[Rodney]

Will Illustrator or Corel work for photographs though (like his 1. paragraph?)

 

[Rodney]

I have CorelDraw 12, is x3 like the upgrade to that software? Sort of like Corel's version of "CS2"?

Edit: Doh...I think I just answered my own question. X3. X is the roman numeral for 10 + 3. Cute.

 

[Rodney]

Heading over the the Corel site now to get upgraded

 

[Rodney]

With the autotrace, is it best to have a tablet to trace a bitmap, or is it something you can do a decent job of with just a mouse?

 

[Rodney]

All you do is import the bitmap/jpg/whatever into corel draw. Then right click on it, then select "trace bitmap" they'll be a flyout menu, you can either do quicktrace or select an option below.

HOLY FREAKIN CRAP...that's amazing. I almost didn't notice anything happened it was so smooth.

Thanks for the tip

 

[Rodney]

THANK YOU so much for this tip! I just started using Crel Draw X3 at work

The autotrace feature works great with the CP sized images (3000 x 3000 pixels). I just coverted like 6 of my cafepress designs to vector graphics in minutes.

That alone was worth the price of the upgrade for me. i had been paying artworksource.com to convert my bitmap graphics to vectors until now

 

[Rodney]

So which is better, Corel or Illustrator?

There is no "factual" answer on this Some people just prefer one over the other.

 

[Rodney]

I think identityburn did a good job breaking down the differences in functions between the two in post #23

 

[Rodney]

Back on topic, I'm interested in Ross' second question about converting files to vector graphics in illustrator. Does that happen automatically when you save it as a ".ai" file?

If you import a low resolution graphic into illustrator (or corel) and just save it as a .ai file, it does not automatically make it a vector image.

That's where the livetrace feature comes in. You have to have the software trace the low resolution bitmap and then the resulting image will be a vector image that you can save as a .ai, .eps, etc vector file.

PS. You can get white t-shirts for much less than $2.48 per t-shirt from just about any wholesale source (ssactivewear, sanmar, broder, alphashirt.com, etc)