Need 50 slick-looking sheets of letterhead [OT]

[Amanda Angelika]

Well you just Go to Format Picture go to the Layout tab and set the behind text option, alternatively if you have your text in a text box you can remove the default fill and border and float text on top of a GIF that way.

Admittedly It is a bit clunky as a DTP program because it is primarily a word processor and designed to deal with inline text and graphics by default. But if you change the format options of graphics and text boxes so they don't behave inline you can drag and drop things any where you want and arrange their order to, you can also flow text between text boxes and change their design to. So it's quite sophisticated and certainly can be used for DTP it's just not very intuitive to use and the default styles are not particularly helpful, so it can be fiddly to use and a bit frustrating on times.

Generally I prefer Corel Draw for most DTP type projects However I have used Word for designing Posters and flyers for people when I haven't had anything else to hand, it can be done :) Of course MS Word would be a lot better if it wasn't made by Microsoft :)

[Amanda Angelika]

Well 10 to 15 years ago you would have been perfectly correct. But most current Ink Jet printers are capable of resolutions in excess of 1500dpi

for example the Epson C64

has a colour resolution of 5760 X 720 dpi if used with the proper Epson Durabrite inks which are not only waterproof but claimed to be fade resistant for 75 years or more

The main reason Ink Jet printers may seem to have a poor reputation is because people can't afford to buy the proper cartridges and end up using cheaper alternatives which are generally totally naf. Like trying to run a Rolls Royce on cooking oil LOL

Well the Epson C64 costs about £50 but a full set of replacement Durabrit cartridges will set one back £48 so it isn't particularly cheap to run with proper cartridges, but the initial outlay is relatively small. A new printer comes with a full set of cartridges so you could just treat it as a disposable and throw the printer away once the cartridges are spent.

Standard Litho printing is 4 colour CMYK Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (I can't remember why K stands for black there is a reason) You need a different plate for each colour, that can be very expensive and isn't practical at all for short runs.

Actually the Epson C64 also uses CMYK colour and requires 4 separate cartridges. So the number of colours is exactly the same as standard litho printing

It depends what you want I use CorelDraw for most DTP projects and hardly ever use MS Word for that purpose. However MSWord has Wizards for creating standard letterheads which means its relatively easy for a non-designer to create something that looks reasonably presentable without needing to learn how to use a full on DTP program or requiring specialised design skills. I mean why make it more difficult when the software can do it for you :)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Or waterproof?

I didn't realise there were pro inkjets. Thought they would be all upmarket lasers.

[bof]

In message , Amanda Angelika writes

I find Corel Draw really unpleasant to use, for posters and flyer type stuff try Corel Xara, for which there is a quite usable free version, and far, far, far better than using Word.

[John Cartmell]

Corel Xara was a development of ArtWorks originally produced by Computer Concepts for the RISC OS (Acorn) computers. Computer Concepts (now Xara) have taken back the program from Corel and market it themselves as Xara X, without the 'Corel' tag. A version of Xara is being produced for a number of platforms (not Windows) free but you can still purchase the Windows version from Xara. The original ArtWorks is still being developed as ArtWorks2 by MW Software for the RISC OS machines.

[Steve Firth]

We use a mix, I prefer the Phaser Solid ink printers which are a bit of a hybrid. They use wax resin inks, heat them up then spray them like and inkjet. But not onto the page, they spray onto a rotating drum like a laser then onto the page. The rotating drum is hot and keeps the ink liquid until it is pressed into the paper. By printing the four colour dots vertically on top of each other the printers manage a higher resolution than inkjets (which have to print the dots close together but not on top of each other, hence their working resolution is usually 1/2 the claimed resolution). The Phaser solid ink printers are also much faster and more accurate than laser because they are one pass printers. Lasers have to pass the paper over the drum four times.

The printers we have are all Epson Pro, because the inks last much longer than other printers and they also print matt black well which the Canons are incapable of doing. Downsides are the crappy Epson print heads which clog up and the usual cost. However several companies market bulk ink conversions for the Epsons so they make good commercial workhorses.

They also print on a wide range of materials, from Indian papers to CD thickness. We can even print directly onto artboard and have done some work for a local artist who likes to sell prints of her work as well as the originals.

Artists tend to hide the fact that they prints they sell are inkjet prints and prefer to call them "Giclee" prints, because French sounds better to their ears.

