• export 90% of designs in 1 click
• protect your jobs from unauthorized use
• background archives creation of exported files
• export with page border

One of the most common operations when working in CorelDraw is to export the document to various formats. Depending on what you do , it can be performed dozens of times during the working day. CorelDraw's built-in features are quite powerful, but each time you need to specify the formats, resolution, folders to which the files will be saved, which can take a significant amount of time even for a single export, let alone repetitive operations.

The Fast export allows you to execute 90% of export operations in 1-2 clicks, eliminating the need to specify the same thing each time. As a result, saving the working time of a designer or a specialist pre-press can reach a considerable value.

Basic functions

The plugin exports the current page, all pages of the document or selected objects based on interactive format parameters, resolution and quality level for jpegs.

Popular raster formats JPEG, PNG and TIFF are available for export, you can also save the document in PDF format. 1 In addition, the plugin provides the ability to generate a JPEG PDF file — this is a pdf file in which the pages are composed of raster images, rather than vector ones like with normal exports. This allows you not to open your design in vector form suitable for printing to third parties and protects your work from unauthorized use.

Depending on the format of the output file, additional export options are available. For JPEG files, you can set the color model of the finished image (RGB/CMYK/GRAYSCALE), and for PNG files a transparent background.

When you run the plugin without first setting up, you can perform export to the same folder as the current open document. This option is not active if the document has not yet been saved. The output folder, if necessary, can be selected manually by clicking on the button at the bottom right to open the path selection dialog. The last exported path is also added to the list for quick selection in the future.

Fixed output folders

A much wider use of the plugin opens when pre-configured fixed folders where the exported images will be saved. This allows you to get rid of the need to specify directories and file names for each operation. To do that, you need to call up the settings form by clicking on the gear icon in the lower right corner of the plugin main window. 3

There are two lists of folders in this form. In the first one, you can specify the paths that you regularly use for export. To add a new item, click on the   sign in the list header. For the newly added folder, you must select the name that will be used for it in the list and, of course, the path for the folder.

Fixed export options

By default, the "Custom saving options" check box is disabled, this means that export to this folder will be performed with the interactive parameters taken from the plugin main window. When this checkbox is set on, the plugin will always use the same individual settings you enter here, ignoring interactive parameters.

Alternative export

For every fixed folder you need to provide the kind of confirmation that should be used when the exported image is saved. The first option is "alternative choice". All folders with this option fall into one list (together with export to the current document's directory) and you can choose only one item to perform the operation. This list is accessible from the left side of the main form of the plugin and is the main one. If it does not have any available option to choose, export can be performed only with a manual assignment of the destination folder.

Background export

Two other options allow you to create entries for the fixed folders, which are executed in addition to the main selected option and create a sort of "background" operations list. This list, if there are suitable settings, is on the right hand side of the main window of the plugin. In front of each fixed folder there is a checkbox that allows to further influence the use or not use it when exporting.

In the fixed folder settings you can specify whether this check box is off by default ("confirmation required") and export will be performed only with additional confirmation by the operator, or the check box is enabled by default and the export will be executed each time if the operator does not change it ("save unless cancelled").

Mirroring folders structure

The second list of the configuration form contains the paths to the folders that are the root for saving your jobs. Most designers have a certain place in which all the created documents are saved. The internal structure of subfolders in them can be quite complex and include folders for individual customers, orders, etc.

When you export from such "root" design folders to another location, you can specify whether to maintain the internal structure of the subfolders. To enable this tick on the "keep folders nesting structure" checkbox.

For example, if all jobs are kept in the \\Designer-1\Jobs folder,1 and the archive is in the \\Diskstation\Archive folder,3 then when you export the job from \\Designer-1\Jobs\Customer name\Order 7334\Sertificate.cdr plugin automatically generates the required path and saves the exported image to \\Diskstation\Archive\Customer name\Order 7334\Sertificate.jpg

This approach allows you to simultaneously store and easily locate the exported files, but not provide undesirable access to the folders with the source files themselves.

By default, for all newly created fixed folders entries, this option is active. If it is disabled, the export will be performed immediately to the specified folder without creating subpaths and files with the same name will be overwritten. When saving images, the page number is added to the name of the file.

Interactive parameters values

At the bottom of the configuration form, two fields are available in which you can adjust the values to select the resolution and quality of the export to jpeg if the default values are not suitable for your purposes. In each list, you can specify 6 integer values, separated by a comma or a space. If an invalid value is entered, it will be ignored. After exporting from the main form, the plugin saves the last used parameters and activates them at the next start.

Specifying the page border when exporting

When exporting CorelDraw creates the output file exactly on the boundaries of all objects. This behavior is not always desirable as for example it does not allow you to estimate the sizes of objects relative to the page size when viewing or printing such a file.

In the main window interactive parameters and in fixed folder settings, you can specify the need to save the file with the page boundary specified. The border itself is not printed, but the plugin generates an output file in which you can see the actual location of objects within the page boundaries.