Conor Knoxx
New Member
LOL, you might as well have asked "what's the best truck to buy"! .... 
Personally, I use Flexi 8: Print and Cut - I believe its missing some of the bells and whistles of the pro version, like job estimating, using photoshop plugins, etc., but most of the meat and potatoes seem to be there. Its sort of off-topic but it does seem to have pretty good RIP software, for wide-format printing. (also about half the price of pro I believe)
I do have Corel X3 - but I'm not very proficient with it, and don't use it much. (no CoCut). The trace program is awesome though, and the clipart and fonts make it darn near with the price alone
Personally, I think what it really boils down to is what software you already "know". You can probably learn the basics of any of them pretty quickly, to get you up and running - but learning the deepest, intricate details and all the functions of any top-tier commercial program is going to take a lot of time, and studying!
Many times I've found that people will call a program "no good" simply because they are used to a similar one, but the "how you get there" is entirely different, making it seem more difficult ( or even impossible). And really, in many cases, unless a program offers something substantially more (important) than what you have / know - its just not worth the effort of learning all over again!
:Big Laugh I still remember, many years ago, the first time I got a chance to try a photoshop demo. Took me about 30 minutes just to get a pic loaded into the (tiny) workspace, and I don't know HOW long to actually "do" something.... and I remember thinking "why in God's name would ANYONE want to use this thing for editing pictures!"
I have a different opinion of it today.
Personally, I use Flexi 8: Print and Cut - I believe its missing some of the bells and whistles of the pro version, like job estimating, using photoshop plugins, etc., but most of the meat and potatoes seem to be there. Its sort of off-topic but it does seem to have pretty good RIP software, for wide-format printing. (also about half the price of pro I believe)
I do have Corel X3 - but I'm not very proficient with it, and don't use it much. (no CoCut). The trace program is awesome though, and the clipart and fonts make it darn near with the price alone
Personally, I think what it really boils down to is what software you already "know". You can probably learn the basics of any of them pretty quickly, to get you up and running - but learning the deepest, intricate details and all the functions of any top-tier commercial program is going to take a lot of time, and studying!
Many times I've found that people will call a program "no good" simply because they are used to a similar one, but the "how you get there" is entirely different, making it seem more difficult ( or even impossible). And really, in many cases, unless a program offers something substantially more (important) than what you have / know - its just not worth the effort of learning all over again!
:Big Laugh I still remember, many years ago, the first time I got a chance to try a photoshop demo. Took me about 30 minutes just to get a pic loaded into the (tiny) workspace, and I don't know HOW long to actually "do" something.... and I remember thinking "why in God's name would ANYONE want to use this thing for editing pictures!"
I have a different opinion of it today.
