Corel Draw Or Illustrator

[velma 6]

Fairly obvious question, do you prefer Corel Draw over Illustrator or is it the other way around? A friend swears by Illustrator despite it being trickier than Corel Draw. I must admit though I haven't used Illustrator so can't really comment on it, I have used corel draw to design sign boards and found it usable but not as fun as Photoshop.

[k_nitin_r 8]

Velma,I must admit that I am at the exact opposite site of the Corel Draw-Illustrator debate from where you are. I have used Adobe Illustrator and have not used Corel Draw. I did try an old version of Corel Draw sometime in 1999 so that does not really count. The vector smoothing in Corel Draw was rather good at the time compared to Adobe Illustrator when creating hand-drawn (or rather cursor-drawn free form drawings) whereas Adobe Illustrator is the tool of choice when primarily working with the pen tool and creating vector graphics as a part of a work flow that involves other Adobe graphics editing tools.You should also try Adobe Fireworks, which became a part of Adobe's offering after Macromedia's acquisition by Adobe. Fireworks is a good alternative to Adobe Illustrator and provides easy access to the gradient tools. I typically build my vector shapes in Adobe Illustrator and color them using Fireworks.

[mahesh2k 0]

Corel Draw and Illustrator, both but it depends on the situation. I do sketching on regular basis and for some of the sketches i need to use illustrator more than corel draw. But for logos and banner designs i found that corel draw is much better. In case of illustration, corel has it's own package called essentials. I got the free version of the essentials when i got the CD with bamboo tablet. In that essential version almost everything was there and you can almost any illustration possible that you used to do with adobe illustrator.For Linux users there is Calligra package with Krita software. It's like corel essentials but with less features as of now. They do have few identical features and is easy to use. But that is for the illustration and for those sketching purpose i have noticed with the krita. I don't know how many are here using Linux.If it's for banner and logo design then i guess corel draw is much better with cliparts and those brush and easy to use. In case of illustrator, it has lots of brushes and the stuff to do things quickly for sketches and the artistic illustration. I don't know if it is worthy to use it for the banner and the logo design. But who know with what people are comfortable with and it is pretty subjective as most of the formats are pretty much portable between these programs.

[velma 6]

If it's for banner and logo design then i guess corel draw is much better with cliparts and those brush and easy to use. In case of illustrator, it has lots of brushes and the stuff to do things quickly for sketches and the artistic illustration. I don't know if it is worthy to use it for the banner and the logo design. But who know with what people are comfortable with and it is pretty subjective as most of the formats are pretty much portable between these programs.

I have actually heard of & seen people use Corel Draw more for logos, magazines, registration forms & pamphlets, I think it is something to do with the overall output because of how graphics could look one way in a computer and another way once you actually print it? I had originally designed a few sign boards in photoshop but the printer required them to be converted into Corel Draw because he wasn't sure about all the effects coming out cleanly on the material... >_< It was a horribly testing moment for Corel Draw is not something I am fond of

I think I will try Fireworks to see how it goes, thanks for the suggestion nitin