a.k.a Brian Smithson, Corel User!

[PeterArnel]

Goodness Brian do u really use Corel - or are u like one of those Vintahe car drivers - who like to be "retro" as a Priner I stopped taking them seriously when I read in their manaul if u wanted to make changes to a layout just cover it with a white box ( mark u this was in about 1994 when three us were desperate to get a section of a magazine printed - only to find the ad had something nasty under the box:-)
Peter
Does anyone else use Corel I wonder - we dont see it in the UK at all . We are only Quark with a small amount of InDEsign

[annc]

Goodness Brian do u really use Corel - or are u like one of those Vintahe car drivers - who like to be "retro" as a Priner I stopped taking them seriously when I read in their manaul if u wanted to make changes to a layout just cover it with a white box ( mark u this was in about 1994 when three us were desperate to get a section of a magazine printed - only to find the ad had something nasty under the box:-)
Peter
Does anyone else use Corel I wonder - we dont see it in the UK at all . We are only Quark with a small amount of InDEsignI'm having no difficulty getting printers to take InDesign files here. Even one of the small one-colour presses just up the road will take them, and do all their in-house work with InDesign Mac.

[ElyseC]

Does anyone else use Corel I wonder - we dont see it in the UK at all . We are only Quark with a small amount of InDEsignIt is apparently a (the?) major app used by many printers in China. I now have clients asking me to provide layouts as Illustrator EPS v10 or earlier, because their vendors are using CorelDraw and say they cannot open AI CS EPS files.

[Andrew B.]

I prefer Draw because it can handle more than one page at a time. I use Photoshop as my primary bitmap tool, but sometimes drop into Corel Photo-Paint because it has better brushes, better smart blur, and some other nice traits. I use Corel Painter, because nothing from Adobe, Quark, or anyone else comes close.

Hmmm. Might as well mention that I also use Corel WordPerfect and Corel QuattroPro -- just to get a couple more Corel's up there.

[Franca]

Does anyone else use Corel I wonder - we dont see it in the UK at allNot quite true - guess where Brian is? ;-)

I use Corel Draw and Corel Ventura and Adobe Photoshop. Running on a PC - gotta use the best tools for the job! <vbg> Sure wish Photoshop had Photo-Paint's interface, though.

[Andrew B.]

Sure wish Photoshop had Photo-Paint's interface, though.Yes, there are some nice interface features in Photo-Paint. Two that come to mind are the popup navigation window in the lower right corner of the image window, and the shift-drag method of sizing brushes.

[Mike]

I'm having no difficulty getting printers to take InDesign files here. Even one of the small one-colour presses just up the road will take them, and do all their in-house work with InDesign Mac.

Just out of interest, are there reasons for sending InDesign files rather than PDFs?

[DTP Guy]

Yes Peter, I do use Corel -- DRAW, PhotoPAINT and Ventura. I also use InDesign and Photoshop and own Illustrator, but haven't used it.

I guess I just use the tool that I think I can get the job done with.

If you haven't used Corel software since 1994, then you are missing out, but I seem to remember that you are a printer, no? In that case, probably every Corel user is bringing you a PDF file and you just don't know that it was created with Corel software. :-)

Very few Corel people send native files 'cos they get that certain look from the service bureau/printer which says "Corel? - here comes trouble..." It means a lot of Corel users are very, very good at outputting their files. :-)

[mact]

yes.

so things done badly can be fixed. such as PMS to White blends (bloody impossible to fix in PDF)

80-90% of the PDF files i get, from whatever application, are done wrong.

[mact]

My turn. <VBG>

The majority of native files I get are Corel Draw files, from versions 7 on up (they all get opened in 11 or 12).

It's even possible (and quite easy!) to kick out eps fropm Quart, bring them into Draw and handle the imposition there because brainless quart hasn]t any real imposition tools.

Draw 11 on the mac is just fine! Can't say that about earlier mac versions.

[PeterArnel]

I'm having no difficulty getting printers to take InDesign files here. Even one of the small one-colour presses just up the road will take them, and do all their in-house work with InDesign Mac.
Anne must be the Aussie mentality after drinking all that XXXX it addles the brain :-)
Peter

[PeterArnel]

Yes Peter, I do use Corel -- DRAW, PhotoPAINT and Ventura. I also use InDesign and Photoshop and own Illustrator, but haven't used it.

I guess I just use the tool that I think I can get the job done with.

