Hi Ziggy,

I already use Photoshop and InDesign (before that PageMaker) after finding the few print shops that take Corel Draw files were scathing about releases that have appeared since Version 3. I have Illustrator because I like the way Adobe software runs and to be honest I'm not an artist - I tend to use Corel Draw for clipart or basic diagrams, and then export them to Photoshop and use a bunch of filters to make such drawings look photo-realistings and to hide their clip-art origins. These days Illustrator and Photoshop seem to work together very well. Corel for me has always been a pig. Text disappears on print that was there on the screen. Exporting a vector format that can be displayed properly in Word is a joke: I invariably have to export as bitmap because none of the vector formats work properly (they all have their own individual quirks). Illustrator may not be so powerful but it just feels so much more solid and "tested" than Corel. I tried Corel Xara version 1 but when Corel took them over there seemed little point in proceeding with releases and it's a pain having to keep learning new interfaces.

That being said, I've taken fontman at his work (I run Windows 2000 here) and Corel 10 has just arrived! I haven't installed it yet but I'm already unhappy. The documentation is extremely slim to say the list. NO clip art book for the first time ever. Why not? The clipart is useless without the manual. It looks to me like penny-pinching cost saving despite the high cost of upgrade. I just hope the software itself doesn't prove as shoddy!

Ian