[j12racer]

hi all,
i am brand new to the game and figured i have been wanting to design a few things for some t-shirts. i have always been interested in designing and artistic things so i cant wait to get started. i did some web surfing and on youtube i found a video that was corel draw with the brush pack add on. i fell in love. Are there any other programs similar to whe brush pack maybe for different software. im just trying to get as close to this corel draw + brush pack as possible without spending so much money. i mean i found corel draw by it self was 400 bucks . the brush pack is a sepereate 99 the only place i found it was silkscreensupplies.com ... any tips on places to get this stuff cheaper or other similar programs?????? one last question. what does it mean corel draw x 5 home and student edition. would you recommend that for screen printing? thanks all

 

[ProSeparatorNJ]

hi all,
i am brand new to the game and figured i have been wanting to design a few things for some t-shirts. i have always been interested in designing and artistic things so i cant wait to get started. i did some web surfing and on youtube i found a video that was corel draw with the brush pack add on. i fell in love. Are there any other programs similar to whe brush pack maybe for different software. im just trying to get as close to this corel draw + brush pack as possible without spending so much money. i mean i found corel draw by it self was 400 bucks . the brush pack is a sepereate 99 the only place i found it was silkscreensupplies.com ... any tips on places to get this stuff cheaper or other similar programs?????? one last question. what does it mean corel draw x 5 home and student edition. would you recommend that for screen printing? thanks all

Illustrator is a far, far better choice especially where brushes are concerned. There are hundreds of sites with thousands free high quality Illustrator brushes. Furthermore Illustrator brush technology is amazing. CorelDraw's brush support is very old and very basic. I really wanted to use CorelDraw on my tablet because it has very good touch support while Illustrator has absolutely no support for touch. But CorelDraw's brushes are terribly basic and inflexible. I chose Serif DrawPlus strictly for drawing on my tablet PC over CorelDraw. Serif DrawPlus is the best vector brush technology I've seen after Illustrator and it also has the best touch support.

So to make it really simple. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop has everything you need for screen printing and are also the most modern software. Illustrator's brushes and brush tech are incredible. My biggest wish for CorelDraw X6 is for them to update their brushes. You will find thousands of brushes for Illustrator on the web, free. You won't find any brushes outside of the single commercial source you've come across for CorelDraw and you will find that Corel's brushes are quite inflexible. If you're using a Wacom then Illustrator will be good. If you're using a tablet PC like me, then Illustrator is not gonna work, Serif DrawPlus is my next choice, but you will have to export everything to a format like tif to get it to Photoshop so it can be separated and printed.

 

[charles95405]

illustrator and photo shop are good IF you can afford them....and the learning curve is a bit steep. I personally prefer CorelDraw...I have CS5 for illustrator but do not use much. But for entry level for most, SerifDraw Plus X5...under $100 is a great buy. Also there is Xara.com which is less than $200 and is also a tremendous value for the money. I have Serif and Xara as well...why do I have them...??? cuz I like to play with graphics and can afford them

 

[dmMatrix]

If you don't want to pay for Illustrator CS5 (since it is pretty pricey) You can probably find CS4 or CS3 online for a great price now days. I am forced to use my old CS3 for one company who won't upgrade because when I downsave from CS5 they claim they have problems.....ugh.

Corel Draw is still an excellent program. On this forum you will find that for the most part those two programs are in tight competition and really is mostly personal preference. So, I would say stick with Either Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.

 

[j12racer]

thank you all for the great information. i appreciate the quick replies. im going to do some research on the illy for a bit and see what i can come up with. i am kind of on a budget. would the cs3 and cs4 be able to do the cool brush effects such as feathers and such. to tell you the truth i want to make a couple personal shirts to get my business name out there at a few MMA gyms and these guys love the skulls with wings and chains and barbed wire and stuff, so thats really the type of brushes im wanting. also. are all of these softwares pretty much turnkey as far as clip are on them or will i have to find an add on? thank you all for your help this is a great forum. any information is always appreciated.

 

[lray]

i would definitely go with adobe products. dmMatrix's idea of buying an older version is perfect if you don't have the cash for cs5. there aren't a ton of differences between cs3 and cs5 anyway

 

[ProSeparatorNJ]

I think that there are a lot of differences between CS3 and CS5, but for someone just getting into it, you might not notice. Adobe updates always involve some major new features plus lots of tweaks that make the workflow better.

 

[dmMatrix]

thank you all for the great information. i appreciate the quick replies. im going to do some research on the illy for a bit and see what i can come up with. i am kind of on a budget. would the cs3 and cs4 be able to do the cool brush effects such as feathers and such. to tell you the truth i want to make a couple personal shirts to get my business name out there at a few MMA gyms and these guys love the skulls with wings and chains and barbed wire and stuff, so thats really the type of brushes im wanting. also. are all of these softwares pretty much turnkey as far as clip are on them or will i have to find an add on? thank you all for your help this is a great forum. any information is always appreciated.

CS3 would be fine and the big issue here is going to be this: it has a quite steep learning curve but there are tons of tutorials on youtube and all over the place. What you mentioned should be easy if you learn the program a bit.

When I am too busy my wife will actually play around with my design software and do jobs for me.... Funny thing is that she picked up everything she knows from just giving brief glances here and there at the keyboard while I was working. So, it really isn't hard at all if you are generally software savvy.

As far as add-ons, my CS3 has zero updates. To be honest, I don't remember if I had any when I first got it either but when I re-installed it I never let it connect to the net and I have never had problems running it.