Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw

If your going to teach yourself, I'd probably go with CorelDraw, just cause I'm self taught, and I've found it easier to pick up then Illustrator was. Both are great programs and you can find tons of tutorial videos on YouTube to help you along.

CorelDraw just released version X7, but I understand it has its share of problems at the moment, so I'd stay with version X6 till they get the bugs worked out. Illustrator along with all Adobe products is no longer being released in disc form so you have to join their Creative Cloud to get access to the newest versions of their software...they sell by the month or by the year plans, you'll have to check with adobe.com to find out more. You can still find some older illustrator versions on disc online, but I understand they've gone up in price since Adobes cloud program started.

I got my copy of CorelDraw from Amazon, mainly because we're located in the middle of nowhere and there are no brick and morter software stores around here, and I don't trust buying software from Ebay....just make sure you get a full version and not a student version wherever you choose to purchase.

xara is supposedly even easier to learn than corel, has better file support, particularly EPS files, in it's pro version, has a basic webpage designer as well as a nice photo editor that supports photoshop plugins, is faster to use & best of all, is cheaper than either program.

i'm planning on getting it myself as i don't like the sound of clunky hard to understand programs or having to RENT illustrator for $500+ a year when the full featured version of xara is just $300.

before you spend your money, read some xara reviews. everything i've read makes it sound like just what i'm looking for to start my own graphics, web design & teeshirt business, but i WILL spend another $100, i think, on adobe's dreamweaver webpage editor as "what you see is what you get" simplified page editors aren't recommended, but even there, xara is better than average. still dreamweaver is "the industry standard" for web design, and the last thing i'd want to do is create pages with problems i can't understand to even fix with a WYSIWYG editor.

i've just asked a couple xara users here what they think of all of the illustartor haters' sticking their nose up at the program (and coreldraw too) when i saw a ton of happy coreldraw users.

skitten said:

I prefer Ai only b/c I was taught the basics in school and learned the rest myself. Although it costs more than corel, Adobe allows you to "rent" the program and others for a month or yearly fee.

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I think when we talk about cost, we have to consider quality. Adobe is famous for high quality and reliability. Prior to Adobe CC's rent forever system, I never thought of Draw "Suite" as being cheaper, and I never thought of it as a suite. It's just Draw, with a handful of junk program in the box. What you're really getting that's possibly worth money is Draw. But even with Draw, many people are still finding that they need plugins for color separations. People say they love Draw and talk about plugins in the same sentence. Separations is a critical feature for t-shirt work. It's elegantly baked right into Illustrator. So if you pay $500.00 for CorelDraw, plus a couple hundred for separations plugins, or $600.00 for Illustrator with elegantly created separations tools built-in, plus elegant preflight tools, which is really cheaper? Illustrator CS6 is cheaper than CorelDraw for me, in terms of t-shirt work. Illustrator CC, rent forever is certainly not because the cost never ends, but at least you're getting supreme reliability. And you're not relying on plugins that you hope will be updated and work properly when Draw get a new update. So I definitely go with Illustrator.

Illustrator has a few huge advantages for screen printing and t-shirt work. Excellent color separation tools built-in with preflight. Supreme reliability and quality. And the very best vector brush tools of any vector program. Corel is weak or not even trying in all 3 of those areas. Corel also has it's unique and interesting features but those are some of the major things that matter to me personally for the t-shirt work that I do.

skitten said:

Look at tutorials for both programs and review artwork made from them. You can find older versions that work just fine. My Photoshop is CS3 and my Ai trial is the newest CS6- no problems no far.

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CS3 was great software. The problem now is that Adobe no longer supports it on modern operating systems. So you'll never receive a point update. You can install it in Windows 8, but it will be 1.0 forever, but that is an extremely reliable version. In fact there's only 1 bug that I have identified in Photoshop CS3 through many years of using it daily. Moving channels around is slow. That's it. It was fixed with a point update. Other than that, Photoshop CS3 was like perfection.

Draw has automatic separations if the artwork is vector and pantones are used the same as Illy. It also has automatic traps and spreads something Illy lacks. The only time I use plugins with draw is when raster is involved but can be done manually also which I don't think you can separate raster in Illy or I've never. Found a good way. I have to do so in photoshop with Adobe products.

This Adobe VS Corel has been done to death and there is no real right or wrong answer. I bought CS6 and that will be the last money Adobe ever sees from me. This forcing you to buy forever is BS to me. Some small shop could upgrade from CS3 to say CS6 but maybe can't afford a monthly subscription.

If your in this business and are serious IMO you need them all. When I first started I didn't have Corel and every now and then would get a file that Adobe won't open. There are plus and minus to each of the companies products. I was not happy when they removed the screen button feature from Adobe. Yes there are work arounds that invoke hardwiring it into the file but if using a Rip you now have to set that in the Rip which adds another step and a chance for another mistake.

ProSeparatorNJ said:

I worked for the single largest transfer company in America for 6 years. It was 100% Adobe. Whoever imagines that CorelDraw is better for transfer work is nuts. They decided to gear up for tiny runs because the company saw profit there. That's when CorelDraw was introduced into the company. Otherwise, the professionals doing zillion piece runs were all Adobe based companies. Corel came along with the guys buying 5 or 10 pieces.

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Well to me Adobe Products are cool but you cannot compare Illustrator to DRAW. In the raster arena DRAW will obliterate Illustrator along with other areans. Especially for simulated process color separations or raster spot color separation. And FYI you can do simulated process color separations in Illustrator, just as you can in Serif Paint. But you just do not have all the raster tools you have right in DRAW and you cannot turn off the colors spaces in Adobe products.

Just because an industry is educated in a set tools does not make them the best tools. For me it is about down and dirty production art work which is 90% of the work flow in this Industry. And high speed creative capability on the art side.

Now you can sit their and say well the Industry Standard is X. Which if that works for you great. As for me I am going evaluate everything and if the entire Industry says X is the best but I know Y is better because I will get things done faster more accurately. I am going to use Y. And then I am going to use Y to take the X users clients, money and business away.

So your comments regarding who uses what holds no weight in my thinking. It is just your way of supporting your understanding and choices. I prefer to support my choices and understanding with facts. Not what others are doing or saying.