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kapilchakravarthy
10-01-2005, 01:31 PM
Guys I have a new job now and the current tools they use are Quark 5. Xara X and Illustrator 9.
And all these years Ihave beeing using Corel Draw and PS. I feel Corel Is much better that and enaf insted having all these three.
Am I wrong. or correct.
PrintDriver
10-01-2005, 05:31 PM
New job doing what?
Xara? Ah ha ha ha.
Good luck finding printing support on Xara. It's PC only and a mix of Raster/vector art. I've seen some excellent stuff done with the program but I wouldn't want to have to color correct it for process.
Quark 5 is probably a little more solid than 6 IMO. Q4 with a side of Acrobat would be better (no lie) if you are staying retro.
Illustrator 9 for the PC still used the old pms color formulae. The colors have since been updated and will appear different in print than you may intend. I don't know if Q5 for PC has the updated colors. And Xara X? Who KNOWS?
Quark 5 is a layout tool. Corel Draw is not. Other than that, you should probably think about updating. Either go with the full Corel suite with a layout program like InD or Quark - or the Adobe Creative Suite - depending on what it is you are designing for and what your print vendors will accept.
PersonasBinar
10-01-2005, 05:41 PM
FROM Pantone.com
Subsequent to this introduction, the major software vendors have begun to introduce updates to their software. Currently, Adobe® Photoshop® 7, Adobe Illustrator® 10, and QuarkXPress™ 5 contain support for the 147 new PANTONE Colors, as well as the revised CMYK simulation values. For those users working with older versions of the above, as well as other applications that do not provide support, Pantone is pleased to offer support files, which will allow the revised colors to be imported to documents within the applications on a document-by-document basis. Simply click the appropriate link below for the platform on which you work. It is strongly recommended that you utilize the "read me first" link to a PDF User Guide prior to downloading any of the files.
http://www.pantone.com/support/support.asp?idArticle=73&platform=PC
Stick with Quark, use Illustator to draw your logos and graphics, or Corel if you're more used to those tools then import them to Illustrator to save as final EPSs.
PrintDriver
10-01-2005, 05:46 PM
And any versions above those mentioned above. :D
Actually, Illy 9 for Mac at some point was shipping with the new colors as well. I have seen a release that did anyway. A LOT of those new 'values' are very very different. If your pantone books are older than the year 2000, it would be best to update those as well. I've gotten into more arguments about color matching only to find out the designer has an old fan-deck. We ask publication date or for actual chips now.
I'm guessing they are using Xara to do photo work that should be done in Photoshop...?
PersonasBinar
10-01-2005, 05:52 PM
*Shudder* YESYESYES never use a colour fan more than two years old.
Eggles1
10-02-2005, 01:00 PM
I had to read your post a few times to understand what you were asking, but I THINK it was to ask how did other forum members feel about using Quark, Xara and Illustrator after you had been used to using Corel and Photoshop.
PD - this person is in India and for all we know, version 9 of Ilustrator may be the latest they have. Your discussion on PMS colours probably went way over his head.
To answer what I think Kapil asked: If you have been used to using Coreldraw for layout as well as creating vector artwork, and Photoshop for raster work, you are going to find using Illustrator and Quark very very different. I don't even know what Xara is, but perhaps if there is not too much raster work in your new job (and we have no idea what it is), you could get by - I don't know.
Did the company that hired you know that you hadn't used Quark, Illustrator and Xara before?
PrintDriver
10-02-2005, 03:57 PM
Eggles,
Kapil has been around here for a while. I refuse to talk down to someone just cuz they may not know what I'm talking about. Just because he is in India (which I knew) doesn't mean he can't get the latest greatest (where is Quark being programmed now???), but that is why I put the statement 'depends on what you are designing for and what your print vendors will accept.'
Also, if he is doing offshore outsourcing he NEEDS to know that color information and I'm sure it didn't go over his head. Please do not make such assumptions based on a person's location.
