Best vector for the $$

[WildWestDesigns]

Now you have. I don't want to deal with Adobe files! ever.

Good luck with that endeavour.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I've received far more .cdr files than .ai files, maybe it has to do with Corel being a Canadian company, it must have better market penetration here or something!

it's very rare for me to recieve a file that i can't open with a combination of Corel and Adobe Acrobat

 

[artbot]

corel. they way the program works makes more sense. maybe illustrator can do more. the last time i fooled with it, which was a few years ago, i was confounded by out counter intuitive the layout was.

it seemed like i was making three moves in illy for every two moves in corel. became exhausted with the process and "regressed" back to corel.

i'm pretty sure i could teach my mom how to use corel draw. but illy would be a disaster. on the same note, i've taught my mom to use photoshop, yet corel photo-paint would be a disaster.

i really wish photo-shop would adopt a corel style custom tool layout. with all the dual monitors out there. we really don't need so much emphasis on collapsing the tools. we need to have more control over our workspace. i'd have buttons like burn, dodge, rotate, flip H, and flip V, levels, saturation, invert selection, ....... the list goes on.

 

[signswi]

corel. they way the program works makes more sense. maybe illustrator can do more. the last time i fooled with it, which was a few years ago, i was confounded by out counter intuitive the layout was.

it seemed like i was making three moves in illy for every two moves in corel. became exhausted with the process and "regressed" back to corel.

i'm pretty sure i could teach my mom how to use corel draw. but illy would be a disaster. on the same note, i've taught my mom to use photoshop, yet corel photo-paint would be a disaster.

i really wish photo-shop would adopt a corel style custom tool layout. with all the dual monitors out there. we really don't need so much emphasis on collapsing the tools. we need to have more control over our workspace. i'd have buttons like burn, dodge, rotate, flip H, and flip V, levels, saturation, invert selection, ....... the list goes on.

Ever since the Adobe CS UI overhaul (in CS4) you can build your own tools and embed them into the UI. You can even embed entire Flash or Air apps if you want to get fancy (aka how some of the newer OnOne tools are integrated).

BTW to the guy above who said $1200...Illustrator CS5.5 stand alone is $599 retail, $199 for upgrades. ~$200 more than Corel but certainly more than $200 worth of improvement over it imo. However it makes so much more sense to buy it as part of Design Standard or Design Premium as you're going to want Photoshop/InDesign/Acrobat Pro/etc. at some point anyway. It's definitely not as bad as it used to be but I still question why you'd ever use it over Illustrator if you were starting from scratch (with no personal bias)--there just isn't enough benefit now that Illustrator has really good perspective 3D, variable width strokes, etc. on top of all it's other advantages.

Anyway full disclosure I'm biased against Corel because one of our largest clients is a Corel only shop and I've wasted months of my life fixing files from it so that they'd prepress, print and cut correctly. I'm sure it's a good tool if you're comfortable with it and do most of your own printing.

 

[signmeup]

Good luck with that endeavour.

Been working just fine for me these past 7 years.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Been working just fine for me these past 7 years.

Now that someone pointed out that it's a Can. company I'm not that surprised now. I would say that statistically there is a better chance of that happening with you then not. I bet right at or less then 20% of the files that I get are out of Coral. I flat out won't except CDR files or whatever the native extension is now for Coral (I am thinking that they did change it, but I could be wrong), but the eps files from coral are about 50/50 success right. Those that it doesn't come out right I'm willing to bet are due to user error more then the software, but I don't know for sure.

 

[signswi]

Corel's EPS export is not great, ask your customers to export to AI and you'll have better luck. Especially if there are gradients, as gradients exported to EPS from Corel end up as clipped raster images instead of gradient filled vectors. Pain in the ass if it's something that needs to go to cut. Of course Flexi is worse with it's "export thin bands of clipped raster images that combined form a gradient" crap.

 

[oldgoatroper]

Now that someone pointed out that it's a Can. company I'm not that surprised now. I would say that statistically there is a better chance of that happening with you then not. I bet right at or less then 20% of the files that I get are out of Coral. I flat out won't except CDR files or whatever the native extension is now for Coral (I am thinking that they did change it, but I could be wrong), but the eps files from coral are about 50/50 success right. Those that it doesn't come out right I'm willing to bet are due to user error more then the software, but I don't know for sure.

I use Corel for everything but get alot of PDFs, EPSs from Adobe products. Over the years I've learned that I cannot trust my Onyx RIP with these files -- Adobe generated EPS and PDF files just are not reliable and often produce some aberration in the final printed product which does not get noticed, of course, until its printed.

However, EPS files generated by CorelDraw are almost 100% reliable through the RIP. Those that are problematic will generate an error, and that error is usually because of an element imported from an EPS or PDF (very likely Adobe-related).

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I use Corel for everything but get alot of PDFs, EPSs from Adobe products. Over the years I've learned that I cannot trust my Onyx RIP with these files -- Adobe generated EPS and PDF files just are not reliable and often produce some aberration in the final printed product which does not get noticed, of course, until its printed.

However, EPS files generated by CorelDraw are almost 100% reliable through the RIP. Those that are problematic will generate an error, and that error is usually because of an element imported from an EPS or PDF (very likely Adobe-related).

