HELP WITH SIGN SOFTWARE

[WildWestDesigns]

I've been with my sign company since 1993.

Approx. 1 year over me (depends on when in '93 you started).

I wouldnt upgrade to 10, who said you had to? We use Flexi and adobe illustrator both still on disks

Eventually one will have to, unless wanting to get into the realm of keeping and maintaining legacy hardware or VMing exclusively legacy software.





If there is one to one feature and workflow parity, there is still going to be an issue. Especially if one started off on one software and just working on other. One software may have said feature, but implemented in a different way. Pen tool and node manipulation in Draw, if I remember correctly, had an extra step with how I used it versus doing the same thing in Ai.

Extra steps of point and clicking in Draw was mentioned, I remember one conversation that I had with Old Paint before he passed, he complained about that very thing in Ai. Except I think it was menus buried within menus and couldn't get key bindings to them. I told him about Actions (which still has it's limitations as to what you can "record" on them), but he couldn't find Actions. Turns out the last copy of Ai he had (or at least one that he could readily install) was Ai7. I can't remember for sure that far back, but I don't think Actions was around then. I seem to only recall them in the CS suites. Before I had switched platforms, I was looking at 3rd party solutions to see if there was a way to add keybindings or macros to say something like the Xkeys that wasn't there from within the program itself. I never got past the original initial research into it as I switched platforms and it already had that built in functionality in there (and even able to have those work going into a VM as well for individual programs in the VM (for my Wacom Cintiq that came in very handy)).

I think no matter what the software company does, it's damned if they do, damned if they don't. If feature and workflow is exactly one to one, then your going to have comparisons between how snappy they are, how quickly rendered etc. They might be snappy with one feature, but not as snappy with the other. Of course, that's not nearly as bad if they have the same feature, but different workflow to it.

Of course, then the wrench in the whole thing is that even if you do go to one program to the next and the next program has a different workflow, for some it may actually be more logical, intuitive whatever, but may not be for the next person.


Pick the one that works for you in all the necessary situations (and yes, I'm including what clients send you) and roll with it.

 

[Bobby H]

Corel Draw became standard in the sign industry very early because it ran on PCs. Adobe products were Mac only, and in the beginning all the CAD/CAM programs for signmaking ran on PCs. Corel Draw and Painter are nice programs, and are fun to play with (I have them both), but in the graphic design community Adobe products are almost exclusively used because they are more efficient. They are not as easy to learn and intuitive as Corel, but if you put your mind to it it won't take long to understand why Illustrator and Photoshop are so popular.

In terms of screen navigation (zooming in/out and hand panning the view) Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are FAR more intuitive than CorelDRAW. Combinations of the Ctrl, Alt and Spacebar keys toggle up zoom-in/out and hand pan functions regardless of the tool you're using at the time. CorelDRAW can't do that. Digitizing paths is the same situation; Illustrator has better keyboard short cuts there. Adobe Illustrator is behind CorelDRAW at putting deeper, more CAD-like path editing functions up front in the interface. I don't like how Illustrator requires users to make an extra click when aligning two objects; you have to click one object again to make it stay in place. CorelDRAW automatically makes the last object shift-clicked stay in place for alignment functions. It's also easier to align nodes/anchor points in CorelDRAW versus the stock version of Illustrator.

Another note on the history, Adobe's products weren't fully Mac-only in the 1990's. Every version of Photoshop was available for Windows. Adobe Illustrator's release history was weird. Versions 1.0, 1.1 and 88 were Mac-only. Version 2 was Windows-only. Version 3 was released for MacOS, NeXT and some other UNIX platforms, but not Windows. Version 3.5 was released for IRIX and Solaris. I bought Illustrator for the first time at Version 4 (in 1993) as a bundle with Photoshop 2.5 (still have the boxes and floppy discs as a keepsake). Illustrator 4 was very primitive and frustrating. But it could paste AICB paths into Photoshop, which was really great considering Photoshop didn't introduce layers until version 3.

The real jerk move Adobe made with Illustrator was releasing versions 5, 5.5 and 6 for MacOS, but not Windows. They even ported AI 5.5 to IRIX. I started using Freehand during that period. Adobe allowed CorelDRAW to become far more entrenched on the Windows platform during this time. CorelDRAW stayed way ahead for years, even after Illustrator 7 was released on both MacOS and Windows. Adobe didn't start gaining ground on CorelDRAW in the Windows platform until they rolled out the Creative Suite packages starting in the 2000's.

Approx. 1 year over me (depends on when in '93 you started).

I worked in broadcast TV at a station in Albany, GA for a couple years before moving to OK and getting into the sign business. I saw a good amount of very different graphics software there. Small market TV is a great place to learn new things, but the pay is $#!+. I got my first look at CorelDRAW in 1990 doing graphics work for a photography store in NYC during my senior year at art school.

remember one conversation that I had with Old Paint before he passed, he complained about that very thing in Ai. Except I think it was menus buried within menus and couldn't get key bindings to them. I told him about Actions (which still has it's limitations as to what you can "record" on them), but he couldn't find Actions. Turns out the last copy of Ai he had (or at least one that he could readily install) was Ai7. I can't remember for sure that far back, but I don't think Actions was around then. I seem to only recall them in the CS suites.

I'm pretty sure Illustrator 7 had Actions capability, but a user couldn't do as much with actions as what was possible in Photoshop. The first version of Photoshop to have actions was version 4. Kai's Power Tools was a great plug-in for Photoshop. They also sold a disc called KPT Actions which did a lot of cool things.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I'm pretty sure Illustrator 7 had Actions capability, but a user couldn't do as much with actions as what was possible in Photoshop. The first version of Photoshop to have actions was version 4. Kai's Power Tools was a great plug-in for Photoshop. They also sold a disc called KPT Actions which did a lot of cool things.

Yea, I can't remember that for back, it could have very well have had that ability. I wish I had kept my old versions (have all the CS versions), but I didn't. CS was really when I was getting more in depth with what Ai could do (still may have been a neophyte compared to some, but I was getting more in depth during that time).

My mom was far more the Ps user that I every was. Ai was my preferred program for a long, long time.

 

[Roto]

I'm planning on purchasing new sign software in 2020. We have three design stations, one is dedicated to spot color vinyl cutting (currently using CasMate Pro software). The second is full color printing (CorelDraw software) interfaced with our VersaCamm wide format printer. The third is sublimation printing on our Sawgrass SG800 (Creative Suite software). Everything we have is currently networked together - we can design on any one of our design stations and we can print to any one of our peripherals... We are running WIndows 8 and as of January 1, 2020 - we must update to Windows 10.

My question to you all - what sign software do you use and why?

I push a Million Dollars worth of signage through our shop using Corel Draw 2018 and some custom macros.

 

[myront]

Corel X7 with Win 7 here. I use corel 99% of the time because I can do designs a whole lot quicker. Faster designs = faster $$ and very happy customers.
Print, edit images, plot...actually haven't found anything I couldn't do. Corel is much easier to customize and can be customized way more than illustrator can. I have and use over 200 macros to make quick work of common sign tasks, adding/deleting grommets, adding dimensions, spacing, nesting, crop marks, reg marks, cut layers, just to name a few.