Coreldraw vs. Illustrator

[Laser Rat]

Greetings All;

I posted a while ago mentioning that we are awaiting delivery on a laser. Most of the work we will be doing will be our own in house vector cutting, but we have had a number of enquiries about raster engraving. So far we have gotten some really low res files from clients who have no idea what the difference between 72 dpi and 300 dpi is. What seems apparent now is that we might have to create the vector files we need. I have read (here and elsewhere) about the basics of what's required to do that. I have Coreldraw 12, which I am very new to. But I am hearing from a lot of folks that Illustrator is the main program out there. I have a reasonable amount of experience with CAD programs but very little with graphics programs. If I only had time to get familiar with one program, should it be CD or AI? Any advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Rat

[stiney51]

Both are very respected programs. You'll find a ton of people prefer illustrator, but I think this is because they tend to gravitate to the Adobe family of programs in general. I never cared for the layout of Corel Draw, but it has been 5 or 6 years at least since I was exposed to it.

One thing you might consider is doing a few searches looking for tutorials and help on the 2 programs. If you find more help out there for Illustrator, then I would go that route, if you find a fair amount for both, I'd stick with the one you already own.

[notjustgraphics]

I'd also like to add to stiney51's very helpful comment...

As an agency, we co-ordinate all types of media for our clients... We find that Illustrator is almost UNANIMOUSLY prefferred in the print industry, and when it is not, it loses to Quark (generally older print houses).

We only run into Corel Draw with Cutters and sign makers... likely because , as we're told, the software used to convert images to plotter files directly supports Corel Draw files.

I'd check your equipment and software specs to see if one of the formats will be more efficient for you than the other.

That said, I can tell you that if and when you are lucky enough to get Vector files from your clients, it will more than likely be an illustrator file.

As for creating Vector files from Client's raster images: In my opinion, Illustrator dominates both in support and ease of use.

Mike.

[Jacorre]

See I'm mixed when it comes to questions like these. I myself love Corel Draw because of its ease of use. I think drawing and manipulating shapes in Corel Draw is so easy. If I need complex shapes I tend to open Corel first and then export to Illustrator for further stuff.

If you have the Corel suite, it comes with Corel Trace where you can take any image and it will vectorize it for you. Of course as a designer that's the easy way out, but it's an option if you really need to for a last resort.

[Laser Rat]

Thanks for the good advice. Still somewhat undecided but I think what I may do for the moment is outsource the "file fix" aspect of this and concentrate creating whatever files are required for the vector cutting part of the business. I have a client who is a graphic designer who is very familiar with all of the "poor file" part of the business and regularly tweaks and redraws file for clients. He will do this for me on a fee per file basis so........ for the moment I think I will go that route and go about learning in myself a little further down the road. My own informal poll in my industry seems to be Illustrator for the design crowd and Corel for anyone that has to create a tool path. Thanks again, Rat

[Topo]

Hello.
I work in a graphic desgin industry and and I like to use BOTH, Corel & Illustrator. To me both are good programs one may have better tools for some jobs, then the other. You can work with VECTOR files as well as BIT MAP, with both.
The only thing to is that Corel let you open and work with more variety of files types. When Illustrator it has more limitations. Like Corel will open any Illustrator file, But Illustrator it won't open Corel files.

[Laser Rat]

In the end I ended up buying a copy of Illustrator and was able to "fix" the files. I have an enormous amount to learn but so far I would say that AI is far more complicated but does more. Corel on the other hand is no slouch but is easier to use and customize. Thanks to all for the advice.

Cheers, Rat