Q & A - FAQ Corel Draw and Photoshop Which software is better Corel Draw or Adobe Photoshop? We get this question often. In reality both programs are going to get you to the same place. When it comes to software people tend to go with what they know, so the real determining factor is you. There are many questions to ask yourself when choosing a software, such as, what is my budget, what type of images do I intend to make, and of course, How difficult will it be to learn the feature set of the software. Other factors include your personal skill set, and what post-sales training the reseller will provide. Will you yourself be using the software or will you hire someone to do the design and production? Are you just starting out in the business or is this a shop growth decision? Photoshop is a raster program, meaning it interprets data in pixels. Each pixel has a finite amount of information and can only be distorted so much. . This is called the DPI (dots per inch). Photoshop is great for just that, working with photos. It allows you to layer images and work with each layer independently. It is easy to design and manipulate images within the software. This program is very popular with artists and designers. To successfully work with vector images you will need to use Adobe Illustrator which is a sister program to Photoshop and uses the same tools. Corel draw is a vector based program used to make vector art. This means that the artwork is created using mathematical equations. This allows you to enlarge or scale down an image without losing any integrity in the design. Most logos are created as vector formats so they can be scaled to be small like a business card or large like on a billboard with no pixilation. Difference 1: You can make a vector art file as large as you want. A block of color is a block of color. You can take a 1 in by 1 in square and scale it to 1 ft by 1 ft and it will look exactly the same. In Photoshop if you create a 1 in by 1 in square and scale it to 1 ft by 1 ft you will get pixilation. Difference 2: Corel does color separations in the print function of the program. When you choose this option it then sends ALL the plates to the rip software or printer of your choice at once. The program not only allows you to separate into CMYK but Pantone colors as well. The biggest difference is artistic control. All the creative effects you see are done in Photoshop. Corel does not have effects. But when you combine the powers of both you can have a nice looking billboard with a huge logo. Each program has its own suite to maximize what you can do with your artwork. If you have Photoshop the CS Suites also have Illustrator for vector Images. If you use Corel Draw the X3 and X4 suites come with Photo-paint to manipulate raster images. In the end it will be up to you to research the two and decide which seems to be a better fit for your needs.