From the article: Graphics Software for Desktop Publishing
Photoshop may be the best known graphics software and it may seem like everyone uses it. But there are other popular choices as well such as the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite and free graphics software such as The GIMP and Inkscape. What graphics software do you use for graphic design, Web design, and desktop publishing? Do you use free software because it's free or because it's better? Do you stick with Adobe because it's an industry standard? Share with us what you use and why you use it. Tell About Your Software
DTP software preference
- Perhaps surprisingly, I find that Word has everything I need (and a lot more than I need). And if every typographical and design feature is used I can see no point in software such as In Design. In fact, I doubt that there is much point in buying any DTP packages unless you want to fancy things like bending a line of text. And even that kind of thing can look very amateurish if you are not a professional graphic designer. Three steps then: set everything up in Word, convert continuous text to a single PDF, and send to printer.
- —peter3arnold4hart
old school??
- My favorite.publisher, after more than 20 years in various graphics, art and plain old typesetting? Pagemaker. I have used Corel, QuarkExpress, Paint & many others. Pagemaker is easy to learn, quick and responsive, easy to customize. And call me old school, but my favorite for manipulating art is still Photoshop. I fell in love with the airbrush effects long ago. But -- maybe its time to try something new??
- —Guest artbug91
Adobe InDesign
- I use the Adobe tools, Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and InDesign. I've found that these tools work together very well. Color management, for me, is very important and I can set the setting across many of my tools. One great feature of InDesign is the ability to package fonts, graphics, and authoring files to be sent to a commercial printer.
- —Guest Paul
Web projects can save money than print
- Because I am unto a web development, my works are made with opensource seem all of them are not required to do some CMYK color modes. Our business is run with Opensource applications and Linux PC. All we have saved our money from there. But some times, we encounter some clients will send a PSD design that is made in cmyk mode. So PlayinLinux is our solution. ^_^ You discover what's in there so u will know what I'm talking about. ^_^
- —Guest press
Photoshop
- just... BUY PHOTO SHOP ;) :P:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)
- —Guest nothing
can't afford Photoshop
- Here is the best replacement http://pixlr.com/editor/
- —Guest carolineallard
newbee
- i was literally thrown into graphic design a few weeks back with zero knowledge of what to use where, am still blindly finding my way around in the dark. illustrator and photoshop are what am working with mostly, i find corel draw very helpful and intuitive but unfortunately can't use it much. am on my way to dreamweaver and indesign for i now have to blindly go into web design, i must say though, i am as quick as they come and can master just about anything. :)
- —Guest jen
Adobe
- I am studying degree in graphic designing. In my institute we are using adobe products. Photoshop for image editing. Illustrator for vector graphics. Indesign for page editing. Dreamweaver for web.
- —Guest muhammed shahir.s
Industry Standard
- I have been a Graphic Designer for over 25 years. Between my partner and I we have approx 50 years of experience. I have worked in many venues including in commercial print shops in the prepress department amongst others. If you want your end product to look professional and print on a commercial printing press, there are many programs to stay away from as they will not RIP properly ending up causing more trouble for prepress and possible ugliness in your final piece (if it can be printed at all). Most commercial print shops (unless they are small mom & pop shops - not high professional shops) will not attempt to process files from MS software (Word, Publisher...), PublishIt, CorelDraw, and outdated software such as Quark or PageMaker (otherwise known as PainMaker). The industry standard of today is the Adobe Suite. I suggest if you really want to produce quality products, use the best software out there. Yes there is a learning curve, but in the end - well worth it.
- —Guest Imagebird
Best Graphics Software
- I started out on a typesetting dedicated computer, with a green text screen which outputted type in a strip, which had to be chemically (messily) developed, and then pasted onto a board with rubber cement or for those that were big time, a waxing device. I graduated onto Pagemaker when it came out and thought it wonderful. From there I progessed to In Design along with Photoshop and Illustrater. All great programs. tried MS Publisher, Corel Draw, and MS Word, along the way. Corel was also a great program but the MS programs I just couldn't get along with! I never could figure out how to do color seps in MS Pub (at least easily) and Word was even more useless. A lot of the people I dealt with had Macs and were using Quark which they really liked. As I used my pc for other things like accounting and database functions I never got to try Quark. Bottom line is that, for me, the best combination is In Design with Photoshop, along with Illustrator about 10 % of the time.
- —Guest paul
I used iCollage for Mac
- I used iCollage for Mac, it can make scrapbook, wallpaper, comic, card, calendar and so on. also it has many free template, so i can easy to use. you can try: http://www.imediacreator.com/icollage-for-mac.html#175
- —Gally110
cowboy
- I prefer acdsee 10 Hobby I do a lot of photo editing Simple and powerful Have photo shop, corel, and others
- —Guest cowboy
Photoshop all the way
- I Have been using Photoshop now since version 4. I have not seen a program with more power or features. It does have a learning curve but there are lots of resources that can be found to help with that. (Shameless plug coming) As a matter of fact... I have a resource for budding graphic designers and desktop publishers at http://www.desktoppublishingsecretsrevealed.com You'll find a load of flyer design tutorials all done right inside of Photoshop. I know some designers are loathe to use Photoshop for anything other than image editing and quite frankly this resource is not for pros, but for people that want to learn some of hottest design techniques using Photoshop.
- —Guest Keith
Print or Web the way to go is Adobe
- Been designing for the last 14 years, started in print moved into the web back in 1996 and stayed there ever since. I started out using whatever was available in my college back in 94 which was PageMaker on a Mac and I believe we had Photoshop 1.0 back then. Purchased my first PC and went with Corel Draw suite because it was cheaper then adobe. Corel draw is a wonderful product, but as soon as I started my first full time job noticed that cross any industry I worked Adobe was standard, which forced me to start learning Adobe illustrator, Photoshop, then flash, etc. It wasn’t that difficult switching to adobe and as a career move was the way to go. Today I use CS3 Suite and must tell you I could not live without my adobe collection everyday all day I switch between Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash and Illustrator; these are my tools of the trade. Nothing more, Nothing less.
- —IGottoDesign
My DTP preferences
- After years of using PageMaker on Windows, (does anyone remember that ?), I find that all my DTP needs are met by Open Source (free) software. Specifically, I use GimpShop (graphics) and Scribus (for DTP; it matches a rather expensive non-Linux program whose name begins with 'Q' ...
- —Guest Maurice George
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