Rant Vector drawing,,,Have we gone back 40 years?

[unmateria]

Corel + uCut plugin. Cheap, efficient and most important, predictable, what u see is what you get. For autotracing there is nothing like vector magic... I have tried everything in 30 years lol

 

[tonyconner20]

Just a bit about me, I'm a 59.99 year old Australian male, self employed, old school, airbrush and brush signwriter of 43 years, I made a modest to descent living with just my 2 hands, and some basic equipment. I am now a digital print guy but not by choice. and a shadow of my former self.
HAVING SAID THAT...
My vector software 30 years ago was 10 times better than what I have now. Is it just me?, Have I missed something along the way?. I started with a $4000 beige Mac that had a 20meg (yes Meg) hard drive (and a floppy disc drive, 1.4mgs per disc). and the vector drawing and cleaning up capabilities were astounding. I was using "buy outright" Flexisign 4 (I think), I could draw characters, logos and free script physically in pen or brush, scan the image and clean the whole thing up in under an hour. I wouldn't even attempt it now with Adobe Illustrator.
So What changed? well for me it all went feral when Flexi decided to discontinue with Mac software, this meant I had to change to a PC, I have nothing against PC's but I was so Mac/Flexi efficient then I could literally do anything. So then I resorted to Illustrator a lot more but all my Flexi files needed converting to be compatible, so I was forced to keep an expensive subscription to Flexi just so I could open existing jobs and convert. This was working Okay but in Flexi I could clean up an entire complex curve, or any line, by removing a hundred nodes on any line in a single click. This feature does not exist in Illustrator as far as I can work out, (I am old), I could literally draw ANYTHING with a few simple Flexi tools, which I learnt in a week or 2, now after using illustrator for 10 years I can only do the most basic drawings and it takes forever. I wouldn't even attempt most things. And I can't go bigger than 6 metres. without scaling ahhggh . Flexi had no size restrictions, and the colour layers for each vinyl was heavenly simple. Everything I ever made including my house, I drew in Flexi first.
Then there's the stone aged cutting capabilities of 'Roland Cut studio" OMG it's like I've gone back to the 1980 Gerber g4. V2, that's how backwards it is.
SO???, Is there another option that I haven't found. preferably Mac.??? Can I achieve greatness again with full drawing and cleaning up capabilities in illustrator somehow. can I smooth whole swathes of lines and curves again or is it just one node to the next from now on, which has appalling results, Why did they take such perfection and made it obsolete?. Why did they complicated the simple art of vector illustration and make it so incredibly impossible?. I need to go lie down. Wow!!! What? you read all that, your amazing.
Brad Butler, Ghostwriter Signs, Sydney Australia.

I only use flexi most recently for production. Started using adobe suite over a decade ago and find it mundane to clean up vector files. I typically outsource most of the work then clean it up from there. Original art I create with my iPad in procreate for raster stuff or something I’m going to live trace later, affinity for vector stuff. All of this gets sent to the computer for final creation but the iPad offers a lot of intuitive free hand capability. You might benefit from upgrading your input device as well.

 

[Signsfyi]

Just a bit about me, I'm a 59.99 year old Australian male, self employed, old school, airbrush and brush signwriter of 43 years, I made a modest to descent living with just my 2 hands, and some basic equipment. I am now a digital print guy but not by choice. and a shadow of my former self.
HAVING SAID THAT...
My vector software 30 years ago was 10 times better than what I have now. Is it just me?, Have I missed something along the way?. I started with a $4000 beige Mac that had a 20meg (yes Meg) hard drive (and a floppy disc drive, 1.4mgs per disc). and the vector drawing and cleaning up capabilities were astounding. I was using "buy outright" Flexisign 4 (I think), I could draw characters, logos and free script physically in pen or brush, scan the image and clean the whole thing up in under an hour. I wouldn't even attempt it now with Adobe Illustrator.
So What changed? well for me it all went feral when Flexi decided to discontinue with Mac software, this meant I had to change to a PC, I have nothing against PC's but I was so Mac/Flexi efficient then I could literally do anything. So then I resorted to Illustrator a lot more but all my Flexi files needed converting to be compatible, so I was forced to keep an expensive subscription to Flexi just so I could open existing jobs and convert. This was working Okay but in Flexi I could clean up an entire complex curve, or any line, by removing a hundred nodes on any line in a single click. This feature does not exist in Illustrator as far as I can work out, (I am old), I could literally draw ANYTHING with a few simple Flexi tools, which I learnt in a week or 2, now after using illustrator for 10 years I can only do the most basic drawings and it takes forever. I wouldn't even attempt most things. And I can't go bigger than 6 metres. without scaling ahhggh . Flexi had no size restrictions, and the colour layers for each vinyl was heavenly simple. Everything I ever made including my house, I drew in Flexi first.
Then there's the stone aged cutting capabilities of 'Roland Cut studio" OMG it's like I've gone back to the 1980 Gerber g4. V2, that's how backwards it is.
SO???, Is there another option that I haven't found. preferably Mac.??? Can I achieve greatness again with full drawing and cleaning up capabilities in illustrator somehow. can I smooth whole swathes of lines and curves again or is it just one node to the next from now on, which has appalling results, Why did they take such perfection and made it obsolete?. Why did they complicated the simple art of vector illustration and make it so incredibly impossible?. I need to go lie down. Wow!!! What? you read all that, your amazing.
Brad Butler, Ghostwriter Signs, Sydney Australia.

You and I have lived a similar sign career. I am now 55. I was in bed with Gerber since 95 and still use their software to this day. I have Flexi for RIP, Illustrator to open certain files when sent to me from designers among other types of software. I find Gerber Omega to be an excellent vector editing software. It is my go to hands down when working with vector type graphics. It is also nice that you can still own it instead of rent. Have a great day!

 

[WildWestDesigns]

To be honest I have never seen any vector tracing software that actually works well enough to not need a lot of cleaning up to get anywhere near print ready.
Really being able to create a vector from scratch and manually trace a raster to create a vector are basic skills all designers or signmakers should have.

Yep, not depending on as much abstraction (I have seen people stuck on software because they "know" how to use livetrace/powertrace and that's pretty much it.

Ironically, it doesn't get better as the price point goes up either. I have dealt with software that costs quite a bit more compared to the master suite (and this is for one software program) and it's auto conversion tools are worse the majority of the time (however, the manual tools are far better)

If one knows how to use the pen tool, the primitives, and/or pathfinding tools and should be good to be able to move within other software packages as well.

 

[Dennis Schaub]

We have this conversation every week at our shop. Everything used to be so much easier. I have to go watch a YouTube video every time I want to do something in Illustrator. And as soon as you learn something, it updates and it is different anyway. Fortunately, AI will probably put us all out of work anyway.

 

[damonCA21]

One main reason I still use Corel X3 and have been pretty much since it came out. I know where everything is on there and how it works, so there is no need to upgrade as the newer versions don't really add any functionality.
On the odd times I have to use Illustrator I hate it as I can never find anything, and it is nowhere near as user friendly