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I have had a good bit of experience with CorelDraw, PhotoPaint and Adobe
Photoshop along with limited experience with Illustrator.
For working with bitmaps:
PhotoPaint can do a few things Photoshop cannot (such as work with AVI
files), however, I believe Photoshop is the better package on the whole. It
handles large files better and seems to produce higher-quality images. Plus
there are many more plug-ins which work with it for more filtering options.
For vectored images:
Corel really is a fun and versatile drawing tool; however, its export capabilities
are lacking especially when working with text. Now I only have version 6. Anyone
know if this improved in the newer versions? Corel is especially good with
wave forms, pin diagrams or the like, if you insert the text in Frame. From what
I have heard, Illustrator is much better with text, especially artistic text.
I think the absolute best scenario is to have as many of the packages as
you can since each has its forte. Since most of live in the real world of
limited budgets, this is not usually possible. If I had to choose right now,
I would choose Adobe's PhotoShop and Illustrator.
Melonie Holliman
The Tech Writer
ABM Data Systems, Inc.
Austin, TX
mrh -at- abmdata -dot- com
