I have to admit, Illy's pretty darn good

[Big Frank]

a can of beans at 34p is suitable for the purpose, at £3.34 it's still fit for the purpose but hugely overpriced

[pauland]

I have CS5.5 Web Design Premium . I don't use half of it. One program I use heavily, others a lot some hardly at all.

The program I use heavily has no equivalent, the others do.

I don't religiously upgrade the Adobe software. I started with one program and then I really need two and so inevitably one you use two Adobe products one of the suites becomes more cost effective.

My upgrade path has rarely been because of killer features, it has been because of my clients. My clients often use Adobe software. They give me assets created in Adobe software and expect back assets for use in Adobe software. When one of my clients engaged me on a project for $7,000 and they bought CS5 I was forced to upgrade from CS3 to CS5. The CS5.5 release included mobile development features and that was a required upgrade on my part.

For me, the value for money aspect of the software is less relevant. The cost of using Adobe software is, for me, the cost of doing business with many of my clients.

If a client was using product X and I was going to work with them and the money was right, I would buy product X.

I mention this because generally the circles in which Adobe software legitimately moves, isn't buying it purely on a feature basis, or value for money basis - Adobe software has become the common language of interchange between companies involved in Media. Besides being the common language of asset interchange, it is also the common language of skillsets amongst people - there's an expectation that you know how to use Adobe software.

If I was an Artist/Graphic designer working on commissions to produce pure artwork rather than work in a pipeline, then I would be interested in price and probably giving non-Adobe products serious consideration. We all know that for artwork Xara is capable of anything illustrator can do - when the right artist is using it.

At one time I used Xara Xtreme heavily and indeed made good use of XWD for projects where the Adobe pipeline came into play. Lately that isn't the case.

[handrawn]

34p can of beans versus £3.34 can of beans bundled with a shopping cart full of other stuff you don't need

[handrawn]

We all know that for artwork Xara is capable of anything illustrator can do - when the right artist is using it.

you know I get a serious attack of the raised eyebrows heavenwards whenever anyone says anything like that - what [I hope] you mean is that the vector drawing tools in xara will do everything the vector drawing tools in illustrator will do .... but it doesn't stop there, there are lots of other issues eg color space to name but one ...

anyhow I've probably said enough

[pauland]

Lets just say "for most intents and purposes", then your eyebrows can return to the normal position .. ;-)

[pauland]

34p can of beans versus £3.34 can of beans bundled with a shopping cart full of other stuff you don't need

LOL, there's nothing like a bit of exaggeration.. ..even ironic when you point out in a later post why the 34p can is inferior to the £3.34 one!

Just think of the extra stuff as ingredients that will sit in the kitchen cupboard - some will be used, some will expire their best before date.

Some people will not be happy with Tesco Value, if they've lived an extravagant life on Heinz Beans.

Whichever way the wind blows, as it were..

[handrawn]

[iamtheblues]

Well, I can honestly say that I never expected my post to generate this number of replies.
Let's nail this price thing once and for all. Illustrator CS5 on the Adobe site costs $599, which converts to €455 and not $860 as quoted above. Your markup seems a bit excessive, Frank. It doesn't make Illustrator a bargain at €455, but it's not the rip off it has been made out to be either.
So for €455 it is good for the price.

Frank, I appreciate that you get along without Illustrator very well, your work shows that you are at the top of your game using Xara.

I wasn't trying to make any comparisons with other design software, but for €85 I think Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is an absolute bargain, but perhaps Inkscape is the best value of all. Value for money is however dependent on a lot of variables, not least being what the intended use of the product is. You could spend your hard-earned on Serif DrawPlus X5 which at €100 looks pretty good, slotting into the same bracket as the Xara product. But in fact Drawplus X5 is extremely buggy. It does have an eraser tool and an CMYK environment and publishes to .pdf and lots more quick shapes, but its brushes are raster and overall the program is a bit of a lame duck in my opinion.

Illustrator is, as has been pointed out here, the preferred software as pauland said; "Adobe software has become the common language of interchange between companies involved in Media. Besides being the common language of asset interchange, it is also the common language of skillsets amongst people - there's an expectation that you know how to use Adobe software."
If you are just a hobbyist then you probably don't need to own Illustrator, but it is still a nice thing to have, you do get a lot of bang for your buck. Luckily for me I was given it as a present, so price isn't a concern for me. it just took me a long time to dip my toe into the water, and having immersed myself, I'm pleased that I did.

Thanks Mike (mwenz) and Steve J for your comments - much appreciated.
Bob.

[Big Frank]

We all know that for artwork Xara is capable of anything illustrator can do - when the right artist is using it.

that's a very good point. you can be some poor noob who knows how to downloadand activate a pirate copy of cs5 but the results of his work will be directly related to his talent and effort not his tools - granted what comes out from illy may be better than what you can do with mspaint, but i think that's because it automates a lot of tasks you have to do by hand in an app that has 90% fewer tools (or had to do by hand in older versions of illy)

34p can of beans versus £3.34 can of beans bundled with a shopping cart full of other stuff you don't need

very good analogy indeed - which one would you buy?

Your markup seems a bit excessive, Frank.

i was directly quoting today's prices on amazon.fr which i assumed perhaps incorrectly to be competitive

Frank, I appreciate that you get along without Illustrator very well, your work shows that you are at the top of your game using Xara.

no, i'm still learning all the time - if you want to see an expert what i is in awe of, look at gary bouton's work and as far as sketching is concerned, there's a bunch of people who make me look the amateur that i am, people like steve handdrawn and zeb the toon

for €85 I think Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is an absolute bargain, but perhaps Inkscape is the best value of all

i agree on both points

If you are just a hobbyist then you probably don't need to own Illustrator, but it is still a nice thing to have, you do get a lot of bang for your buck

especially if it's a pirate copy, i am convinced there'd be far fewer pirate copies of creative suite if the prices weren't so damn extortionate. for me the matter of price does come into it. but for my business i need a tool that can fulfil all of my needs. i'm sure illustrotar could be that tool but it's not even in the ranking (neither is any serif product) because i am so deeply satisfied with xara - and i get away every time with exporting from xara as pdf for every client who "absolutely and irrevocably" insists on having an ai file - and many printers i have come across in my work seem to be unaware that an ai or an eps is simply not required if you supply a pdf (and I have had some who have truly argued the toss with me over it until they have had to be proved wrong) - it would be nice if xara could export illustrator compatible ai and eps files to keep such people happy

i am probably talking out of my boot but i did like your happy accident image at the beginning of this thread bob

[Albacore]

To get back to your drawing Bob nice result. What problem did you have using the Clipping Mask maybe I could help? Normally it is a combo of the Pathfinder Tool & Clipping Mask command that I use in most situations. I agree with your statement about the brushes it is so easy to use and they are all vector with only the Scatter Brush which is not (exactly like Xara's).

I did not want to get into Franks discussion but I want to talk from my point of view. To upgrade from Design Pro 6 to 7, talking vector improvements only here, the number that I would count would be 2 vector type upgrades: Live Copies & Improved Snapping & Alignment (OK you could count that as 3)

How many vector upgrades would you get going from AI CS4 to CS5? I counted 8: http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/features.html

What about the upgrade price for me Design Pro7 £119 (143.35 euro)
What about upgrading from CS3 which I have got to CS5 £190.80 (229.72 euro)

Will not upgrade to any of them. I am 64 and next November will be retiring from work so no need to get the most recent upgrades because between the 2 programmes that I own at the moment I can do my work, thank you.

Bob it is still a nice bit of work which should have been the discussion here.