Corel X3, Illustrator and other non-essential topics

[attrofy]

So, any one out there using the new X3 yet? Any thoughts or opinions?

Secondly, any of you using both Illustrator and Draw - or anyone that has switched? Is there a Corel-to-Adobe users guide out there? I have been using Draw since version 3, and for the life of me, I cannot get the workflow of Illustrator. I have been hesitant to even switch, as I have tried it in years past, and it has usually been just a waste of time - as IMHO - Illustrator was crap and had nothing serious to offer. Now I am in a position where I purchased Adobe Production Studio Pro (CS2) and it came bundled with Illustrator. I have been "having at it" for over 2 weeks now, and I swear there is nothing more frustrating then trying to do something with a node, only to find out you "cant do it like that here" with Illustrator. I am determined this time, as I gave Photoshop the same perserverance, and in some cases like some of the things that Adobe does better then Corel (mostly color correction and ease of "webisizing" photos). I must say, it was a long time with messing with Photoshop before I swore it was no longer "crap", but it took until version 7.5 to bring me away from even considering editing a photo in PhotoPaint. So here I am faced with the same issue in Illustrator, and for the life of me, some of the simplest tasks seem way overly complex (i.e. zooming in and out, dragging a node to "stretch" the line (or God forbid a group of nodes to stretch a "portion" of an image)). One of you Illulstrator gurus out there tell me that it is just me. I am begging, please, I dont want to throw my hands up in disgust yet again - as I do see some cool features in Illustrator. However, I have to overcome the speed of operations (or lack thereof) for the workflow to consider using Illustrator. Maybe I am too ingrained in the Draw way of doing things, but some of these operations are just not intuitive. I am going to cross post this to the illustrator forum too - since there is likely limited Illustrator users here. Anyway - thanks for enduring my ramblings and ravings, let me know if any of you have succsfully made the switch, and how managed or what tools you used to ease the transition.

 

[Brushman]

Yes X3 used here. I tried Illustrator V7 the same time Draw was at V7, I gave up on Illustrator and having spoken to sign and print colleagues who still use Illustrator nothing much would change my mind on it. Were there any specific points you wanted to know about X3?
Alan D

 

[attrofy]

Any major improvements? ANy "must have" features that you werent sure you lived without until X3? Worth the price to upgrade from 11 or 12 (or in this case buy a standalone for work)? A side note, I believe 12 was worth the upgrade form 11 for the dynamic guides - which I must say, ADobe seems to handle a little more elegantly - one of the few features I found that I liked with Adobe. Also, photopaint seemed to gain a few really decent web export options and power in 12 over 11. ANyway - havent had much a chance to see what is new for X3 yet. However, based on the hype on Corel's site, the new Trace and the crop tool seem to have some appeal -- any thoughts on those?

 

[Brushman]

As a signmaker who need vectors to cut the Power Trace (now intergrated not standalone)is a major improvement regarding accuracy, colour selection within it is good too, beaware however that centrline and woodcut features are now removed but if you have V11, V12 still installed they are available with the application launcher. *Countours are now curves not hundreds of straight lines
*Boundary tool useful - *Crop tool handy. *Major thing for me as I do typesetting as well is drop shades now support Pantone, are set to multiply so separate properly. *Overprints now display as they will print. *Text handling is improved but now has dockers. * PDF now import better as text or text to curves. * EPS is now one filter with options in a dialogue box. * Photopaint now supports Pantone better in channels (not an expert with Paint so just going what others say. *Filters in geral updated. I'm only outlining the things emmediate to me and what I can think of at the moment but there are other tweaks as well, post here for more specific answers. In case you are wondering why I should know I was on the Corel advisory Council and have been Beta testing since Beta releases.
Regards
Alan D

 

[attrofy]

Sounds like you covered the significant items - at least the ones that are significant to me. Not sure what "dockers" are for text handling - I am assuming you mean "virtual nodes or anchors" to dock text to lines, grids, objects, etc. In either case, looks like I am sold. Ordering it right now.

 

[Brushman]

No - dockers are the dialogue boxes for the various text options, they can be 'docked' to the side rather than have them floating all the time. Glad you're ordering, shame I'm not on commission. Obviously X3 is very new but I have not encountered anything that is stopping me using X3 in my everyday work.
Regards
Alan D