I would have a very difficult time dealing with a Xara file unless it exports to EPS in a friendly manner. I've yet to have someone send me one to play with but I know of the program. It's almost exactly what Microsoft Acrylic is modeled after, inadvertently or not. Semi-raster, semi-vector glorified web graphic programs. Both of them make me shudder.
PrintPharmacist
10-03-2005, 02:41 PM
Quark 5 is a layout tool. Corel Draw is not. Other than that, you should probably think about updating.
This is not true, we do all of our layouts in Corel with much ease and satisfaction.
PrintDriver
10-03-2005, 04:43 PM
OK. Corel Draw is a layout tool in the same way the Illustrator is a layout tool. Fine for one or two sided things but not multipage.
OK. Corel Draw is a layout tool in the same way the Illustrator is a layout tool. Fine for one or two sided things but not multipage.
I disagree. Why is it not a page layout program? In the old days using CD7 I layed out many 24 page or so spreads and had no problems at all. Unlike illustrator it has multi page capabilities. http://home.comcast.net/~rnick9/koolsmiley.gif
Mynock
10-03-2005, 04:50 PM
FIGHT!
Not a fight, I'm just curious as to why it's not considered a page layout program. I wouldn't want to do a 300 page book in CD but I know it works for small brochures and such.
PrintDriver
10-03-2005, 04:54 PM
Freehand supports multipage and Illustrator does too if you buy a plug-in.
Does that make them multipage layout tools?
But I'm corrupted by my environment...
I guess it's time to point out my sig line again <sigh>
:D
Still not sure I understand your reasoning PD. All I want is some reasons why it's not a multipage program. Is it a RIP problem in the large format world? What does Illy & Freehand have to do with CD? I've heard it stated many times that CD is not multipage but never heard why.
Keyare
10-03-2005, 07:32 PM
I just switched a monthly 16 page newsletter from Indesign TO Corel because Corel is so much faster to work with. No popping out to build ads in Illustrator, no popping over to photoshop to adjust photos. Don't even have to pop anywhere to scan a photo. You can do All of it right in Corel. Plus, master pages, page numbering, styles and far better control over headline text than ID or Quark. Linked images...
Hmmm.. What am I missing that ID or Quark has that Corel does not?
Oh wait... Corel just crashed again.
PersonasBinar
10-03-2005, 07:47 PM
AND it can impose multiple documents with multiple pages in the print dialog, with proper marks.... Corel has been given a bum rap over the years. Yes some stuff doesn't work and you do get a decidely Corel look-and-feel to it, but man can it print.....unlike Illy
PrintDriver
10-03-2005, 11:53 PM
Okay, okay, I give up.
:D
I'll admit you guys know more about multi-page in Corel than I do. Normally in wide format you don't DO multipage too often, not unless the exhibit is large and there is a sizing and layout standard to the panels where master sheets come in handy. Mostly it's one offs.
I will say however that not a lot of large/wide format vendors (the ones I use anyway) will take Corel without a lot of grumbling. It seems they have an inordinate amount of trouble getting all the elements to RIP (remember we aren't using seps). Most want the Corel files, with all fonts outlined, as eps in addition to the .cdr file or, in a couple of cases, as .tif's at full output resolution! A lot of times we have to take multi-page docs apart anyway for production and there usually isn't a front and back requiring imposition.
Does that explain where I'm coming from? A little bit?
PersonasBinar
10-04-2005, 12:07 AM
I'll admit I had quite a time printing posters from Corel sometimes to our Onyx.
I'dd get the whole trade show booth in Corel ...panel per page.
I started with CorelDraw! (Version 2) It was a hateful program but we stuck with it. We used it until version 7....That’s when we started finding errors in our printing. I don’t recall what the exact problem was, but it had something to do with the “Enhanced Viewing” mode not holding when the file ripped. The work-around was to convert to Illustrator then it Ripped just fine. So we started using Illustrator more.
