Must you make a hard choice between Adobe, Corel, Xara, Affinity, etc.

Phil1923 over 7 years ago

Hi Everybody,

Do you really have to make a hard choice between Adobe, Corel, Xara, Affinity, etc. for a draw application.
I only use DRAW a few times a month so I'm just wondering. However, I use both PhotoPaint and Photoshop on a daily basis.
I use an older version (CS 5) of Photoshop so no renting. Admittedly, I would prefer all tools in just one application but why fight City Hall.

You can get fairly recent versions at reasonable prices on eBay. I bought Adobe Acrobat Pro XI for $125.

Can the same be done for a draw vector program.

Phil

0 David Milisock over 7 years ago

I would say it depends on two things.

1. What type of work your doing.

2. Your understanding of the technical requirements of where the work will be used.

Applications have overlapping features but many lack core technology. An example would be if your required destination mandated color management and your application didn't fully support it. Another example would be if you required specialty features and the application didn't support them.

Illustrator and CorelDRAW share many features, they're both have vector drawing but the similarities quickly end there. CorelDRAW allows you to work and output to RGB,CMYK,GRAYSCALE and SPOT COLOR simultaneously, Illustrator cannot do this at all. CorelDRAW handles text better, multiple pages and larger page sizes as a few examples.

Illustrator handles high node count files well

So in reality CorelDRAW and Illustrator don't really compete with one another.

Some drawing programs xo well as long as the only thing you're doing is display or web work.

I use CorelDRAW because it handles 99.9% of all my needs as an ICC compliant color managed, PS, GDI compliant graphic application and 100% of my drawing needs.

Some people don't have such needs, if what you do is screen printing, PS compliant spot color is really your core need.
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Verify Answer

Cancel
0 Phil1923 over 7 years ago in reply to David Milisock

Hi David,

My question was "why not use several programs for the very same file ".

For instance, the shot of the smiling lady used Photoshop's Content Aware Fill to get rid of the eyeglasses and Liquefy to get the smile. Thirty seconds later I was in Photopaint to use the Pen tool to help get areas for smoothing the skin.

Can switching between applications be done for a vector file to get the best of each program for the very same file.

Phil
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Verify Answer

Cancel
0 Leslie Dean Brown over 7 years ago in reply to Phil1923

Sometimes, but one application really has to do something MUCH better than the other to bother doing that.

For instance, I did this with corel when I had to put dimensions on my drawing for a school project.
I exported to Corel, added the dimensions, re-exported an AI, resaved in illustrator (important step) and no one was the wiser.

I my experience, corel can do more. I am no illustrator expert, but I could never get used to selecting between two tools all the time, even with A and V keys, it's slow. I don't think anyone is going to force me to use illustrator. I did a graphics design diploma with it, and found it so clunky, I quickly went back to corel to learn everything 'properly'.

The few things that illustrator can do (such as swapping outline & fill colours), corel can do with macros. The things that might have been slower, I set up macros and shortcut keys for.

I think it's better to learn one piece of software really well than know two only half as good. In the West, all the designers seem to shun corel and work with illustrator 'cause it's "adobe" and "more compatible". But if illustrator can't open corel files, and yet corel can open illustrator files, you tell me what is really more compaitble. Just because everything is part of a 'suite' doesn't make it faster or better.

I think InDesign is a great piece of software for layout, but ultimately, corel can do a bit of layout as well, all in the one program, so I tend to use that for simple projects. It's just much faster if you can get away with only using one program than exporting to other apps all the time...
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Verify Answer

Cancel
0 Leslie Dean Brown over 7 years ago

Further...

I tend to use corel paint most of the time for simple photo editing/resising (because it loads faster). I do have a subscription to CC because some people want their files in AI format. I have photoshop, I learned photoshop, it's a complicated program. But I did find it much more powerful than corel paint. It is sometimes slow and resource intensive though. But some of the stitching / panorma tools are amazing. Not to mention better cloning control, patch tool, liquefy, etc. I can't imagine going back to paint for *serious* photo editing (I don't do much anyway). Also, photoshop has script addons that allow you to do mockups very quickly.

And Indesign is generally the pro's choice for layout / publishing. I would only use it now if I was desiging something complex like a book or a magazine. Where the CC subscription comes in handy is when you realise that things like after effects, premiere pro, flash, are all included. At first I thought "all I want is illustrator... just give me illustrator" but I have found it handy to have the CC subscription on top of corel.

But my main tool is corel. I would rather give up photoshop and indesign than lose corel (if I had to). If I was a photo editor or true graphic designer (not the same as an illustrator), probably I wouldn't say that.

In short, I tend to use the best program from each suite. I rarely take the same file and edit it in two separate programs. Each time you do that, you lose time anyway.
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Verify Answer

Cancel
0 David Milisock over 7 years ago in reply to Phil1923

Not really unless you constrain yourself to not using special effects. This is where they are vastly different. Only two vector application I know of color mange their effects Illustrator and CorelDraw. Affinity might I haven't had time to load it. In any case these programs approach how they code the effects differently so in 99.9% of the cases the answer is no.
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Verify Answer

Cancel