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I am new to all of this and am trying to learn photoshop and corel.
I am doing heat press currently, moving to vinyl and eventually the goal is screenprint.
Can anyone give me some specific areas in these programs to study and learn for these applications rather than following books step by step and trying to learn the whole program.
Thanks so much!
If you could email me since only 5 messages can go in here on the forum.
I don't know about photoshop, I use Corel. I don't see why you would want both since Corel gives you Photopaint. I would say choose one or the other and learn it throughly. Questions on this forum usually get answered pretty soon, so ask away. I have never read the Corel manual though I did refer to it a few times in the beginning. The tutorials on the Corel disk give you some good basic information. Corel has much less of a learning curve than the Adobe programs, and most Corel users can do anything in Corel that can be done in Photoshop or Illustrator. No matter how many books you read, you learn by doing so just jump in and go.
Can anyone give me some specific areas in these programs to study and learn for these applications rather than following books step by step and trying to learn the whole program.
Hi Libby,
Unfortunately there is no easy way I know of to learn the essentials of either program. I would recommend to pick Corel or Adobe, one or the other to learn. They are 2 different programs that work differently to get pretty much the same end result. If you're leaning more towards being a graphics designer, go with Adobe. If your just wanting to go the cheapest and easiest route, then I would say use Inkscape (shareware) or Corel. It would just be personal preference as to which program to learn.
If your like me, cracking open a book to learn is overwhelming. I am more of a spacial learner. I learn by doing. I found the best method for me to learn is through tutorials. You can search u-tube and find probably most of want you need to get started. I choose to sign up with Lynda.com. Right at the moment I am learning Dreamweaver. The first time I opened it, I was totally overwhelmed. After watching a few tutes I am feeling much more comfortable with my ability to design a web page.
Also, If your planning on doing vinyl you'll need a vector program which Corel and Illustrator are. I use Corel and find it perfect for screening and signs and heat pressed vinyl.
Good Luck.
Can anyone give me some specific areas in these programs to study and learn for these applications rather than following books step by step and trying to learn the whole program.
but why wouldn't you want to learn the whole program? i've been using illy and photoshop for years and am still learning. sure people learn in different ways, but just because there are a gazillion tuts out there doesn't mean that's the way to go. there are plenty of people posting vids showing a guy drawing a flower in illustrator, but where's the foundation in that? most producers of their software have a clue to what's the best way to go about learning what their selling. that's why they make manuals. adobe press makes the 'classroom in a book' line of publications. you learn by doing projects that you'd be given as an artist. sure you can learn the basics pretty quick and that's fine until the day someone asks you to do something you don't know how to do, then it's learning all over again. it's a never-ending process.
I got my start in Corel and I am good but not as good as many. I still don't no the complete in's and out's and have had the program 3 years. I am constantly learning.
I am taking a Visual Communication program at the local Technical College and we must use and learn Adobe if going to be a graphic designer so I was forced to learn some of the program. I found it hard in the beginning because I was so use to Corel. It was frustrating because work seems much easier in Corel that in Photshop or Illy. Once I watched a few videos on youtube I got the hang of it and I am actually liking it a bit more than Corel now. (This could be because my school work has to be done with Adobe so I use those programs a lot more than I do Corel now. )
Which ever one you choose, remember it will have a learning curve and you can always ask here as many are willing to help out. I learn best by doing so reading the manual won't do it for me. You can use google and will find a bunch of tutorials in Pdf format that are very helpful. Youtube has gazillions of videos on anything Illy, Photoshop, Corel, Gimp, and Inkscape and probably others. I have subscribed to several and I watch the video on one monitor and actually do it on the other. I am getting good at Illy and Photshop now.
My homework this weekend is in Indesign which I hate but I am sure watching a few tutorials will get me right through it.
Good Luck on whichever program you decide to go with!
Katrina
Thanks for all the info and replies. I have both corel x4 and adobe creative suite and would love to eventually learn both, but I think I will begin with corel.
I am no graphics person, but need to be able to utilize these programs for the business especially when I get into vinyl and screen printing.
I was so overwhelmed just loading and opening photoshop and illustrator that I just stopped!!
I will definitely look into the tutorials out there and have the adobe classroom in a book pulled up through an ebook from the library.
The programs look amazing and once I get over being apprehensive I will dive in! I would love to learn all the programs have to offer, but also would like to know the specifics of what I have to know for screen printing and vinyl.