On the Mac, we have always used QuarkXpress, Illustrator and Photoshop since their inception. And still use Quark today for design. My Art Director Swears by Indesign (Former Quark nut), but I still stick with Quark.
My feeling on the whole thing is most people like what they either started with or were forced to use. If you can work with a program and use it for what it was intended for and still get the desired results, then who cares what the name of the program is. Heck, I printed a job designed in Scrapbook Deluxe Pro...and, you know, it looked fine when it was done.
I noticed you had Illustrator 9 listed as one of your programs. Adobe had problems with Illy 9 with gradations. If you saved the file to a PDF and zoomed up on a gradient, you would see white outlined boxes on the file. It was fixed in 10.
My $0.02
PrintPharmacist
10-04-2005, 01:30 AM
A Testimonial to Corel:
Through school, we were taught your mainstream Adobe Products, Macromedia, and Quark Products. These are all fine, but the politics behind them is highly noticeable. Quark's workspace, whall effective, is very touchy and you have to constantly alternate between it and other programs to maximize the effectiveness of you project (in other words to get it just right)
When I went into the work force, I was introduced by a successful small commercial printer to Corel. We run various types of presses (Ryobi, Mitsubishi, etc...) and still use film. ( If anyone can remember film... ) At first, yes, I was skeptical about this new program, and did not know how much better it could be than what had been repeatedly beat into our head in school. After using it, I can honestly say that the productivity speed you can work at in it is much faster than any Quark product or InDesign for that matter. When weighing out the pos. to the neg. I really feel the others lack compared to it. Yes, there are some issues, as with any program. I too like InDesign, and will happily work in files send in that format. But as for creating projects myself I will do everything I can to keep it in Corel. The workflow is unmatched (IMO) and for the most part you can find the loopholes into importing almost every file into it. Multipage documents, Business Cards, Brochures, etc.... most of this can be done from scratch with rarely ever minimizing and opening anything else. I like that, and I think anyone who says they wouldn't needs to take the blinders off. If there is one thing that I have learned in life, it would be work smarter, not harder.
PrintDriver
10-04-2005, 11:06 AM
We look at this from three different perspectives.
For Designer workflow it may be faster to use Corel (though I think the way CS2 is set up a little practice in Indesign would be just as fast).
For the '4-color' prepress guy it isn't much of a problem to print the stuff the designer 'did fast' in CD.
But wide format is a different story. We accept anything, but there may be more pain involved in one format over another. Any program's new release is a problem for at least 3 months. Some more.
CD is just generally less accepted in some areas of wide format. But then, there are still a few vendors out there who don't like accepting files with transparency features.
I'm sure there are shops out there who started in Corel for vinyl and added printers later and I'm sure some labs have it down better than others. Maybe all it means is a call to the printer (as usual).
I disagree. Why is it not a page layout program? In the old days using CD7 I layed out many 24 page or so spreads and had no problems at all. Unlike illustrator it has multi page capabilities. http://home.comcast.net/%7Ernick9/koolsmiley.gif
Illustrator is an art program, and in my opinion the best of the sort. Its lack of multi-page capabilities is a downer, but it was meant to create the art used in your final page layout, preferrably placed into InDesign.
CorelDraw, on the other hand, does have the most broad-range of capabilities. It's been around for a long time, and has very often been used in Page Layout capacities. However, that doesn't make it a page-layout program.
Quark Xpress and InDesign (and Pagemaker) are made for page layout. Illustrator is made for art. Corel is a 'jack-of-all trades', but still primarily an art program like Illustrator (and Freehand is more like Corel).
I personally am fond of the Adobe Creative Suite, giving a designer all the top-of-the-line tools for the job, all using the same format, tools, and functions for easy learning of all programs. If you're an Adobe man or woman, then it's very easy to move between all Adobe Programs, including non-linear programs like After Effects, Premiere, and Audition, which gives you the full range of multimedia capabilities.
