I worked with Corel for a very long time and used for print as well and i may have some handy advice for all the fellow designers using CorelDraw as the main source for vector drawings.

Since i am a self thought designer i am not quite sure if i am a very good teacher,but i will try nonetheless to describe a few steps on how to transform your Corel Draw files into Illustrator format.
In most of the situations the printing company requires native Illustrator files or EPS files for print. Corel is a powerful vector tool and very handy, but it lacks of fidelity when documents are printed. Aside of that as Alli mentioned in an earlier article, many comapnies cannot handle Corel files and require Adobe files. Now, from my experience the shapes that cause problems are the ones that in Corel they use transparency effects, other gradients than circle and linear, generally speaking: most of the issues with Corel are related with it’s special graphic design functions that will be always misinterpreted by the printer and very well known issues regarding the color proofing.

Next you will see a very simple tutorial on how to make your work valuable for a client.

First let’s take the worst scenario: O’sphere design, aka The Orb designed in a native CorelDraw file:

Step1

Oh my, what do we have here, a beautiful logo with nice effects and catchy colors. Client must have been impressed and i am sure he is satisfied with the results. Is he really? Mnaaah, I don’t think so.
First of all fellows we have get rid off the effects that can cause problems in illustrator.
So, all being said, open the CorelDraw file and in a a very unfortunate way all your shiny and attractive beautiful sparkling logo will have to be stripped down to it’s nakedness. Technically what we are going to do is to remove all the effects used and let the shapes flat colored, let’s say in white for example. (see image bellow)

Then simply export the file from Corel to Illustrator and use the settings for exporting to Illustrator ver. 8 (see the image bellow) :

Easy, huh?…
Now let’s go to that strange orange icon from your desktop and open illustrator. Open the exported file with illustrator (Menu File->Open), and right before the artwork expands you will be prompted to choose the color profile: RGB or CMYK. Obviously you will choose CMYK and hit the Open button. You will look then at the file laid out in all its splendor in front of your eyes. Note that you may be prompted a second time to choose what to do with the missing color profile. just select for the moment the color profile from illustrator, or what ever. We will discuss this properly in another article.
Et voilà, this is your first step into making a happy client. Hurray!!!
Not so fast though…we are moving now to the next step, where we have to re-build the following:
1 Shades and shadows
2 Colors
3 Anything that is not looking like in my submitted winning entry.

Step2

In the left top corner of your illustrator you have to select the select tool (or use key V from your keyboard).Then go to your artwork and click on it once or select all (ctrl+A). That means you have selected the artwork. Now, right click the artwork and select ungroup. That means all the logo elements are ungrouped.(see image bellow) Note that comparing to CorelDraw, Illustrator lays all the objects in “invisible layers” – one on top of each other. Remember that as it will be useful later.
Now here it comes the handy thing. You always have your Corel file and you can see the effects used. Well, good news fellows, you can also do that in illustrator. Not as easy as in Corel draw, but it sure can be done. What i usually do is to make a print screen from the CDR file and paste it in the illustrator file so that i can have a face-to-face comparison.
That moves us further into the job.
Now, as you see the ex-transparent shapes are now white. Select one of them – let’s select as in the image bellow – and now we have to re-build the transparency effects.

I know two ways to make that happen:

1 The modest way:

Simply select the white shape and then apply to it a gradient from registration black (C100M100Y100K100) to White. Open the Menu->Window->Transparency panel and while you selected the shape you already applied the gradient then set it’s transparency mode to screen. Select then the gradient tool while keeping the shape in selection and play with the gradient like you do in corel, but now think that this is your actual transparency tool you used in CorelDraw.
I call this method the modest way because this is not the best way as some things may go wild when printed just because we are using transparency in an unprofessional way. It’s accurate enough to be satisfactory – given the fact that we already designed a logo that contains gradients and shiny things.
I will link here a useful article on how to use the gradient tool in illustrator:

http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/publishing/articles/13240.aspx

2. The old way:

Meaning you have to make use of opacity mask feature in illustrator.
An opacity mask is practically helping the designer to control the transparency of a shape.
This one can be a little difficult if you are not very familiar with illustrator but it’s not an end.
Let’s try the old way.
a) In the illustrator file please select the shape as seen in the image bellow.
b) Copy it (ctrl+c) and then paste it on top (ctrl+f).
c) Select the one that is above and add a gradient from black to white as in the image.
Offset the gradiented circle a little bit so you can visualize both shapes (as in the image).
Select both shapes and then align them by using the alignment tab – see image.
Go to the transparency tab and in the upper right, click on the little arrow. (Palette Options) Select “Make Transparency Mask.”
And there you have it.
After you place the object in the right position, you can play with the gradient if you select the opacity mask from the transparency tab as in the figure bellow.
Then select the gradient tool ( G ) and you can play around  to obtain the desired transparency.
once you finished go back to the Transparency panel and click on the left object (as in the last image ) so that you can exit the clipping mask and can arrange the transparent object as you have it in Corel and edit the rest of the shapes. Repeat these steps for the other highlighted shapes and you will get the desired result. This can also apply to the mirrored text.

That was about transparency. I know it may look a little too elaborate but don’t be afraid. With practice – that not necessarily means many wins –  you will start to move faster and faster on the layout and the illustrator tabs. Believe me it wasn’t easy for me either, but if you are a true designer then you need to learn how to adapt your client’s requirements and learn that doing logos is not just a funny way to make some money.

Next episode i am going to show how are we going to adjust the colors mostly using the gradient tool ( g ) and the color picker aka Eyedropper tool ( i ) .

Until then i will let you do your lessons you old corel users and meantime you can read some useful tips about illustrator gradient and transparency tool here:
http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/transparent-gradients-in-illustrator/

P.S. I advise you to start with Illustrator CS4 – the most stable version so far.

*If none of the initial designs are not on the target then there will be an additional two design concepts based on more information from the client.
**Stationery contains: letterhead, business card, envelope, folder (prepress included)

The design was inspired by the collective idea: