Corel vs. Adobe... Should I switch? 1

[frenchtaquito]

Hi all, I have always used adobe programs, photoshop especially but I am considering going with Corel Draw rather than upgrading again. I couldn't find much help on the Corel site so I was wondering how Corel Draw users feel about it. The most important thing for me is being able to automate certain procedures (most of my tasks are extremely repeatitive. Photoshop has an actions palette for recording sequences. Does Corel Draw have something similar? Does the print merge feature let you import data from a text file or database? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
One more thing... What is the difference between Corel Draw & Photo Paint? Cheers

 

[Brushman]

Difficult to say which is best, I like Corel Photo Paint and struggle with Photoshop but my bitmap editing if very modest, speaking to the majority of my sign and print collegues who use both they seem to say that Photoshop will handle larger bitmap images quicker and more reliably while Corel's range is easier to use, so unless you are working with monster size bitmaps paying the extra for Adobe equivalents may not be the "must do" investment to make. That said I do like Acrobat.
Alan

 

[ominubyv]

I think that Corel Draw is one of the best vector programms with the WORST Help (I mean the Help File). I can never find what i 'm looking for.

 

[diwin]

CorelDraw 11, which I now use, has Acrobat built into it, just as Adobe Illustrator does. Acrobat is IN CorelDraw...Neat, eh?!

Also...
I do some wicked page layout tasks with VB in CorelDraw 11. I love that. I produce a 40 page, 600-product catalogue for print by pressing one button. It runs my vb code in CorelDraw, which takes 15 minutes. Page after page, it pulls all the product data from the MS Access 2000 database and CREATES the catalogue for me while I go make a banana chocolate milkshake in my new cuisinart blender.

To see a downloadable pdf which my client's customers can print for themselves off the web, go to

http://www.wrightmanalpines.com/shipping.asp

and read the instructions that accompany the pdf download files down at the bottom of the page.

Daniel Dillon

 

[Phranque]

For vector graphics work CorelDraw must be hard to beat, but then I've been using it for years and it's become my second home!
I also have Photoshop and use this or Photopaint for photo-manipulation, whichever I feel comfortable with at the time.
CorelDraw is my 'backbone' application though.
A lot will depend upon what sort of work you are producing.