However, as a graphic designer you don't have the choice of sticking with one company, as you usually have to work with what you're given (especially working on-site). So getting back on topic, you have to know just about all the programs you can. As far as print design, you should know at least InDesign, Quark Xpress, Illustrator, Corel Draw, and Photoshop.
To answer your question, Kapil: I know you're used to Corel, but learn Quark and Illustrator. You'll find the combination of the two to be quite powerful, and these are skills a designer can't really get by without knowing.
As far as Xara is concerned - do the company a favor and tell them to ditch it and get Photoshop. It is only one more program, and I'm sure they can afford it. It's not fair to ask them to put out more money to buy Corel, as Illustrator and Quark in combination do everything Corel does, and more. Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign are an easier workflow, as is what you're used to - Corel and PS, but Illustrator, Photoshop, and Quark will certainly get you by!
Of course, Xara must go - what were they thinking!?
PrintPharmacist
10-11-2005, 06:52 PM
I have to ask what it is that Corel lacks in comparison from the design standpoint?
PrintDriver
10-12-2005, 11:16 AM
Corel lacks nothing except for the fact it is only available for PC.
Which isn't necessarily bad. As long as your printers can handle it, go for it.
PersonasBinar
10-13-2005, 04:12 PM
Ultimately you want to be able to print your documents. You'll experience far less headaches if native documents are provided so that the printer can do what they have to do on your documents. You'll be hamstrung to find a good printer that supports Corel as well. Working in Corel isn't a bad thing but you'll forever be exporting to a different format that the printer might have to simply print. Whereas if he got a Quark collection you'd get some colour correction and they would able to fix any errors found, typos, spot colours etc.
when I wa smy own printer working in Corel wasn't an issue. When I need someone else to do the print for me, that's where the issues occur.
kapilchakravarthy
10-13-2005, 04:36 PM
I had to read your post a few times to understand what you were asking, but I THINK it was to ask how did other forum members feel about using Quark, Xara and Illustrator after you had been used to using Corel and Photoshop.
PD - this person is in India and for all we know, version 9 of Ilustrator may be the latest they have. Your discussion on PMS colours probably went way over his head.
To answer what I think Kapil asked: If you have been used to using Coreldraw for layout as well as creating vector artwork, and Photoshop for raster work, you are going to find using Illustrator and Quark very very different. I don't even know what Xara is, but perhaps if there is not too much raster work in your new job (and we have no idea what it is), you could get by - I don't know.
Did the company that hired you know that you hadn't used Quark, Illustrator and Xara before?
Hello,
Thank you for replying and sorry i replyed late. I am not in India and I'm working for a UK based corporate for their inhouse work which has about 18 designers, but the blood is still indian lol.
Yes the people who intervied me knew that i have'nt use Quark and Xara and just took me in after having 9 rounds of interview.
In fact I didnt know as what Xara X was, and it's capibelity. The previous place where i worked we used Adobe CS2 now that is when I resigned But mostely prefered using CD 12 for its useablity.( 11 is better that 12 )
Yes the PMS stuff very much didnt go over my head because here in India 55% of the vendors prefor in CMYK and 45% on PMS, which means i have to be really strong in both.
Broacher
10-13-2005, 05:32 PM
Corel as a multi-page layout program? Not for me. For quick comps, maybe. I use the multi-page function to save variations--whether it's ads, logos, signs, whatever. It's a great way to keep all the things connected in one file. But the main areas where Corel is inferior to layout apps is master pages, and type styles and functions. A good example is paragraph rules-- but there are so many other typographic functions and refinements built into layout apps--especially ID, that I don't see the point in using Corel for lots of text. As for the rest of the stuff I love about Corel--sure wish Adobe would take a long, serious look at what that is.
As for the rest of the stuff I love about Corel--sure wish Adobe would take a long, serious look at what that is.
