RGB to CMYK without my permission?

[impulselondon]

I think I'm screwed here - the file I spent four months on in rgb has somehow been converted to cmyk without any action on my part. Now it quite naturally looks like complete crap and I'm about to shoot my computer.

Can anybody help me with this? Here's what I can give in steps leading up to this catastrophe:

i) My idiot friend installed 3D Studio Max 7.

ii) My other idiot friend insisted Firefox would be better then IE and installed that.

iii) I punched both of them incredibly hard in the head for touching my professional computer.

Oh god, please help me. Please please - I can't have lost that much work again.

 

[Brushman]

I don't see how the file could have changed without some kind of intervention, was it exported/imported into different programmes or formats in any way? Is it a Draw file or a Paint file and how is the colour model being reported and from where. Has your colour manager been altered/switched on/off. A rgb file normally shows on screen with fairly vivid colours, if the colour manager is switched on ie Corel now displays as how it may print to a given device simulating cmyk output it is not unusual for the colours to be less fibrant and sometimes appear muddy, so check colour manager first.
Alan

 

[impulselondon]

It's a mystery all right.

It's a standard .cdr file. All the colours are from a hand-created rgb palette I use, right down to hand-named colours. There are cmyk bitmaps littered throughout as drop shadows, but no source bitmaps (nothing that had to be imported). I checked and then reset every visual or display profile for all hardware on my computer. I uninstalled CORELsuite, restored XP, uninstalled and reinstalled every other program that has since been touched, reinstalled Corel, and everything goes back to almost-perfect...except this file is still screwed.

It's been saved by Corel with the rgb palette used converted to cmyk. And the worst part is that it didn't do it correctly, so I can't ever fix it. Some areas of my mid-blue it took as a grey colour, and some other areas of the same blue are now tan. The crimson has been replaced by mauve and green randomly, and the transparencies set to multiply have all done exactly what they should (big white areas now).

It's okay - I really don't know what triggered this, and since I've already put my foot through the computer it's no longer a big deal. Thank you for the thought, though.

 

[Brushman]

Sorry I was not mush help, I do know how you feel though.
Alan