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Guilloches made on a Mac

Excentro: Version 1.9.13 September 18, 2013 / Excentro Lite: Version 1.9.14 July 29, 2014

About Excentro Downloads:

Excentro is a simple but advanced tool that can create guilloche designs like backgrounds, borders or rosettes. Excentro:
Current version:
The guilloches are vintage design elements that were frequently used for anti-counterfeiting security purposes on banknotes,
passports, checks and certificates during the past two hundred years. As the times changed and digital copy and printing 1.9.13
technologies perfected, guilloches no longer presented sufficient security measures that could prevent forging and counterfeiting of Release date:
valuable papers. Today the main part of security technology lies in the special paper or tricky inks the designs are printed upon or
with. September 18, 2013
Excentro (16 MB)
Still, it is too early to say that the days of guilloche designs are over. They can still be used to prevent the counterfeiting of products
that do not require the highest level of security (i.e. theater tickets, diplomas or gift certificates). Or, they can just be used to
decorate and add some aesthetic value to a product giving the money-like look and value. Excentro Lite:
Excentro was originally started in the early 90's as a solution for the emerging Russian security printing market. New promising Current version:
economy situations asked for a simple, yet not very expensive solution that runs on an industry standard graphic arts platform and 1.9.14
can produce the sort of patterns similar to what could be done on mechanical guilloche devices employed by government banknote
printing plants. Since then it went through several major updates and features overhauls Release date:
July 29, 2014
Excentro Lite (6.5 MB)

Online prices:
Excentro: $500
Excentro Lite: $25

Buy online:
Order page at Kagi

Excentro Features
1. Excentro interface
Each document in Excentro has three distinct areas to display: Preview, Structure and Layers.

Preview and Layers are similar to the windows of other graphic design applications: Preview displays guilloche graphics with
the magnifications specified, Layers shows back-to-front order of paths and allows the designer to arrange which objects are

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below or above.

The Structure area is the key highlight of Excentro. It illustrates the process of guilloche construction with graphic objects
presented as interconnected bases and elements.

2. Fast guilloche creation

With Excentro you can create all popular kind of guilloches: backgrounds, bands, frames, rosettes. The underlying principle is
similar to that of mechanical guilloche machines from the past and is based on the movement of drawing an object over a path
created in a similar way in previous steps.

Using Excentro requires some hands-on learning and browsing through the user guide and other reference materials. After
becoming familiar with Excentro you will find it quite easy and even fun to work with

3. Versatile step & repeat sets

(Step & repeat sets in Excentro Lite version are limited to single Step & Repeat set per design object and have only one
Constant type of increment.)

Excentro allows you to duplicate its graphic objects any number of times with the individual attributes of the objects modified by
user defined values.

With this Step & Repeat feature, you can create intricate guilloche designs in almost no time with few mouse clicks and
keystrokes. If the design needs to be modified or reworked later, you can just change several attributes of existing objects and their
Step & Repeat sets to get a design that looks different.

4. Automatic frames and tiles

(These features are only present in full Excentro version and are not available in Excentro Lite.)

Excentro can cut a part of the existing design, then reflect and repeat this part to create complex borders or backgrounds with
symmetrical patterns. You can even automatically create a complete rectangular frame for a certificate or diploma in this way.

Adjacent path segments and corners are accurately joined and stitched together to create continuous paths without overlapping line

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caps. This feature can also be used to crop a background or a border to certain area.

5. Stroke width modulation and reliefs

(These features are only present in full Excentro version and are not available in Excentro Lite.)

The stroke width of background paths can be changed by either modulation settings specified by the user or by the pixel value of
the underlying grayscale image. In the similar way portions of paths located over non-white areas of the underlying image can be
offset to create bas-relief like effects.

Any graphics file in common image formats (raster TIFF or vector PDF) can be imported into an Excentro document to be used
with this feature. You can even apply Step & Repeat sets to the images to vary its position, size, brightness or contrast.

6. Export after you finished

When a guilloche work in Excentro is over you can export the finished design in generic PDF, Adobe Illustrator format or create a
preview in TIFF, JPEG or PNG.

A PDF file can be directly printed or placed into a page layout application. An Illustrator file can be opened in the Adobe Illustrator
application to add some effects. Excentro layers and document settings are fully transferred to this format. Preview image files can
be sent to customers for design approval or placed into web pages.

You can download this information as a printable data-sheet in PDF-format.

