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Will Affinity Designer eventually import cdr CorelDraw files?


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I'm just wondering ... I have 10+ years work in CorelDraw (I've had an Adobe Illustrator license too, but somehow I never liked AI).

So now I want to switch to Affinity Designer. But apparently I can't just go and open my old .cdr CorelDraw files. I'd have to convert them to .ai Adobe Illustrator files (and potentially lose line widths etc, anyway it's a tedious extra step). 

Are there any plans to have Designer open .cdr files? 

Edited by Loader
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Very unlikely, in my opinion, as the .cdr file format is proprietary to Corel and is undocumented.

If you convert your files to .ai format, be sure to use the appropriate compatibility options to ensure that the .ai files also contain a PDF representation of the data. Like .cdr, the .ai file format is proprietary, and Affinity can only read it if the PDF information is included.

You might consider (and try) simply converting to PDF rather than to .ai format.

-- Walt
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4 hours ago, Loader said:

Are there any plans to have Designer open .cdr files? 

 

24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Very unlikely, in my opinion, as the .cdr file format is proprietary to Corel and is undocumented.

 

 

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Try exporting from CorelDraw to another format. As with all these things, whatever features reside within CorelDraw, that don't reside in Affinity, they will not be transferred regardless of the format, in most cases those features will either be rasterised or not imported. Even if a feature is similar i.e. gradients, the method of application could be different enough to cause import issues. PDF seems to be the best bet format at the moment but don't expect miracles.

 

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Thank for the replies. Ok, yes, I tried pdf as the go-between and it does preserve the layers, line widths, line types, arrow types, fonts, colours, gradient fills, all done well. The only thing to do is make sure all the layers are visible and printable. As a work-around this will do I think.

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On 6/15/2019 at 6:20 AM, walt.farrell said:

Very unlikely, in my opinion, as the .cdr file format is proprietary to Corel and is undocumented.

 

Didn't stop Inkscape writing an import filter. And CorelDraw can import AI files, also proprietory. It goes without saying some features will be lost in the process.

There are a lot of disgruntled CorelDraw users watching the development of Affinity apps and whilst there is a long way to go for pro users to be able to jump ship, the ability to import CorelDraw files will be viewed as a huge positive in trying to attract those users, myself included.

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30 minutes ago, Hywel Harris said:

It goes without saying some features will be lost in the process.

Right. And some will be handled incorrectly. 

And the developers need to watch each new release or patch of CorelDraw and figure out what might have changed.

Yes, it can be done, but it is time-consuming, and when it is done it then becomes necessary to invest further time in the future to keep re-reverse-engineering to pick up the changes.

And when you've done one, lots of users will say "but why didn't you do <this one> that I really wanted" and expect you to reverse engineer 25 other formats, too.

If a developer wants to play that game, that's their decision. But if they decide they'd rather focus their limited resources elsewhere, that's also their decision.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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43 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Right. And some will be handled incorrectly. 

And the developers need to watch each new release or patch of CorelDraw and figure out what might have changed.

Yes, it can be done, but it is time-consuming, and when it is done it then becomes necessary to invest further time in the future to keep re-reverse-engineering to pick up the changes.

And when you've done one, lots of users will say "but why didn't you do <this one> that I really wanted" and expect you to reverse engineer 25 other formats, too.

If a developer wants to play that game, that's their decision. But if they decide they'd rather focus their limited resources elsewhere, that's also their decision.

Indeed it is, however as a developer you have to be mindful of what your potential customers are using and the tools that they offer. Corel userbase is as large as it is because historically CorelDraw offered the largest set of import and export filters (amongst other things). Affinity are late to the party which kicked off in the late 80's. By the mid 90's the current major players (adobe and Corel) were already established. For Affinity to prosper in the professional market (and thats where the money is, in professional level tools)  thats where they are going to recruit their customers from.

Your other drawbacks are easily solveable. Never offer current version import. Indeed establish an import filter for a recent stable version of the competitor product, say CorelDraw 2018. CorelDraw users of later versions can easily save back to that version, and more importantly can batch convert later files to an older version.

No-one expects an import filter to bring in features that don't exist in the Affinity software.

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55 minutes ago, Hywel Harris said:

 Affinity are late to the party which kicked off in the late 80's. By the mid 90's the current major players (adobe and Corel) were already established.

You do realise that Serif started in 1987?  Page Plus was released in 1990 a year after Corel Draw 1. 
That said I think being able to import Corel files would be a plus. Not that I have seen Corel since Version 3  in 1993-5  but there does seem to be a large userbase still.

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