Excentro is a simple but advanced tool that can create guilloche designs like backgrounds, borders or rosettes.

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 technologies perfected, guilloches no longer presented sufficient security measures that could prevent forging and counterfeiting of valuable papers. Today the main part of security technology lies in the special paper or tricky inks the designs are printed upon or with.

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 was originally started in the early 90's as a solution for the emerging Russian security printing market. New promising economy situations asked for a simple, yet not very expensive solution that runs on an industry standard graphic arts platform and 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…

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 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 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.

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

1. Excentro:

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 demo version of Excentro use the link below:

excentrodemo19.dmg (Version 1.9, 13.4 MB, Disk Image)

System requirements: Apple Macintosh with Mac OS X version 10.5, 10.6 or 10.7. (32/64-bit Universal Binary version for both Intel and PowerPC based computers.)

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 this file ‘excentrodemo19.dmg’ and transfer it to Macintosh with Mac OS X system.

Recent version changes:

Updates are free for all registered users. Please, contact Excourse to get updated serial numbers and download links for ‘full’ (not demo) Excentro version.

• 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.
    
  
  
  
  Excentro 1.9
  
  
• 1.8.3 (May 31, 2010)
  Stability fixes.
  
  
• 1.8.2 (May 12, 2010)
  Minor fixes (accumulated since January 2009).
  
  
• 1.8 (December 24, 2008)
  Some minor feature additions (like gradient colors), interface and stability fixes.
  
  

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:

excentrolite19.dmg (Version 1.9, 8 MB, Disk Image)

System requirements: Apple Macintosh with Mac OS X version 10.5, 10.6 or 10.7. (32/64-bit Universal Binary version for both Intel and PowerPC based computers.)

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 this file ‘excentrolite19.dmg’ and transfer it to Macintosh with Mac OS X system.

Recent version changes:

• 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.
    
  
  
  
  Excentro Lite 1.9
  
  
• 1.8.3 (May 31, 2010)
  Stability fixes.
  
  
• 1.8.2 (May 12, 2010)
  Minor fixes (accumulated since January 2009).
  
  
• 1.8.1 (January 13, 2009)
  
  • Elliptic Page gradients now behave identical to that of full Excentro version.
    
  • Some interface fixes.
    
  • ‘pnot’ and ‘PICT’ preview resources are no longer saved with the documents (to reduce disk space usage), 256x256 icons are used instead.
    
  
  
• 1.8 (December 19, 2008)
  Some minor feature additions (like gradient colors), interface and stability fixes.
  Update is free for all registered users. Please, contact Excourse to get updated serial numbers.
  
  

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 behavior as well as notes on new Gradient Mixer inspector (introduced with Excentro and Excentro Lite version 1.8).

Excentro has the following pricing:

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

Excentro: Site license: $1000

A Site License covers all locations for your organization within a 160 kilometer radius of your site (100 miles). One big advantage of a Site License is that you do not need to keep track of how many people at your site are using the software.

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:

Excourse 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.

E-mail: info@excourse.com
Phone/Fax: +7 (495) 7256001
Mail address: Kursiv Publishers, P.O.Box Kursiv, Moscow 107140, Russia