[Steve Firth]

Amanda Angelika wrote: [snip]

CMYK, how printers spell blue, red, yellow, black (old printer's joke).

FWIW, K is for "key".

HTH.

[Willy Eckerslyke]

Dunno why so many people feel that way about CorelDraw. I get along with it just fine. The other day one of our students ignored my suggestion to use it to make a poster and came back saying he'd decided to use - wait for it - Powerpoint instead! Fair enough, mate, just don't expect any help from me.

[bof]

In message , John Cartmell writes

Yep, I must have been one of the first purchasers, back in ooh, err, when did it first come out? Still got the Art Works and Impression dongles . . . and an A540.

Then used Corel Xara for years, but couldn't get it to work under XP, so kept a Win2k machine specially for it.

There was a free Windows version with the Feb 2006 PC World magazine which is where I found it again, hadn't noticed the Corel tag had gone though. I hope it's a success.

[Amanda Angelika]

Yes I have used Corel Xara and currently have Xara X which is another version of the same program. It's quite a nice program and easier to use than CorelDraw. It's especially good for making flyers and posters, and also very good for Designing Web graphics, and in fact you can design a whole Web GUI in Xara export the various graphic elements and re-interpret the design in Dreamweaver.

That said I do like CorelDraw, and of course it can deal with multi-page documents which of course also means one can store things on other pages and even keep multiple stages of ones' design in the same document, which is useful. It's also useful for creating demonstrations of a design concept because you can output multi-page Adobe Acrobat PDF files which of course can be made to run full screen and operate in the same way as Powerpoint presentations.The other thing I like about CorelDraw is all the fills all of which can be adjusted so if you are ever stuck for inspiration you can just play with some fills.

That said I would agree CorelDraw can be a bit annoying and not very intuitive. Like things like page Zoom, alignment, and arranging objects involves some very bizarre methods that are nothing like any other graphics program, defy logic and interrupt one's workflow. But I still like CorelDraw :)

[Mary Pegg]

Imagine if people used their kitchens the way they use their computers. They'd be frying stuff in the milkpan. The frying pan would be used as a rolling pin. The rolling pin would be used to crack eggs. Etc.

[bof]

Yep, PowerPoint's drawing tool is even more unpleasant to use than CorelDraw.

[Steve Firth]

Amanda Angelika wrote: [snip]

CorelDraw works Ok provided that:

You don't need to get CMYK output. It only produces reasonable colour for sRGB.

You don't ever send anything to magazines who demand CMYK and usually Adobe Illustrator, because Corel's AI export is dreadful, just plain wrong.

And really if you don't care about the final output matching the on-screen display.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And very fine it is too. As is DrawWorks Millennium. Both of these keep me with RISC OS and even if I do go for a PC for browsing and A/V stuff I'll still go back to them for technical drawing type tasks.

[Steve Firth]

And how. Back in the good old days when Aldus Freehand still existed and there was also Persuasion available, someone tried to convince me to use Powerpoint. The drawing tools made me laugh, primitive, largely useless and the package couldn't cope properly with transparency. 14 years later, and that's still true.

[Amanda Angelika]

Yes I remember now B stands for Blue as in RGB so you can't have CMYB where B means Black because that would be confusing so it has to be K :)

That said I also paint and actually one can think of Black as a type of very dark Blue when mixing colours, because that's how it tends to operate e.g if you mix black with yellow you get a kind of green rather than what one might expect a dark yellow, it tends to cool as well as darken. In order to get a dark yellow therefore that retains the same warmth, you have to compensate by adding red. Of course the best method is to darken yellow with a brown such as Burnt Umber. But interestingly enough black does operate as a kind of blue in colour mixing. But I suppose this makes sense in some ways the sky is always blue even when it's black :)

[Amanda Angelika]

Well it does have various colour profiles one can set, but it's a bit complicated. I must admit though when I have done things like adverts for magazines particularly when I know they are using Macs I have output the final design as a Photoshop PSD or PDF file and do the final colour tweaking in Photoshop :)

[Amanda Angelika]

Have you seen my kitchen? LOL :)

[Guy King]

The message from Willy Eckerslyke contains these words:

I can manage in CorelDraw but I'm not a dab hand with it. Oddly, the thing I can produce acceptable results fastest with is MS Publisher 'cos at one point it was all I had available so I learned to use it well.

[Guy King]

The message from Mary Pegg contains these words:

Ah, you've seen my kids cooking then?