Screen Printing Forum

My brother and I are just breaking into the screen printing buisness and are looking for some opinions on software. First, we have zero graphic design experiance...so whatever program we end up purchasing, we will be taking any online courses we can find to try and learn them as well as we can. We've kind of narrowed it down to two options: A) Adobe's CS4 Design Studio (so that we'll have both vector and raster/bitmap programs with PS and Illustrator included) or the much less expensive option B) CorelDraw X4? What are some of your opinions of the two, keeping in mind...we'll need to learn either of these programs anyway? Also...do we need both PS and Illustrator, or can design, layering, and color seperation all be done on one or the other? We will be running these programs on PC ad well (as opposed to mac....for now).

This hands down has seemed like the most difficult hurdle to get over thus far...so any insightful input, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a ton!

Corel has vector & raster programmes, so is fairly cheap, you need PS & AI to do vector and raster with Adobe.
You can try Inkscape and GIMP which are free to download and quite competent these days.
Adobe & Corel do 30 day trials so you can choose your favourite.
In the end it's what you can do the work on, some people swear by one or other but at the end of the day you can't tell the difference between the finished products.
I use both Corel & Adobe, one is easier for one thing, harder for another.

Thanks or the reply! So I you don't mind me asking, which things do you find easier to do on one program, and vice versa?is there any one program you feel is just superior to the other, and just all around more complete? And do you feel like one is just more complex than it need to be, for the screen printing industry?

Again, I appreciate your input....it's extremely helpful!

IMHO
I like Corel for duplicating object 'coz it has a keyboard shortcut & Adobe is clumsy. Corel has a better trace facility.
I find it easier to draw in AI & PS is better then Photopaint.
It depends whether you are going to be given files in different formats. you might need both.
Corel is a lot cheaper.

Thanks again for the reply! After talking to several people yesterday...we went ahead and purchased copies of corels graphic suite X4. It seems as though from what we've been told, that it will do just about everything that AI and PS will do, that well need it for. I've played around with the trial version of X4 a bit...and it actually seems like a great program.

Again, I appreciate your input and feedback. It's
nice to have another perspective! Thanks again!

You'll be fine with that, I suspect that if you are a top-notch artist pushing the bounds of design, then there may be a significant difference. But for the rest of us who want to separate a couple of spot colours, there isn't a vast difference.