Attn Grphc Dsgnrs: CorelDRAW X6 CMYK/bitmap/artistic text printing issue

[Signals]

CorelDRAW X6 CMYK/bitmap/artistic text printing issue.

I have this advertisement that I created using CorelDRAW X6. This advertisement is basically text. Black, purple(CMYK 68, 100, 20, 21) and gold(CMYK 0, 50, 98, 0). The advertisement was created from scratch using CorelDRAW's artistic text feature and it also includes a company logo that was a bitmap that was provided for me.

I am printing this on a bright white paper (98 brightness) 32 pound laser printing paper and I am using a Konica Minolta magicolor 1600W color printer.

Initially the flyer came out fine with a couple of exceptions. My artistic text was printing the wrong shade of gold and purple and bitmap logo was printing a little bit too jagged for my taste.

I solved the problem of the text printing wrong shade by simply converting it to a bitmap image and now it matches the logo perfectly.

My question is how do I solve the problem of the artistic text that I converted to bitmap and the original bitmap logo from coming out to jagged?

The most important thing here is for me to maintain the proper color of purple and gold as per the guidelines that have been given to me.

If I convert the text from a bitmap back to CorelDRAW's artistic text, how do I get it to print the colors correctly? Or is there a method to get these bitmaps to print more cleanly and sharper?

I guess I should ask the obvious question here. Am I at an impasse with the limitation of my Konica Minolta magicolor 1600 color laser printer? Do I need to just kind of accept the fact that at 1200 by 600 dpi, this is all I am going to get? Truthfully, It doesn't look that bad, I am just exercising my perfectionist habit. I want it to be sharper if at all possible.

http://i177.***BLOCKED***/albums/w236/starkist_2007/c5397cfb-9e6e-412c-9aba-80db11c30dec.jpg​

 

[Signals]

The bubble over my contact info was a last second idea to avoid a guideline violation as per the forum rules. It's not a part of the design.

Got that in just in time before my 15 minute editing time frame expired.

 

[Seven]

Is it plugged in?

 

[kmp77]

Jagged means it's not high enough dpi. Print should be around 300 dpi.

So if a 6" x 4" print ad at 300 dpi would be 1800x1200 pixels. Normally text would NOT be converted to bitmap. You need to keep text as vector and images as bitmap or whatever. If your dpi is right and it's still jagged then that's the printer not being able to handle the resolution.

For colors, is the printer printing cmyk? Maybe the image is in RGB and the text is cmyk and that may be why it's not matching. Maybe convert the image to cmyk first. Been a while since I've done print but that's what I can remember.

I didn't even know they still made corel draw. I use photoshop/illustrator for design usually.

 

[Signals]

Jagged means it's not high enough dpi. Print should be around 300 dpi.

So if a 6" x 4" print ad at 300 dpi would be 1800x1200 pixels. Normally text would NOT be converted to bitmap. You need to keep text as vector and images as bitmap or whatever. If your dpi is right and it's still jagged then that's the printer not being able to handle the resolution.

For colors, is the printer printing cmyk? Maybe the image is in RGB and the text is cmyk and that may be why it's not matching. Maybe convert the image to cmyk first. Been a while since I've done print but that's what I can remember.

I didn't even know they still made corel draw. I use photoshop/illustrator for design usually.

Ha, yeah, CorelDRAW is still around. I am using it because I had used it many years ago and they offered a free 30 day trial for X6.

I did convert the colors to CMYK but was still having an issue with it. Converting the text to bitmap did solve my problem and I finally accepted the fact the the real problem was the resolution to my printer. It's fairly decent for a low end color laser but 1200 by 600 is just to low dpi to get the sharpness I wanted. It'll have to suffice.