It contains full resolution vector artworks (with all them borders and backgrounds) that might serve as an illustration of what typical Excentro output may look
like.
Excentro Data Sheet (PDF: 17.1 MB)

Excentro comes in two versions

Excentro is available in two versions made for different user groups with different feature sets and price preferences:

1. Excentro:

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Excentro, or the full application version, is geared to professional graphic artists who make designs for security papers,
certificates, packaging or even plastic cards. This version has all the features mentioned above.

To download full version of Excentro use the link below:

excentro1913.dmg (Version 1.9.13, 16 MB, Disk Image)

System requirements: Apple Macintosh with Mac OS X version 10.6, 10.7, 10.8 or 10.9. (32/64-bit Intel code only.)
Internet connection may be required for software activation.

Details: This is Mac OS X disk image created with Disk Utility application. If you are using non-Macintosh computer
to access internet resources, download the file and transfer it to Macintosh with Mac OS X system.

Recent version changes:

1.9.13 (September 18, 2013)

Minor UI changes.
Some fixes for forthcoming Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) release.

1.9.12 (August 29, 2013)

More configuration options were added to Stroke Width Modulation effect.

1.9.11 (July 29, 2013)

Minor enhancements: Snap to Grid option for editing base control points with interactive tools, Coil
Growth attribute to control radius of Spiral bases.

1.9.10 (July 22, 2013)

Minor fixes and UI changes.

1.9.9 (April 17, 2013)

Stability and performance improvements.
Text String object now has resize handles to change font size with mouse dragging.
Text on Curve object has additional option to choose between Base and Direction paths to define angle
for characters rotation.

1.9.8 (April 10, 2013)

Several fixes for user reported issues.
Two new objects for basic text handling: Text String and Text on Curve. These objects could be used
to add simple text elements to document's design. (Implementation of the feature still needs fine-tuning,
no documentation is provided yet. Please, feel free to comment or ask questions.)
New Image Group object that allows to wrap paths of other objects (including new text objects) into a
group that will be used with bas-relief generation effect.

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Excentro 1.9.8

1.9.7 (April 3, 2013)

Step & Repeat Sets feature and size-center attributes were added to objects of Group/Compound Path
type.
Internal changes to Group/Compound Path and Cut & Tile objects processing.

1.9.6 (January 22, 2013)

List of templates and examples was added to New Document dialog.
(This replaces old Stationary Pads templates, that are not very well supported in recent Mac OS X
versions.)
Document Setup dialog now opens as additional panel inside document window and contains new
Description field for author comments.
Other minor fixes and interface changes.

1.9.5 (November 16, 2012)

Minor fixes and interface changes.

1.9.4 (November 9, 2012)

Minor interface enhancements.
Internal changes that add better support for recent Mac OS X versions.
New minimal system requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or above.

1.9.3 (June 19, 2012)

Fixes glitches with graphics caching that could cause paths and images to be drawn twice.
Some other cosmetic improvements and minor fixes.

1.9.2 (March 15, 2012)

Adds new objects stroke weight option to New Document and Document Setup dialogs.
New preferences options to manage Swatch Palettes.
Internal changes to make documents and preferences data saves more reliable (to prevent accidental data
loss).
Some cosmetic improvements and minor fixes.

1.9.1 (February 29, 2012)

Adds better graphics caching and multi-threading support.
Works faster on multi-core and multi-processor systems.
More responsive to user actions.
Changed handling of images (for bas-relief effect) to make it less dependent on file formats and
somewhat faster.
Some cosmetic improvements and minor fixes.

1.9 (October 19, 2011)

Adds 64-bit code versions for both Intel and PowerPC based Macs.
User interface code changes that were required for 64-bit support.
Floating Toolbars were removed (as it seems to be the current user interface style).
Other cosmetic user interface changes.
Some fixes for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).
New minimal system requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or above.

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2. Excentro Lite:

Excentro Lite is a simplified version with the features set close to the original Excentro from mid 90's. It does not have Tiles,
Frames, Reliefs or Pen tools of full Excentro version, but it has a very affordable price point and is made for the users who need to
create designs for occasional jobs or just to do some guilloche experiments.

To download Excentro Lite use the link below:

excentrolite1914.dmg (Version 1.9.14, 6.5 MB, Disk Image)

System requirements: Apple Macintosh with Mac OS X version 10.6, 10.7, 10.8 or 10.9. (32/64-bit Intel code only.)