If you haven't used Corel software since 1994, then you are missing out, but I seem to remember that you are a printer, no? In that case, probably every Corel user is bringing you a PDF file and you just don't know that it was created with Corel software. :-)

Very few Corel people send native files 'cos they get that certain look from the service bureau/printer which says "Corel? - here comes trouble..." It means a lot of Corel users are very, very good at outputting their files. :-)

I have a cut down version at home -which my daughter uses - my comment was very tongue in cheek - does it have any features that makes it better than say Quark

[annc]

Just out of interest, are there reasons for sending InDesign files rather than PDFs?When offered either, I find they prefer InDesign. Dunno why, unless they've received too many that wouldn't rip, or were at the wrong resolution.

In my current job, I have one client-supplied PDF that wouldn't print untill I exported it to PDF out of InDesign and placed that back in the document.

Now it prints perfectly.

[annc]

Anne must be the Aussie mentality after drinking all that XXXX it addles the brain :-)
PeterOnly in Queensland, Peter. The southerners say nasty things about XXXX. <g>

Ann(who drinks Hahn Ice in hot weather, and no beer at all the rest of the time)

[Steve Rindsberg]

Quark vs Corel Draw is a meaningless comparison. Corel Draw vs Illustrator, that's the ticket. Draw is an illustration program that (some might say misguidedly) happens to handle multipage documents. It's not a page layout app.

[annc]

Quark vs Corel Draw is a meaningless comparison. Corel Draw vs Illustrator, that's the ticket. Draw is an illustration program that (some might say misguidedly) happens to handle multipage documents. It's not a page layout app.However, because it is capable of creating long documents, people use it for that purpose.

[Andrew B.]

I don't understand this the misguided part. If I load a PDF into Illustrator, it only takes one page (as defined in the PDF) at a time. In Draw, it gives me a list of pages and the option to load as many as I want.

[Franca]

I think he meant that some might feel a drawing program shouldn't try to be a page layout program, and that giving it the ability to handle multiple pages might have been a misguided notion. (?) I like that Draw handles multiple pages for all of my scraps and edits pertaining to a given project or client, but it certainly doesn't do multiple pages well enough to be compared with programs like Quark or Ventura. (Nor does it do paragraph text well.) I almost never do a complete project for printing in Draw. I export the appropriate bits as EPS and import them into Ventura along with all of the other essential publication components.

[Andrew B.]

Ah, okay. I see what you mean.

I see Draw as illustration software. Which is also how I see Illustrator. I see InDesign and Pagemaker as page layout. Ventura and Framemaker as publication software. I'm not sure what Quark is. I've never used it.

Thing is, my use of any of this software is becoming so rare, that lately I hesitate to comment. In fact, I think my budding career in DTP ended when my place of work started turning to me to solve database problems. Now I'm seen at the data guy, and that's all I seem to be doing lately.

[mact]

<<It's not a page layout app.>>

Nope.

But it is certainly used that way by the majority of its users simply because it provides vastly more flexibility than conventional page layout apps.

(which, btw, does not include Ventura Publisher, according to J. Hart. But we can carefully ignore that for now).

And I wish that Draw would improve it's use of text styles, making it even easier to use for "drawing" a page.

[Franca]

Well you certainly seem to be good at the database stuff! Do you miss the DTP?

[Andrew B.]

Do you miss the DTP?Hmmm. Well, yes and no. I miss looking at how a design can come together, and how great it feels when everything falls into place. But I don't miss struggling to make a design come together, and how frustrating this can be. And I was struggling more often than not. So maybe it is not such a loss. But one thing I keep an eye out for at work is a chance to do a database driven publication. Like a catalog with photos. Probably using Ventura.

[Steve Rindsberg]

And you could perform open heart surgery on yourself using nothing but a steak knife and a pint of vodka for anaesthetic.

In fact, it'd probably be a more enjoyable way to spend an evening than creating long documents in Draw. And mind you, I *like* Draw. ;-)

[Steve Rindsberg]

And that's a neat feature. The fact that it can create drawings across several pages is very useful as well. Just one more reason I think it's better than Illustrator, but let's not start THAT old steam engine up. <g>

But it's not a word processor or page layout app, where QXP is. Not to fault it for that, any more than I fault QXP for including some drawing tools that equally misguided people try to bludgeon into acting like a real drawing program. Like Draw.

[annc]

And you could perform open heart surgery on yourself using nothing but a steak knife and a pint of vodka for anaesthetic.

