11 on a 386. CorelDRAW was the reason I spent the extra money to get the 386 Math Co-Processor for my computer, however, I am sick and tired of everything going to a mandatory subscription, and it is time to reverse the roles in my toolbox, and switch from CorelDRAW being my daily driver and Inkscape being my support convertor program to learning Inkscape and making it my daily driver and using CorelDRAW to convert my old work to open formats.
Community question for other CorelDRAW refugees, did you go to GIMP for your Corel PHOTO-PAINT replacement, or is there something else for raster editing that Corel users tend to migrate to?
How Do You Use Inkscape? To replace CorelDraw
Inkscape.org
Hi folks
I've been using CorelDraw since Version 3, about 1995 or so. Since 2010 I've been on Version X5, which was doing everything I needed it to do, so no need to upgrade. In February 2019, I got an email from Corel stating they thought I was using an illegal version, and offered to sell me the current version for 1/2 price. I stated my copy was legal and tried every way to prove it was. The final message I sent included pictures of the DVD case, the DVD, and the serial number stickers. Not good enough. They wanted the receipt. I challenged them to find a receipt for everything they had purchased in the past 9 years but didn't get an answer to that. Their final message to me was to say that they would disable my program and I would be able to view files, but not modify or print. That never happened. Every time I launched the program the window popped up saying it was illegal but I could still do everything. Just this week I had to replace my hard drive. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to reregister the program so I went out to look for a replacement and found this. Imagine how delighted I was to be able to open my Corel files. There will be a huge learning curve to learn Inkscape, but Corel is out of my life now. Thank you, developers.
Welcome.
You are not alone in the "You have an unregistered copy of Corel" diaspora. A large number of new Inkscape users are migrating from Corel for that reason, the trend towards subscriptions, and the incompatibility of older versions with Win10.
If you can get back into Corel, I suggest saving all your work as SVG files, there should be a batch conversion macro to make it less cumbersome. Inkscape can open some Corel files, but the svg format is native and more reliable.
I am like JerryK. I have had every version up the X8 AND not going to go any further. Having used CorelDraw every working day for about 30 years I have a fair understanding of how it works and still learning.
However with Corels push to annual subscription we won't be going any further so they have lost another client. Have installed Inkscape and now the learning process starts again. In Inkscape can you modify keys eg in CorelDraw F2 is zoom in and F3 is zoom out - just what I am used to. Also does Inkscape have any Macro ability please.
Keys can be remapped: https://inkscape.org/doc/keys092.html
Macros can be approximated by the use of custom Extensions and/or command line operations. Not the same as recording keystrokes, but there are 3rd party programs that can do that also.
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Extensions.html
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/CommandLine.html
Yes I used Corel Draw! when I was on Windows. Every version from 1 to 13 (X3). Then I switched to Linux and the'yd stopped making the Linux version. I quickly got used to using Inkscape. And I don't miss anything from Corel Draw! (apart from customisable toolbars).
Corel is a very different company culture than when they were founded. They contacted me by phone after stopping at their booth at a computer graphics conference in Chicago in 1989. They gave me a beta of their new graphics program for Window and I remember it coming with software like visual basic or something to customize it. By the second version of CorelDraw, I was able to create some respectable graphics for the various newsletters I was doing page layout for, but until I discovered the AmiPro WordProcessor for Windows Corel was my only Windows app.
At the time I was running Dr DOS with the GEM GUI by Digital Research. DRI DOS/GEM ran faster, managed memory better, and so was more stable than Microsoft DOS/Windows GUI. At the time I didn't think Microsoft had their act together because they didn't even have a Windows version of their own word processor available, just weird.
Besides Ventura Publisher was a full-featured Page Layout program which ran beautifully in GEM, with more features than Aldus Pagemaker running on Apple gear. I had found a Postscript emulator named Freedom of Press that ran great with a few scripted memory swaps combined with the Intel Edge Memory card upgrade increased print resolution to 600 x 1200 on my HP Laserjet for stunning printouts, equal or better than the Mac fanatics at fraction of the cost in hardware and software.
Anyway, I still use Corel for print work and causal sketching mostly because after all these years its interface is so familiar that it is invisible to me.
However, I really hate what Corel the company turned into and to be honest they haven't had an original thought for improving their software in decades.
