tshirt company wants file in cdr or cps...

Do you know someone with Corel?
Or you could use the fully functioning trial: http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod3670089

Btw, as it may be important, what is the format you currently have the design in?

krossfyter said:

so tshirt company whats file in cdr or cps. i dont have corel draw.

what can be done?

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I always have the same problem, but Corel can open EPS formats from illustrator.

Watch out for trasparency and gradietns but for flat art you'l be fine.

AFAIK Corel opens .ai as well as .eps files. I run into the same problem with every printer here using Corel exclusively. Never had a problem with the print output yet though, I give them .eps's and print ready PDFs of the same file.

Zoreke said:

Watch out for trasparency and gradietns but for flat art you'l be fine.

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Yes. Gradients in particular have a tendency to start 'banding' when moved between different vector packages -- I used to get it all the time moving files between Freehand, CorelDraw and Illustrator, even when saved as EPS files rather than any of the proprietary file formats.

Cheers

Jim

Funkatronic said:

AFAIK Corel opens .ai as well as .eps files. I run into the same problem with every printer here using Corel exclusively. Never had a problem with the print output yet though, I give them .eps's and print ready PDFs of the same file.

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we use both corel and ai at my job, and i haven't been able to get corel to open ai..? maybe its a function I'm missing

as he said though an eps would work just as fine as a cdr

This doesn't make sense to me.

Why would a printer want a corel file? The standard is .eps file or .pdf. Even high-res .jpg or .tiff. What printer doesn't have standard Adobe software to open .eps?

I'm sure I'm being ignorant here as I don't know the whole story.

I know this is old, but thank you.

I'm trying to get some business cards printed while I'm living in China. I sent a PDF front and back, but they responded (a week later) telling me I sent two images and they didn't know what to do or what size to print them at. Then they told me they wanted CDR files.

I'll send them some EPS, and see if that works.

krossfyter said:

...
the current format i have it in is jpeg. but i can easily transfer it to eps/vector cause i do have illustrator.

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If you place a JPEG in an AI file and save or export as EPS you will not have vector art in the EPS.

EPS is not a "vector" format. It is a metafile format that supports a range of mixed data types. These include bitmaps, vector, and fonts. The same is true of Ai format and CDR format.

The T-shirt company might accept an EPS, but they may be really limited to CDR format files. You need to find out what elements you can include in the CDR file. They may need pure vector or may accept placed bitmaps. You need to find out. You also need to find out whether they require either CMYK or RGB color space and whether they accept, or even require, spot colors.

dwig said:

The T-shirt company might accept an EPS, but they may be really limited to CDR format files. You need to find out what elements you can include in the CDR file. They may need pure vector or may accept placed bitmaps. You need to find out. You also need to find out whether they require either CMYK or RGB color space and whether they accept, or even require, spot colors.

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The T-Shirt question from @krossfyter is about 6 years old!

mrbobdobolina said:

I sent a PDF front and back, but they responded (a week later) telling me I sent two images and they didn't know what to do or what size to print them at. Then they told me they wanted CDR files.

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Making a new thread would have been easier to read through the topic. Nevertheless I try to answer your question.... here a small crash course..

If it took the printer a whole week to give a reply like that to you, I'd recommend searching for another printer, especially if Corel Draw is a nogo for you and the printer can't make you a better proposal. A good printer can print almost everything you give to him. If you have no idea of what he needs, it usually means more work for him and more money for you to spend.

Making a business card in Corel Draw and sending a CDR is possible but not really convenient. Sending a PDF is IMHO the international accepted right way to do it. An EPS is, like @dwig pointed out, just a container similar to a single PDF page and no guarantee for a good result.

If you just want to get a quality business card and don't want to became a designer or publisher, I recommend finding some experienced artist, prepress expert or advertising agency nearby and let her or him do the job. A designer around the corner knows about standard business card sizes in China (AFAIK a final size of 90 x 54 mm) and also knows about the common used standards at your place.

There are different ways to get a print job done, some are more and some are less common. The first question is the output device. Is it an inkjet or a laser printer, screen printing or what is most common for a business card offset printing? I continue expecting it to be offset.

