CMX

CMX is Corel’s own format. This format—which stands for nothing at all, as far as we can tell—is an efficient version of the CDR format. It contains only the information necessary to render a drawing, but not the elements that helped you create it, like grid information, styles, or guides. Much of Corel’s clipart is stored in CMX format.

There are two ways to work with this format. The most obvious is to export drawings as Corel Presentation Exchange (the CMX format, which upon further scrutiny, should have been named the CPE format). Once done, you’ll be able to import the file into any Corel application that supports CMX. The second approach is less obvious: when you save your drawing for the first time (or issue a Save As command with an existing drawing), the Advanced button takes you to a screen of secondary options, one of which is called Save Presentation Exchange. With this option enabled, you embed the CMX data directly inside the CDR file. With this extra data, you can import the CDR file into other Corel applications that support CMX.

Corel itself has watered down the usefulness of CMX by offering direct support for CDR in most of its other applications. Still, this export option is useful for delivering a “just the facts” version of a drawing to another user, without all of the frills that might get in the way.

HPGL

HPGL is initially a command language for plotters of Hewlett-Packard. Because all CAD systems support plotters, it becomes a simple way to send data from CAD systems to 2D systems like word processors or imaging tools. When printing in HP-GL(/2), the printer will define points “a” and “b” and then draw a line between them. Consequently, if your image contains a lot of points or nodes, the plot file will have a harder time connecting the dots. This will result in larger file sizes and slower plots. The HPGL format is recommended for simple line art or text, and should be avoided if your file contains complex fills, bitmaps, or multiple multinode line segments.

WPG

As you probably expect, DRAW’s WPG exports are quite reliable, subject only to the limitations of WordPerfect itself. Some bitmaps are broken into separate pieces, complex fills are rendered as bitmaps, all colors are converted to RGB through who knows what conversion method, and fountain fills are broken into multiple lines. On the up side, text remains editable and the correct typeface and format is retained.

Recommended For Simple files, such as logos, destined only for WordPerfect.

Avoid When Using complex fills and bitmaps.

Portable Documents

In one of the sleeper moves of DRAW 8, export support for creating Adobe Acrobat or Portable Document Files (PDF) was included. These filters didn’t meet any of our export standards, and in version 9 have been dropped in favor of the excellent new Publish to PDF engine. Read all the details about Publish to PDF in Chapter 28 to learn how to create highly accurate and transportable files from your DRAW documents.

Exporting to Bitmap Formats

Exporting to a bitmap format is not unlike converting a graphic to a bitmap within DRAW—all of your clean, intelligent curves are transformed into an army of unintelligent dots. The advantage of exporting to a bitmap format is that you have not permanently dummied down your drawing—when you’re done exporting, your drawing still contains all of its curves. Furthermore, you might be surprised at how good a 300dpi TIFF file can render your work.

	NOTE For the details on Web graphics, we send you back to Part V. In general, DRAW can create GIF and JPEG files, and the newer PNG and Wavelet formats. It also offers a Wizard for turning a finished page into an HTML file, with all formatting and positioning maintained.

The Dialog

The Bitmap Export dialog has been updated in DRAW 9. The new dialog, shown below, is smaller, arranged more logically, and offers a few new choices.

Color

The usual suspects: Black and White, 16 Color, Grayscale, Paletted, RGB, and CMYK. If your chosen format does not support one of these color depths, that choice will not be on the list.

Anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing is a process that simulates smoother transitions between contrasting colors by creating pixels of intermediary colors between the transitions. Choose this option to reduce the appearance of jaggies. For graphics with small text or straight lines, you will probably see better results without anti-aliasing. We offer chapter and verse in Chapters 21 and 22.

Dithered

Check this box to create the illusion of more color in paletted and other low-color images. A second cousin to anti-aliasing, dithering simulates a greater tonal range with dots of color instead of solid blocks. This option will create larger compressed files and should be used carefully when creating Web graphics, since large areas of color which compress easily are eliminated. For examples of dithered graphics, consult Chapter 21.

Transparent Background

If an image format supports “alpha channels” (such as TIFF, PNG, CPT, and PSD), this option will be available. An alpha channel is another channel like the RGB channels. This extra “alpha” channel defines the relative transparency of the pixel. It is an 8-bit (256-level) grayscale representation of the image and is used to “mask out” the color of the underlying pixels. By checking it, you are telling DRAW to create an alpha channel for any background area contained in the final image’s bounding box. This is an easy way to banish those pesky white backgrounds on the fly, without ever leaving DRAW.

Use Color Profile

Check this box to enable your active color profile when image colors are translated. For more on color management, see Chapter 27.

Uncompressed File Size

This tells you information about the expected size of the export, before compression. If this number is incredibly high, you might need to decrease Resolution, but export the file first and judge for yourself. We have learned not to blindly trust DRAW’s estimates.