Details: This is Mac OS X disk image created with Disk Utility application. If you are using non-Macintosh computer
to access internet resources, download the file and transfer it to Macintosh with Mac OS X system.

Recent version changes:

1.9.14 (July 29, 2014)

Some UI fixes.

1.9.13 (September 18, 2013)

Minor UI changes.
Some fixes for forthcoming Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) release.

1.9.11 (July 29, 2013)

Minor enhancements: Snap to Grid option for editing base control points with interactive tools, Coil
Growth attribute to control radius of Spiral bases.

1.9.9 (April 17, 2013)

Stability and performance improvements.
Text String object now has resize handles to change font size with mouse dragging.
Text on Curve object has additional option to choose between Base and Direction paths to define angle
for characters rotation.

1.9.8 (April 10, 2013)

Two new objects for basic text handling were added: Text String and Text on Curve. They could be
used to add simple text elements to document's design. (Implementation of the feature still needs
fine-tuning, no documentation is provided with this version.)

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Excentro Lite 1.9.8

1.9.7 (April 3, 2013)

Excentro Lite now can create objects of Group/Compound Path type (like full Excentro version). These
objects could be used to group, transform, step and repeat paths of selected objects or parts of design.

1.9.6 (January 22, 2013)

List of templates and examples was added to New Document dialog.
(This replaces old Stationary Pads templates, that are not very well supported in recent Mac OS X
versions.)
Document Setup dialog now opens as additional panel inside document window and contains new
Description field for author comments.
Other minor fixes and interface changes.

1.9.5 (November 16, 2012)

Minor fixes and interface changes.

1.9.4 (November 9, 2012)

Minor interface enhancements.
Internal changes that add better support for recent Mac OS X versions.
New minimal system requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or above.

1.9.3 (June 19, 2012)

Fixes glitches with graphics caching that could cause paths and images to be drawn twice.
Some other cosmetic improvements and minor fixes.

1.9.2 (March 12, 2012)

Adds new objects stroke weight option to New Document and Document Setup dialogs.
New preferences options to manage Swatch Palettes.
Internal changes to make documents and preferences data saves more reliable (to prevent accidental data
loss).
Some cosmetic improvements and minor fixes.

1.9.1 (February 27, 2012)

Adds better graphics caching and multi-threading support.
Works faster on multi-core and multi-processor systems.
More responsive to user actions.
Some cosmetic improvements and minor fixes.

1.9 (October 14, 2011)

Adds 64-bit code versions for both Intel and PowerPC based Macs.
User interface code changes that were required for 64-bit support.
Floating Toolbars were removed (as it seems to be the current user interface style).
Other cosmetic user interface changes.
Some fixes for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).
New minimal system requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or above.

Documentation

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To reduce the file size of updates we separated documentation books and applications. To download full set of Excentro
documentation books in PDF format use the links below:

Using Excentro guide (PDF: 22.8 MB)

Place this file in the same folder as Excentro application and you will be able to access it from Help menu of Excentro.

Excentro Windows Reference (PDF: 5 MB)

Excentro Commands Reference (PDF: 4.8 MB)

Excentro Objects Reference (PDF: 24.2 MB)

Color And Gradient Mixers in Excentro 1.8 (PDF: 284 KB)

This is a quick update that covers some differences in Color Mixer inspector behaviour as well as notes on new Gradient Mixer inspector
(introduced with Excentro and Excentro Lite version 1.8).

Pricing and Online Purchase

Excentro has the following pricing:

Excentro: 1 or more single user licenses (per user): $500

Volume discounts will be applied to purchases of more than one license.

Excentro Lite: 1 or more single user licenses (per user): $25

Excourse uses Kagi payment service to accept international payments. Use link below to purchase Excentro online with credit card:

Excentro Online Order Page at Kagi

Please, do not forget to provide your correct e-mail address. When Kagi will notify us about your payment we will send you valid
serial number by e-mail (allow another three days for this procedure).

By entering serial number in Register dialog displayed at application start up you will turn Demo into licensed version.

Bug Reports, Questions and Comments

We would like to hear feedback on the benefits and shortcomings of our software. Please include your suggestions and comments
with information on what hardware and operating system you are using with Excentro.

E-mail: info@excourse.com
Phone/Fax: +7 (495) 6176652 (This is a contact number of Kursiv Publishing House. Please, use e-mail for Excourse software
specific questions.)
Address: 17, bldg. 6, Selskohozyaistvennaya st., Moscow 129226, Russia
1998-2014 Excourse

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