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PhotoShop Interface

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RedlineMan

New Member
Hello All;

I am getting my first plotter soon, a "gently used" 4100 Graphtec. I use PhotoShop 5.0 regularly, and am reasonably proficient with it, although I know there is TONS more there.

My question is, how am I going to interface this with my plotter? I believe I will be looking at purchasing something like CoCut to link the graphic functions with the plotter functions, but I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this whatsoever.

Any resources you could point me toward or recommendations you could make would be greatly appreciated.

It's a brave new world!
 
Techman

Techman

New Member
Photoshop is for pixel manipulation. It will not drive a cutter.
You will need Corel Draw or some other vector based program to drive that cutter.

I use corel draw and cocut pro. A perfect match.
 
Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
CorelDRAW is a good choice or, if you want to stay in the Adobe camp, you may also want to look into Adobe Illustrator. Both will work with CoCut as a plugin. For producing cut vinyl graphics, Photoshop will only serve as a resource for processing image files before tracing them into vectors.
 
Buddy

Buddy

New Member
What's the best price on Co-Cut out there ??

Anyone on this forum have it for sale ?
 
Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
The primary for Cocut and CoCut Pro is Smart Designs in Phoenix. I don't think they do much discounting though with it. I don't know of anyone here at Signs 101 that is a dealer for it.
 
R

RedlineMan

New Member
Thank you, Gentlemen;

You know, it's funny. I learned PhotoShop (to the various extent I have) on my own, mostly. I also have Illustrator somewhere, but I never could get anywhere with it. For some reason I found it the least intuitive program I've ever tried to use. It made no sense to me at all. I could not even figure out how to draw a stinkin line. I'm now wondering if my difficulties were in the fact that it is not a pixel base, and so has a completely different method of doing most everything. Maybe it is time I give it another try.

Failing that, price is an issue, so it looks like CorelDraw is the best solution. There seem to be plenty of people cutting directly from it, so that is a plus.

More study!
 
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3CGraphics

New Member
I cut right out of AI with no other program. The only issue I have and haven't been able to understand is the cutting order - no matter how I create or place ganged images it cuts them in what seems to be a random order - I believe programs like CoCut will allow you to specify the order things are cut.
 
Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
CoCut is a plug-in for CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator that will allow you to control a cutting plotter from within either application. The poster was referring to CorelDRAW for cutting directly which is limited and something the poster is not familiar with.
 
animenick65

animenick65

New Member
For some reason, Adobe Photoshop is more intuitive for people. Illustrator is just a mess and the tools really don't make much sense. Also, if your going from photoshop to illy, the tools don't match up and in some places the interface doesn't either, which is a shame because many many professionals use both and go in between them.
 
Cadmn

Cadmn

New Member
fred steve of 3c states he cuts straight from AI & was asked if he could explain & I would also be interested in understanding, I use corel now but have people that want me to cut from AI if possible & would save time in conversion to corel /importing. Bring it on Steve
 
njsigns

njsigns

New Member
RedlineMan said:
I learned PhotoShop (to the various extent I have) on my own, mostly. I also have Illustrator somewhere, but I never could get anywhere with it. For some reason I found it the least intuitive program I've ever tried to use. It made no sense to me at all. I could not even figure out how to draw a stinkin line.
Click to expand...

It's not just you, I had been using Photoshop for years, and then tried to move onto AI. I suffered the exact same problems. I tried taking AI tutorials, bought training DVD's - nothing could help me wrap my head around the tools/work area. I could follow tutorials just fine, but when it came time to execute what I had learned - it was a nightmare of frustration.

Then I decided to give CorelDraw another chance (X3), and it's been great - probably the best decision I have made in years! I actually find CorelDraw to be one of the most intuitive programs I have ever used.

Good luck,
Gene
 
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3CGraphics

New Member
to cut from Adobe Illustrator (I have CS not CS2) I simply apply a .25 outline to fills and if there are any strokes, outline them with .25 as well. I have the cutter installed as a printer and select it when I got to "print". you will have to set up your media sizes as mine only had the standard paper sizes in it.

If you are importing or opening vector files they often need cleaning up to get rid of unwanted paths - I usually turn off all fills to easier see where joins etc may be and merge them to have a clean outline.

Except for the problems noted with cut order I have not had any trouble cutting straight out of Illustrator.

Glad to fill in anything if I made it clear as mud.
 
signage

signage

New Member
If your cutter has a windows driver you can cut being these drivers for graphics software are usually HPGL and most plotters use HPGL to drive them.
 
L

lav

New Member
I think the only reason you guys are finding Illustrator difficult is because you are trying to use it like you use photoshop. PS and AI were built to work together not to compare side by side. Im not a corel fan at all, It is a great program dont get me wrong but it has its limitations at a certain level.
 
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