I’m yet to find anyone who can do any job in Illustrator quicker than I can do it in Corel. People say you don’t need tables and other layout tools as you can use Indesign or Quark for this, but why would i want to jump between lots of different programs when I have one that can do all these tasks quickly and efficiently.

For me, the biggest advantages of CorelDraw over Illustrator are:
-Font substitution: Open a file that you don’t have the font for (or the font is named very slightly differently) and Illy just substitutes the default font. Corel asks what font you would like to use for each missing font.
-Selection of objects: The inability of Illy to select only objects fully contained by the marquee. This is invaluable when you have multiple objects on a background image. Corel by default only selects contained objects, but if you hold Alt it selects everything the marquee touches, like Illy. Nice to have the choice!
-Multiple pages: Yes, it’s in Illy now, but it works terribly compared to Corel which has had it forever.
-Print imposition: Laying up more than one copy (e.g., business cards) on a page when printing in Illy is very manual and time consuming. In Corel it is one click.
-Aligning objects: When using align tools, Corel always aligns to the last object you click when Shift-Selecting. This saves lots of messing around having to change the order of objects before aligning.
-Adding fonts: If i install a font whilst using Corel, it shows up straight away. In Illy i have to exit out of the program and reload to see the new font.
-Shape editing: I think it is almost universally accepted that the shape editing tools in Corel are far superior (the one thing the forums seem to agree on).
-Powerclips: Are much better and easier to use than clipping masks

Incidentally, someone mentioned that the scroll wheel zooms rather than scrolls. Well, if you don’t like it, you an change it in the options (Tools > Options > Workspace > Display) unlike Illustrator.

Takes I have been spending numerous times and numerous hours fixing and correcting vector files that come of illustrator , even today when Im at work I wonder why somone did not cut/trim graphics instead cover the unwanted pieces with white boxes, or why ohh why
would someone inflate an outline with a pen tool ???? and all the night mare with node and curve editing lol the interface is awful and hard to get around, there is no scale factor and the drawing is limited to only certain size I think 288 inches anything past that you gotta do the math on your own to scale , imagine you got a computer with vector designing software and you gotta do the math in your head to compensate for scale lol,
what a joke…. corel has pretty much almost inifiny size capability , you can lay out entire city block in size and in perfect scale, , I found it funny how Adobe is trying to make Illustrator/photoshop application in one with the new releases of Illy cs5. I thought it was supposed to be a vector software so why inflatingit farther with phot filters lol… I laugh how unexperienced are the design teachers in colleges teaching art sold to corporate discount of Adobe lol . I design in both applications unfortunately I first started off with illustrator,
and after a few years at worked with freehand and corel draw. I chose corel draw as my only vector application because its simple , straight forward and so user friendly, and most I mean 95% of CDR files I receive from other companies are done perfectly and ready for production, I can run a large format printer, I can plot my graphics I can cut my graphics I can send my graphics to router table to sheet metal bender and use the same files in 3d sudio and guess what they all work perfectly and yes they are CDR files.
Hope this clears up the choice to make for new upcoming designers.
If there was no Photoshop nobody would ever care for illustrator and that’s the truth.

Cheers Mates, and enjoy the weekend !

Andrew

Illustrator is much easier i let my older brother who knows nothing of design, play around with both and he found illustrator to be better. Illustrator workspace is better, things are easy to find…
Photoshop on the other hand i don’t use for much design work, just photo editing, painting, and anything to do with art, but it is brilliant and no one can deny that…for what it does…

They all great Programs though …Peace in the design world!

As for the price of Adobe products, it’s up to the buyer to decide whether it’s worth it or not. If you’re making a little money, you may say that the price is too expensive. But some people are making a fortune with Adobe products. People’s businesses are based around Adobe products. Big multi-million dollar businesses. I don’t think they’re worrying themselves over the cost of Adobe products.

For the sake of argument however, Adobe does fail in one very basic regard, and that’s price.
While I love Adobe software, it’s simply not worth the insanely high price. (You can thank the Mac elitists of yesteryear for that – the very same elitists who think that a $5.00 cup of coffee is an OK thing). When it comes to price, Corel is an infinitely better value.

Summing it all up, do yourself a favor and stop hating on one program over the other. Hunker down and learn both programs. You’ll be glad you did.

I want to import a copy of a photograph into Corel Draw x4. I want to make an irregularly-shaped text box over the photo that I just imported. I want to type into that text box and fill that box with my letter (possible change the font along the way). Once I get my letter done I want to remove the imported photo so my background goes white again…remove the text-box-line so that all I have remaining is text in an irregular shape. I want to then print my text onto that picture that I imported.

Please advise price. Thanks dave

I am a traditional pre-press and now digital print artist and use photoshop
for my photo editing and coreldraw for layout and vector.

I use adobe illustrator occasionally but am used to coreldraw.
Im not a hater like some – i just like what im used to.
I use sketchup too and use the same technique just in 3D.

All 3 are brilliant programs!
Illustrator is good too but old versions are quite slow on my PC.

I also use CorelDraw since version 8. Never had problems either. I FULLY agree with you that it depends who use which ever program. Some people like Adobe (which I don’t), and others like Corel. It takes a professional PERSON to be able to create a work of art – not a fancy smanchy looking program.

but for layers ps ultimate.

Coreldraw and related programs are more than enough for any casual user and will do
just nicely for the professional.

I am a new user to Adobe AI and Photoshop. Other than some tools and filters that corel
does not have, it doesn’t impress me.

I have run into a number of problems and issues with the Adobe products, even after the
limited time I have been using it.

And judging from the internet sites ( including Adobe’s ) it would seem that it is just
as buggy and has just as many issues as any other software.

The exception being the prices Adobe charges for their crap. And the drooling Adobe
fans that seem to place Adobe on a Apple made pedestal.

There are free and shareware programs that in the hands of a professional can do most
anything you need to do. It may take you a little more effort…but you can do it.

That’s what usually makes the difference between a professional and…….. an Adobe
products user.

Illustrator prior to CS3 was downright unusable. After purchase of Macromedia, and incorporating some of that Freehand spirit into Illustrator it became quite a decent piece of vector editing software.

My 2c are as follows:
- In down-to-detail bezier curve editing Corel PWNZ AI in every aspect
- It also kicks it’s ass primo on aspect of curve combination, in Corel, there is a definite primitive of bezier path (bezigon) that everything can be recombined to, pathfinder is nowhere near as powerful — although it has upperhand of allowing subsequent editing of parts that make up combined path.
- When it comes to effects, Illustrator bitmap based effects like drop shadow, blur et al make artwork design much simpler, corel is both slow, memory hungry and requires “freezing” artwork to bitmaps for most of that to work. If they did this the AI way in X6 (as it’s too late for X5) they’d rock
- AI bitmap output is superior (their antialias is topnotch, whereas Corel still makes blurry unfocused output) and prepress results are neater, but Corel is more powerfull in both regards.

Both are CPU hogs, bloated monsters with tons of useless shit inbetween few useful functions, and both are equally shitty when it comes to stability but if I had to chose just one tool it would be Corel because you can get EVERYTHING done with it, and off course, there is the price factor as well.

The only two reasons why Corel is still bashed by design snobs are:

- Design snobs are mostly Mac snobs and Adobe WAS from planet mac, whereas Corel is more of a windows company, Adobe will probably dump Apple sooner or later because of business politics so it will soon change
- It’s cheaper so design snobs who are Mac snobs, naturally assume that when you pay the premium for turd it automagicaly turns to gold — just as they assume when buying computers.