My hubby says to crack open a beer and dive in and if I get too frustrated to have another beer =)
My hubby says to crack open a beer and dive in and if I get too frustrated to have another beer =)
that's a constant in my house. my girlfriend gets aggravated at all the belching and AAAAARRRGGHHHS!!!! she hears coming from my office.
this is a dynamite forum made up of people with all kinds of knowledge and varying degrees of skill and experience that are willing to share. it's easy to get frustrated at the beginning. i know when i spend that kind of money on a program that i should be able to 'plug right in' and be able to get right going on making whatever it is i want to do. but it's like anything else, you've gotta start somewhere.
i'm old school. i learned doing it by hand. using illustration board, pencils and pens etc. so back then we didn't have monitors to watch tutorials and such. hell when the first mac came out i was working at a type and design house. we did typesetting on linotronic machines where you'd have to develop this type of photopaper in these huge machines. and when dry i had to do paste-up. well imagine a 200 page book. thank god for programs like indesign now. holy s#*t! needless to say when people started doing the typesetting on macs that whole industry of paste-up and hands-on board work died and there was a generation of artists that had to be retrained. so instead of spending money on school i spent it on computer equipment and software and taught myself. but i needed help just like you do now.
it sounds like you're in school now, is that correct? what i did when learning on my own was to give myself projects such as what a client might bring to you one day. like design a logo. get your logo sketched out on paper and then write down exactly what it's going to take step by step to produce that logo in illustrator. i.e. 1. use the ellipse tool to draw the circle. 2. use the pen tool to create the middle shape etc. it gets you thinking in designing on a computer. layer by layer, color by color etc. the pen tool is the most important tool to learn. period. making smooth bezier curves is a necessity. omg, sorry....but anyways.
if using a vinyl cutter, all work has to be vector. so you're talking adobe illustrator or coreldraw. you'll want to research what cutter is compatible with both your computer and it's os and what programs does it come with or work with. i've got the roland gx-24 which comes with a plugin that let's you output to the cutter directly from illustrator. vinyl's great for 1-2 color low run jobs for tshirts and uniforms etc. doing vinyl for more than 50 shirts isn't cost effective as it is getting plastisol transfers or farming the job out to a silkscreen printer. a silkscreen printer should be able to work with both vector and bitmap files. if you don't know the difference between the two use the search function and check out some of the threads on it. vector is just easier for them to use. are you planning on doing silkscreen yourself? if so there's a whole other part of this forum dedicated to that as there is vinyl, heat transfers etc. whatever it is you can always ask here. keep us informed of how it's going. if you get stuck just come back and we'll see what we can do. -good luck! btw, indesign ain't that bad.
Hi sporttees1,
CorelDraw is not heavy at all and intuitive to serve. Try out it simply in rest. Otherwise one finds a lot about Google. If you have special questions, you can announce yourself with pleasure.
Greetings Michael
I am new to all of this and am trying to learn photoshop and corel.
I am doing heat press currently, moving to vinyl and eventually the goal is screenprint.
Can anyone give me some specific areas in these programs to study and learn for these applications rather than following books step by step and trying to learn the whole program.
Thanks so much!
If you could email me since only 5 messages can go in here on the forum.
I appreciate all the help I can get!
I would pick one graphics suite in the beginning. Either Adobe or Corel and learn the programs in that suite.
Once you pick one of the suites, then there is a great book specifically for screen printing that you would benefit from: Dane Clement's T-Shirt Artwork Simplified. There are two versions of the book, one for Adobe and one for Corel.
Then another great place to learn one of the suites quickly is at your local community college. Most offer classes on graphics software, especially Adobe.
Welcome to the shirt design world the best program to use for t shirt design is coral draw and paint. I learned this program within 2 weeks and is alot easier to learn than photoshop and illustrator. Coral also does better vector art. Good luck.
Welcome to the shirt design world the best program to use for t shirt design is coral draw and paint. I learned this program within 2 weeks and is alot easier to learn than photoshop and illustrator. Coral also does better vector art. Good luck.
that's about as ridiculous as GWAR is. pleeeez! (and what kinda bleep is gonna be a GWAR slave). you learned the program within two weeks. i doubt it. you can't even spell it correctly. (coral is in the ocean). hey i've got something original for ya, a band called KISS. what a bleep!
Learning Photoshop and Corel 
