GAH! I HATE stupid corelDRAW X4...

[marklone]

I recently got a job working at a screenprint Tshirt shop, and they have me doing a TON of designs, mostly one color. I always use either photoshop or illustrator and vector my image lineart I scan in. well, the shop only uses corelDRAW. they cannot ever get my work to show up right, when he does a live trace in corel, it makes all these little gray specs and stuff where in illustrator it was black, and most of the time he cannot GROUP the different colors or anything (which are different layers when I sent them) I hate it, don't even get me started on what a pain in the ass this 2 color image is... I separated it onto different channels in photoshop and got the trapping really good so all he should have to do is PRINT the two screens. but no, he insists he needs to do a live trace in corelDRAW. well, guess what, it won't even open in corel draw no matter what file I send. any advice? is there some way to transfer multilayered psd files into corelDRAW X4 and be able to GROUP and UNGROUP all the separate colors? any advice would be massively helpful as we are spending too much time dinking with it and are losing money...

[Aaron Gein]

Ugh. I f*cking HATE Corel Draw. The shop I manage was using it almost exclusively when I got hired. I had to learn it when I was first hired but now that I am the manager I have switched over to PS and Illustrator almost entirely. Corel Draw is still kept around because our vinyl plotter software is driven by Corel Draw. Other than that I almost never use it. The only advice I can give you is to stop fighting it....Adobe products and Corel products do not like to play well together. Almost every time I have to go from Illustrator to Corel with a file it will need all kinds of adjustments and re-working. If you have files sepped out in Photoshop at the proper print size there is no reason at all that he should have to trace it into Corel in order to output it to film....no reason except that he doesn't know what he's doing with Photoshop. So either you need to learn Corel Draw and start designing in it exclusively right from the start (and have your work suffer due to Corel Draws crappiness) or the dudes outputting film need to learn how to output from Photoshop or Illustrator. I suggest the latter.

I feel your pain, man. Corel Draw can suck it.

[marklone]

THANK YOU! so it's pretty much useless trying to get the two to work together as far as corel and adobe? is photo-paint (the program that comes with coreldraw) worth a shit? I hear it's supposed to be like a knock off of photoshop where you can do layers and all that stuff...

[Aaron Gein]

Well...it's not like you absolutely can't use the two together....it's just a major pain in the ass most of the time. And there's not really any reason too. So why bother?

I've actually never used photo-paint. It was never installed on our computers at work, and I hate Corel Draw so much that I didn't bother installing it to try it out.

[Aaron Gein]

Corel Draw is like Illustrators mentally handicapped inbred cousin (no offense to all you inbred mentally handicapped people on the GP!) It cant do nearly as much stuff as Illustrator and the things that it can do are awkward and poorly executed in comparison. I'm pretty much convinced the only reason people use it is because it is a lot quicker to learn than Illustrator if you have no prior computer design experience. Illustrator is a lot more in depth and you have a lot more control with Illustrator...which makes it harder to pick everything up quickly. Corel is easy to learn to use because it can't do nearly as much. You can pick it up quickly, but then hit a wall where you end up having to fight with the program because it can't do what you want to do.

[RichieGoodtimes]

Quit your job.

[Aaron Gein]

Obviously that is the only logical course of action here.

[marklone]

I did quit my job because you guys told me to. just kidding.
well, I got it to work, found out it downsamples ANYTHING from photoshop OR illustrator from 350 dpi to 72 dpi, so when I bring it into photopaint, I just put the resolution back to 350. I been messing with the live trace options in corelDRaw a bit (still haven't figured it out because it's really stupid compared to illustrator) but I think as long as it does a good trace where you can't see the pixels when you zoom waaay in, it will be good. I tried to get them to just print from my channel separation in photoshop and they wouldn't, they keep saying some guy came in and setup the printer so the printer will only work with corelDRAW. yeah right. anyway, they won't let me show them what's up. but anyway, other than that, the job is awesome.

[squeegeethree]

What printer are you using to output films? The answer would be to take your own laptop to work show them how to print out the files from photoshop or Illustrator from you computer.

Seems like your someone in your show is purposely keeping output in the dark-ages as a job safety measure.

[Recovery Shirts]

Haha.. damn y'all really hate Corel.. Well, I'm one of those red-headed inbred step children that learned on Corel, cuz that's what the guy that taught me used. It's really not that bad, if you've not been tainted by Adobe too much, which is pretty much no one out there.

I can pretty much answer all your questions, no prob, and get you fluent in no time. Ur boss is prob not too tech savvy, and doesn't want to take the time to learn new tricks. His way works, and has probably worked for years, so why change what isn't broke (in his mind). Plus, he's paying you..

Get my phone number from my contact page on my website and give me a buzz. An hour or two on the phone and you'll be a falking expert. I can almost guarantee you'll be able to show him a few new tricks by the time we're done..

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