ResourceSpace – Preview images not generated for CDR and Affinity files

[shivang patel]

Hello everyone,

We are currently evaluating ResourceSpace (Digital Asset Management platform) for our organization and have encountered an issue related to file previews.

At the moment, preview images (thumbnails / previews) are not being generated for the following file formats:

• CorelDRAW (.CDR) files

• Affinity Designer / Affinity Photo files (.afdesign, .afphoto, .afpub)

These file types are widely used in our design workflow, and the lack of preview images makes it difficult for users to quickly identify and browse assets within ResourceSpace.

We would like to understand:

1. Whether ResourceSpace supports preview generation for CDR and Affinity file formats natively.

2. If not, are there any recommended server-side tools, plugins, or converters (e.g., ImageMagick, Ghostscript, LibreOffice, custom scripts) that can be integrated to enable preview generation?

3. Has anyone successfully implemented a custom preview workflow for these formats within ResourceSpace?

Any guidance, workarounds, or best practices from the community would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help.

[Dan Huby]

ResourceSpace doesn't handle any conversions natively and uses external tools such as ImageMagick and FFMpeg for conversions (as do most if not all DAMs).

It looks like it might be possible to add CDR support to ImageMagick:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21308845/cdr-to-svg-convert-using-imagemagick

I couldn't immediately see any way to add support to ImageMagick for Affinity files. 

You can manually upload previews for any file - it's just a bit more work. From the resource page choose "Upload preview image" and select a JPEG file.

Dan

[Philip Panelli]

There is one possibility that I can think of for the  CorelDRAW  files.  I'm going to assume a LAMP stack.   

Install inkscape on the server.    Inkscape has support for CorelDraw files but your mileage may vary.  Use the inkscape command line parameters to get your files to see if your files will convert from the command line.  If you are good from the command line you can do something like this in your config.php file.

// STL Preview pwp
$file_upload_preprocesing_extensions[] = 'cdw';
$external_preview_tools[] = array(
    'extension' => 'cdw',
    'command'   => 'inkscape    --export-filename=FILENAME  --export-type=TYPE  --export-dpi=DPI  --export-width=WIDTH or -w WIDTH / --export-height=HEIGHT' 
);

 You can look the command line parameters up and adjust.  I have tried this with stl files from 3d printing software and had  limited success.  

If you can't get a straight inscape conversion to work with the files ,  you need to search for another command line utility that can produce a jpg from the file.