Open Corel CMX Clipart Files in Your Browser
If you’ve got a stack of CorelDRAW clipart CDs — or a client folder full of .cmx files and no copy of CorelDRAW — this page is for you. Sign makers, engravers, print shops and vinyl cutters still lean on those enormous 1990s clipart collections, and CMX is the format most of them shipped in. Drop a .cmx file here and it renders instantly, with SVG and PNG downloads ready per page. Vector artwork and text come through faithfully; the odd exotic fill or effect may be simplified. Nothing gets sent anywhere: the converter is a compact WebAssembly engine, about 1 MB, that runs entirely on your own machine, so it keeps working offline and your artwork stays private. Under the hood it’s libcdr from the Document Liberation Project — the same filter LibreOffice relies on to open Corel files.
About Corel CMX
CMX is Corel Presentation Exchange, the interchange format Corel introduced in the mid-1990s so artwork could move between CorelDRAW and the rest of the Corel suite — and, crucially, so clipart could ship in a form any Corel product could read. This was the golden age of the clipart CD: CorelDRAW boxes bragged about bundling 25,000, then 50,000, then over 100,000 clipart images, and third-party publishers pressed countless discs of their own. The vast majority of that art was distributed as .cmx files. Unlike CorelDRAW’s native .cdr format, which changed with nearly every release, CMX was meant as a stable, simplified snapshot of vector artwork — shapes, curves, fills and text without version-specific baggage. That’s why so much of it survives: sign shops, engravers and embroidery houses built entire libraries around those discs. But without CorelDRAW installed, a .cmx file is opaque. The Document Liberation Project reverse-engineered both CDR and CMX in libcdr, which powers LibreOffice’s Corel import — and powers this converter, compiled to WebAssembly so it runs in your browser.
Frequently asked questions
Do my clipart files get uploaded to a server?
Never. Conversion happens on your computer, inside your browser, using a WebAssembly build of libcdr. No account, no upload, no tracking of your artwork — you can load this page once and then convert files with no network connection at all.
How does the tool know my file is really a CMX?
It reads the file’s contents rather than trusting the extension. CMX files carry a recognizable internal structure, and the engine detects it automatically — so even a mislabeled or extension-less file copied off an old CD will be identified correctly.
What should I do with the SVG once I have it?
Treat it as the modern master copy. SVG opens in Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity Designer for editing, imports cleanly into sign-cutting and engraving software, and scales to any size without quality loss. Use the PNG when you only need a quick raster image for a proof or an email.
What’s the difference between .cmx and .cdr?
.cdr is CorelDRAW’s native working format — full-featured and different in nearly every CorelDRAW version. .cmx is the simplified interchange edition of the same artwork, designed to be readable across Corel products, which is why clipart collections shipped in it. This page is built for .cmx files; if yours came from a clipart CD, it should convert directly.