There are different ways to get the data done for a printing job. For a business card Adobe InDesign would be my first choice for the layout and text. Depending on the design I'd import files from Adobe Illustrator and/or Adobe Photoshop. Illustrator is great for vector art that can scale without any loss of quality, that makes it perfect suitable for logos and other components of branding. Photoshop is perfect for images or any kind of graphics that are consisting of pixels and are therefore normally just scalable in a limited range. Most typical your pixel images would need a resolution of 300 dpi at the original size. Higher resolutions like 1200 dpi at original size are nowadays less common, but can be used to get sharp b/w Bitmap pixel art that comes close to the sharpness of a vector. If possible don't use any pixel based images for your first business card, as it needs some extra experience. After putting all the elements together export a PDF from InDesign following the guidelines of the printer.

Typical tasks or guidelines include to...
... set the bleeding of the document (the part that will be cutted away after printing, typical + 3 mm at every side for the bleeding)
... choose the colors, color space and color profile (offset printing typically requires Spot colors, that are colors mixed in advance with a reproducible recipe that are filled directly into the printing machine, or more common 4c or CMYK colors, that is mixing the 4 colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and the Key-Color, usually Black, on the paper while printing)
... do the color separation (a CMYK pixel image file is ideally converted from RGB with the proper icc color profiles e.g. with standard profiles from ECI, Fogra, Idealliance, etc. or a custom icc profile from the printing partner that fits exactly to the printing machine, paper and color that will be used.)
... use fonts that can be printed (Typically PostScript and not TrueType based fonts) or convert them to (vector)curves
... maybe embed some PDF/X-standard.
... check the exported PDF directly in Adobe Acrobat Pro to make sure the print will be fine.

If you do it yourself, you can exchange the mentioned Adobe software, but the software has to be capable of doing those tasks.

If you really need a CDR file, you should install Corel Draw on a Windows guest in VirtualBox or on BootCamp. There is no Corel Draw for Mac out right now, converters or export add-ons are giving mixed or just bad results. You can archive the mentioned tasks with Corel Draw, but IMHO it is some kind of pain. To get a print job done in Word or Pages is about the same.

If you want to have a cheap or no-cost alternative, I'd recommend Scribus as a substitution for InDesign, avoid using pixel art or buy Affinity Photo, avoid using branding elements (did I really write this?) or buy Affinity Designer for creating Signets and Logotypes. Put everything together in Scribus or make the whole business card just with Affinity Designer, export a CMYK PDF and it shouldn't go too wrong. Apps like Gimp for pixel images or Inkscape are free and great but they still lack in CMYK or Spot Color production. If the colors of your business card are not really important (did I really write this, too?) you could make RGB pixel or vector elements with these Apps, put them together in Scribus and make a color conversion to CMYK during PDF export. This would lead to a color shift but at the same time to a possibly correct PDF file for printing without having to buy software licenses.

I said possibly, because there are many pitfalls that can be on your way, if you start your first printing job and still many years later. Therefore I recommend a good printer that has a better responding time at least. If your printer has the same software that you use, then you're able to give him open data files. That makes life easier for the printer to correct your files that could have many mistakes inside if you're just beginning.

I think that's what your printer is asking you. He probably thinks that you are using Corel Draw as it is a common tool for many PC users (including professionals for various things like foil plot, embroidery or postmarks). The printer just wants open data files that he can correct and more important access the different design elements.

Sending a pixel image inside a PDF is usually not the best thing for business card production. Sending a pixel image as EPS is the same bad idea. That image inside contains everything in one layer and that is really hard, up to impossible to rework. Sending an image as TIF file is not a really good idea, either. At least every typographic or logo element would get printed blurred, if the layout wouldn't get completely reworked. Though a TIF image can be a valid base for a printer to do the prepress publishing, if he's willing to recreate the whole file. Depending on your creation it could take him several hours or days to select the right fonts, make the typesetting, vectorize logos and make your business card professionally printable. If there is a background image inside your design it gets even more complicated to provide it in a separate file or layer. It's a long and unnecessary work for the printer if you provide any kind of pixel image to him, unless you know exactly what you do. That's why a good artist can make a correct file faster and probably cheaper and of course with a good quality for you from the scratch.

Use vectors where vector files should be used, use fonts to get sharp outlines at text and use pixel images, where pixels should be used. To get that delivered to a printer, PDF is the first choice, because there are too many platforms, apps and app versions to get layouts with open data shared correctly. Years ago open data was the standard for printing and PDF made life a lot easier. How you create a PDF for publishing is nothing that can be explained and generalized in just a single reply like that, but I hope you got an idea of what to do with your business card files. Good Luck!