Starting with Multipage handling in Illustrator. :)
Or looking at it the other way... I sure wish Quark and Corel would take a serious look at why people buy Adobe! For starters... How about real object/layer handling? I once had a Quark designer say to me, "You use layers? Ewww!" This was while I was working in Quark, which has no layer handling capabilities to speak of... Imagine if she saw me working in Illustrator. :) Or how about quick and easy zoom tools like CTRL/CMND + and CTRL/CMND -? It's little things like these that has allowed Adobe to blow their competition out of the water for so long.
PrintDriver
10-16-2005, 06:10 PM
Illustrator does not need multipage handling. It is not a layout program to be used in multipage fashion. HotDoor has a plug-in for Illy multipage but any print vendor will look at you sideways if you hand him a file that uses it. (If your print vendor already looks at you sideways, something else is wrong.)
Broacher
10-16-2005, 07:43 PM
>>How about real object/layer handling?<<
?? What do you mean? CorelDraw has always had layers/object management--which even have some tricks that the Adobe layer manager doesn't have (such as: Masterlayer attribute-- due to its multipage functionality).
But I can think of a good reason why you don't see CDraw using layers as much as AI users: you don't need to! Or not nearly as much. In making object selections in AI, any object that has a piece of it fall inside a selection marquee gets selected. This is quite frustrating to CorelDraw user where your selection is restricted to those objects which only fall entirely within the selection marquee. This lets you quickly select small objects layered or hiding within larger ones. I don't know why Adobe doesn't at least this mode as a timesaving option.
>>Or how about quick and easy zoom tools like CTRL/CMND + and CTRL/CMND -?<<
Corel's default zoom controls have also been around forever. And they've actually included many useful ones that Adobe should consider, such as zoom to selected objects, zoom to page width, zoom to all objects on page and pasteboard, one shot zoom. I like the Ctrl - and Ctrl + and Ctrl-spacebar shortcuts that AI has though and I just added them to the matching zoom tools in Corel so all I have to do is memorize one set of shortcuts.
>>It's little things like these that has allowed Adobe to blow their competition out of the water for so long.<<
No, it's the big things like their history of getting in first and 'owning' the prepress operating standards (postscript, PDF) which gave them their big financial and market postion that allowed them to make moves like BUYING out their competitio--that's what makes allows Adobe to stay on top. They may have not paid much attention to MicroSoft when it was starting out, but I'd say that they learned quite a lot from Mr. Gates over the years. If anything, I'd say that if it wasn't for the presence of smaller players like Corel and MM over the last decade or so, we'd still be stuck with an AI feature set somewhere around AI7. The number of unique enhancements and improvements that have been added to the AI toolset since then that did not already exist in some form in the competition, are very small. And all along the way Adobe routinely goes through this "As market leader, let us just say that this newest feature offered by [Corel, or MM] is a frivolous feature, limited in use, and has no place in a true postscript drawing environment"-- until swiping those same ideas a year or two later. I'll stand by my original statement-- the useful UI feature/enhancements that AI should steal from CDraw far outnumber the reverse list.
If there's one good thing I do see in Adobe products, and especially in AI, it's the adoption of a far more integrated and extensive object-based architecture. The introduction of the Attribute palette, and the movement of filters and effects into object attribute layers is what I'm talking about. It brings 2D drawing closer to that of 3D where there is such an abundance of object level attributes to satisfy even the most gluttonous of control freaks. This model also follows the trend to 'vanishing commitments' --that is, by making an effect or a transform an attribute, you can always back out again. Corel still has the edge, in my opinion, in some of the other interactive UI controls (gradient and transparency controls, for example), but because its Adobe who overhauled everything postscript to fit the new suite-wide PDF architecture, they'll always have the inside edge on how to milk it for all its worth.
So in short, to attribute market supremacy solely on a feature by feature comparison is futile. You have to include the bigger picture of market history, and who really controls the bazillion dollar investment that makes up for all that prepress gear out there. If it was strictly a function of speed, and functionality, I think Adobe would have 'left the building' years ago.