The garbage code Corel exports when saving to any flavour of SVG makes it useless. Anything I need to do, for example, creating touchscreen interfaces for Open Stage Control, Inkscape is my exclusive go-to for creating clean code that I can easily parse through by eye and hand tweak using a simple code editor. This latest update is just amazing, so I am more motivated than ever to invest more time really becoming fluid in creating with it.
I have been using Coreldraw since 2006 but I do not like being held hostage to a company that adds one new color to their palette and says it's an update.
I have been using Corel X-8 since 2018 but once again I thing either you upgrade and then pay monthly or your program gets turned off.
I like InkScape and have been practicing using it for a while now and I like it.
I have a website with almost 1,500 CDR images and I want to do a batch transfer to ether SVG or PDF format and was wondering where to store the files and is therre a macro for bathch transfers. I use Window 10 now.
I use a Roland printer to produce the images and I send the images from Coreldraw in a EPS format and I was wondering it that would still work in InkScape?
I appreciate any help or ideas you might have.
Jim Hill
What is holding you back from some testing?
Well the only thing holding me back is first I must figure out how to send my 1,500 images from CorelDraw to InkScape and if I should use SVG or PDF format to do it.
I also must find a place to store my images since I don't think I can do that on InkScape.
Then I will try and an image from InkScape to my Roland SP-300V printer and see if it works.
Thanks for creating such a wonderful graphics program.
Jim Hill
Take it one step at a time.
Not every CDR version is compatible with Inkscape. That may be why it boils down to PDF. @TylerDurden uses and has more experience with CD. I´m on macOS only.
At least you´ll store the files wherever you want - internally on your HD or externally on flash-drives etc.
I would try the Corel export to SVG and see if it meets your needs. PDF is a poor (last resort) format for editing.
If the SVG from Corel is acceptable, I'd use the batch conversion plugin for Corel get the 1500 images to SVG.
Thanks for that very useful information.
I tried exporting the CDR images in Inkscape to see if it would work but the results were not good.
I will convert a few images from CDR to SVG and see if that works better.
I have been using Inkscape all day getting used to it and I really like it. I find everything that was in Coreldraw is in Inkscape just in different places.
I appreciate your help and ideas.
Jim Hill
I have now tried converting my CDR images into SVG images and importing into Inkscape but none of the images look correct and all of them would need to be fixed in Inkscape.
Not sure what to try next!
Since my images are only used for a website I design in CYMK colors and save has a CDR images but when I upload to my website site all of the images are converted to JPEG images and the color value is changed to RBG colors for the internet.
The reason I design in CYMK colors in my Roland Printers uses CYMK ink cartridges. I know that is what Rip software in for but the colors never would print correctly when I designed in RBG colors. After a great deal of trial and error I consuled a friend with a Degree in Graphics and explained my problem and he told me just to design in CYMK and it worked fine until now when I want to use Inkscape but unless I can figure out a way to import my images into Inkscape I may be forced to stay with CorelDraw.
This method has worked for many years with no problem.
Any idea on how to proceed?
Jim
Maybe provide sample images in CDR and SVG converted by Corel.
Inkscape can use CMS settings (there are some bugs), and that may help get the conversions to look correct in Inkscape, but further conversion/output to RGB might not look right due to differences in gamut.
I use Inkscape almost exclusively, but myself and others here also use Affinity Designer, Illustrator and Corel (mostly for testing and conversions).
Not to muddy this thread, but I just wanted to chime in and also say I've made the choice to move from CorelDRAW to Inkscape. I've used Inkscape in the past to open SVG files and save them in a different format that CorelDRAW can open, as CorelDRAW tends to handle SVG's really poorly. 🙄 I, like others, have been using CorelDRAW for a long time. My first version was CorelDRAW 3, which came on a stack of floppy disks, and I was still using Windows 3.11 on a 386. CorelDRAW was the reason I spent the extra money to get the 386 Math Co-Processor for my computer, however, I am sick and tired of everything going to a mandatory subscription, and it is time to reverse the roles in my toolbox, and switch from CorelDRAW being my daily driver and Inkscape being my support convertor program to learning Inkscape and making it my daily driver and using CorelDRAW to convert my old work to open formats.
Community question for other CorelDRAW refugees, did you go to GIMP for your Corel PHOTO-PAINT replacement, or is there something else for raster editing that Corel users tend to migrate to?