I probably won't have to deal with the same issues that y'all do with regard to print, because the only printing that I do is for sublimation, the rest of the stuff that I do is for embroidery design and that's where it really get's sticky with coral based files compared to illustrator files.

 

[signswi]

I use Corel for everything but get alot of PDFs, EPSs from Adobe products. Over the years I've learned that I cannot trust my Onyx RIP with these files -- Adobe generated EPS and PDF files just are not reliable and often produce some aberration in the final printed product which does not get noticed, of course, until its printed.

However, EPS files generated by CorelDraw are almost 100% reliable through the RIP. Those that are problematic will generate an error, and that error is usually because of an element imported from an EPS or PDF (very likely Adobe-related).

Complete opposite experience. Try implementing a PDF/X-4 workflow, PDF/X-4 is completely supported in Onyx x10. Also be sure to check things like overprinting, especially CMYK on top of or below spots as that's the most common problem in any print shop.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Corel's EPS export is not great, ask your customers to export to AI and you'll have better luck. Especially if there are gradients, as gradients exported to EPS from Corel end up as clipped raster images instead of gradient filled vectors. Pain in the ass if it's something that needs to go to cut. Of course Flexi is worse with it's "export thin bands of clipped raster images that combined form a gradient" crap.

I actually ask my clients not to use gradients when giving me a coral file especially if it's going for embroidery design work. Gradient colors, no matter the source, throw the embroidery software for a loop, which isn't surprising since you really don't have gradient thread out there other then veriegated thread.

 

[signmeup]

Now that someone pointed out that it's a Can. company I'm not that surprised now. I would say that statistically there is a better chance of that happening with you then not. I bet right at or less then 20% of the files that I get are out of Coral. I flat out won't except CDR files or whatever the native extension is now for Coral (I am thinking that they did change it, but I could be wrong), but the eps files from coral are about 50/50 success right. Those that it doesn't come out right I'm willing to bet are due to user error more then the software, but I don't know for sure.

What on earth do you mean by this?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

What on earth do you mean by this?

That you've been able to not have to deal with Ai files (or adobe files in general) for 7 yrs, given that it's a "local" company. It probably really is pervasive in that area in general because of that and add to it that it's about what $200 cheaper (I'm not degrading the quality of the program by mentioning that). I'm sure those two factors help in making it more widely used up there.


No need to get uppidity. I didn't mean it in a negative way.

 

[GAC05]

Just to keep this going...
The price differential is a bit more than $200.00
CorelDraw is bundled with PhotoPaint.
To get the equivalent in the Adobe lineup you'd need to add Photoshop to Illustrator.
People unfamiliar with Corel don't take this into account.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[signmeup]

That you've been able to not have to deal with Ai files (or adobe files in general) for 7 yrs, given that it's a "local" company. It probably really is pervasive in that area in general because of that and add to it that it's about what $200 cheaper (I'm not degrading the quality of the program by mentioning that). I'm sure those two factors help in making it more widely used up there.


No need to get uppidity. I didn't mean it in a negative way.

Not uppity... just incredulous. Canada is bigger than the US... We only have 1/10th the population of the US but it's spread over a larger area. To suggest that Canadians must use Corel more because it is a "local" company blows me away.

I have a copy (CS4) that I use to send files to my printer. I design the files in Corel and save them as AI and ship them off to him for printing. It's a $500 bridge program to me. (I have no issues converting from Corel to AI BTW)

I choose not to use AI because I found it so counter intuitive that I gave up bothering to learn it's odd lingo and strange methods. I also don't use it because as I said, I do the designing for my customers, not the other way around. If I had a business like yours where I had to accept a lot of files I would undoubtedly be forced to use AI more.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Not uppity... just incredulous. Canada is bigger than the US... We only have 1/10th the population of the US but it's spread over a larger area. To suggest that Canadians must use Corel more because it is a "local" company blows me away.

Don't doubt the power of buying domestic over import. Even if it's just a perception that it's domestic. You would be surprised how many do just that.

What options does it give you when converting to Ai from Corel? Instead of asking for EPS when I do my promos on here, I might just ask for a straight Ai file. Trying to find the easiest way to be able to handle everything out there.

 

[signmeup]

I click "save as" and choose Ai. Then I can choose from Illustrator 88 all the way up to CS3. Then I can choose Mac or PC, convert text to curves and other choices. What versions of Corel does Illustrator save to? (I notice people often complain that Corel doesn't save well to Ai and wondered how well Ai worked in the reverse situation)

Never mind... I remember now... In Corel you click open and click the Ai file and it opens. It's a shame Ai doesn't have that function for Corel files. Sounds like quite a few of you would be able to use a feature like that.

 

[studio 440]

for finish work i allways liked these

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Never mind... I remember now... In Corel you click open and click the Ai file and it opens. It's a shame Ai doesn't have that function for Corel files. Sounds like quite a few of you would be able to use a feature like that.

I just did that with a CDR file that I had and it looks like crap. It will open it, but I wouldn't do it that way.

Same way with the "place" function as well.

 

[oldgoatroper]

I just did that with a CDR file that I had and it looks like crap. It will open it, but I wouldn't do it that way.

Same way with the "place" function as well.

So, are you saying that Irritator actually has an import filter for CDR files?

And that the resultant graphic is crap? So, who's fault would that be? Adobe's or Corel's?

Come to think of it, that would be smart on Adobe's part. Sour the users away from the competition...