Inkscape

Which file format to save drawings from in Corel Photopaint so as to open them in Inkscape for future editing.

Asked by Marquis

Hi,
I want to switch from Corel Photopaint to Inkscape, but I have a lot of drawings (building plans) which I drew in Photopaint, as in an older version they were accurately scaleable when printing.
After a PC died I bought Coreldraw Graphics Suite X4 (inc Photopaint X4) on a new PC and to my horror my older Photopaint files were no longer supported, so I resented having paid for the new Licence.
But now I am told if I upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 my X4 Photopaint licence won't work, and Corel want me to buy a brand new licence for another newer version, which I am not willing to do.

A committed Ubuntu friend introduced me to Inkscape, and it seems to do what I need.

Now I want to 'save as' my Photopaint files, in a format that Inkscape can read and open scaleably. Preferably so I can edit them, but keeping scaleable will be enough, when I print building plans I have to state the Scale - then a user can use a ruler to measure the drawing and derive the full scale measurement.

Even if I can't use each object, so long as the old drawing is to scale, I could then draw over the drawing, treating it like a background if the objects are merged with the background during the 'save as'.

Or I can output as PDF, not sure if that scales.

So, which is the best file format to save as, for future use in Inkscape, please?

(Sorry, I cant see a way to copy the list of Photopaint output formats to paste here)

Best wishes, Mark (Marquis)

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Hachmann (marenhachmann) said : 		#1

Hi Mark,

Inkscape can open (at least) these file formats that can contain vector data (scalable):

- svg (preferred!)
- ps, eps, pdf
- cdr, vsd
- ai

Proprietary formats like ai, cdr and vsd may be imported incompletely.

PDF import can produce files that become difficult to edit (strange grouping, unnecessary masks, texts broken into single letters). As pdf files can contain both raster and vector data, it depends upon the exporting program if the result will be scalable (vector data is scalable, raster image data isn't).

ps and eps don't support partial transparency.

If your Corel program can export to SVG, that would be the optimal route to go - as SVG files can not only be opened by Inkscape, but also by many other programs, because SVG is an open, standardized file format, so vendor-lock-in cannot happen.

Hope this helps choosing the right format.

Kind regards,
 Maren

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