In fact, it'd probably be a more enjoyable way to spend an evening than creating long documents in Draw. And mind you, I *like* Draw. ;-)A woman I know who'd only ever done posters and other 'arty' stuff was talked into doing a cookery book on a 'share of the profits' basis. Bad way to start a job anyway, in my view. Anyway, because she had Draw, and no page layout software, she did it in Draw. I got a blow-by-blow description of all the problems she was having with it, culminating, months later, in a horrendous experience trying to get the thing printed by a printer in Melbourne, selected by the writer of the cookery book. The printer, of course, was expecting a Mac QuarkXPress file. I think he eventually got PS files, but it was an old version of Draw, too, so the PS files weren't all that reliable.

We had a laugh about it at the end, and I suggested to her that she write a book about how not to design, lay out and typeset a book.

Oh, and she never got a cent. The book never sold a single copy, as far as I know.

Of course, you could set a book in FreeHand, too, but I've never heard of anybody trying.

[Mike]

I have one client-supplied PDF that wouldn't print untill I exported it to PDF out of InDesign and placed that back in the document.

I've had a few problems printing InDesign-created PDFs at 1200 dpi on my HP5000N. The job with get part way through and crash the printer even though it prints fine from InDesign. Or at least, that's the case when ussing Acrobat CS. Printing the same job using an earlier version of Acrobat has been fine.

The last time it happened I narrowed the cause down to a rogue font (a version of Times) but so far, fortunately, I not had any complaints from printers and I'm now working on my tenth book produced in InDesign.

[annc]

I've had a few problems printing InDesign-created PDFs at 1200 dpi on my HP5000N. The job with get part way through and crash the printer even though it prints fine from InDesign. Or at least, that's the case when ussing Acrobat CS. Printing the same job using an earlier version of Acrobat has been fine.

The last time it happened I narrowed the cause down to a rogue font (a version of Times) but so far, fortunately, I not had any complaints from printers and I'm now working on my tenth book produced in InDesign.That's maybe the HP PostScript clone playing up. What version of Acrobat are you creating? I'm still making all my PDFs at Acrobat 4 level. My GCCprinter is only PS 2, so I have to be careful.

I'm just happy that the current printing house will take InDesign native files. The cient says the last job 'was perfect'. Certainly nobody from the printer contacted me, so I'm believing him. <g>

[Mike]

What version of Acrobat are you creating? I'm still making all my PDFs at Acrobat 4 level. My GCCprinter is only PS 2, so I have to be careful.

I'm using 4 as well. So far as I remember ID's press option defaulted to that and I've never bothered to change it.

It could be an HP clone problem. After a crash all other print jobs fail till I reboot.

[ElyseC]

But it's not a word processor or page layout app, where QXP is. Not to fault it for that, any more than I fault QXP for including some drawing tools that equally misguided people try to bludgeon into acting like a real drawing program. Like Draw.Yep, QX's drawing tools are no substitute for real, dedicated illustration software. I've had to create simple illos with them and use Extensis' QX Tools to import vector EPS into QX as QX objects, to take advantage of multi-ink colors. Al the time, however, I was wishing Illustrator could handle the whole layout. Back then QX was the only one.

[Franca]

Yep, QX's drawing tools are no substitute for real, dedicated illustration software. I've had to create simple illos with them and use Extensis' QX Tools to import vector EPS into QX as QX objects, to take advantage of multi-ink colors. Al the time, however, I was wishing Illustrator could handle the whole layout. Back then QX was the only one.This reminds me of one of the [many] great things about Ventura - the "Edit In" feature. For example, you can hook up "Edit In" to Corel Draw so that if you are working on a publication in Ventura and need to edit a piece of vector art on a page, you can choose "Edit In" from the menu. Draw will open right up so you can make your edits which - if your graphics are stored externally - will be immediately reflected in the Ventura publication. Close Draw and get back to work on the publication.

[ElyseC]

This reminds me of one of the [many] great things about Ventura - the "Edit In" feature. For example, you can hook up "Edit In" to Corel Draw so that if you are working on a publication in Ventura and need to edit a piece of vector art on a page, you can choose "Edit In" from the menu. Draw will open right up so you can make your edits which - if your graphics are stored externally - will be immediately reflected in the Ventura publication. Close Draw and get back to work on the publication.I haven't tried it, but I think that's how Adobe apps are supposed to work. I agree, it's a very good thing.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Ouch! Didn't it occur to her to wonder, say, 1/4 of the way into all that pain, whether there was a better way?

[Steve Rindsberg]

InDesign does that if you're using all Adobe apps, doesn't it?

[ElyseC]

InDesign does that if you're using all Adobe apps, doesn't it?I think so, but have yet to have the chance to try it.