Adobe InDesign vs. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite

Adobe InDesign is very well suited to image-heavy publications, such as children's books, cookbooks and coffee table books. It gives you almost complete control how to arrange these elements, and to be able to tweak them with precision. The software is an absolute necessity if one is developing interactive eBooks, especially for the Apple iTunes store. Unless coded by hand, I am not aware of any other tools to handle this. It is a powerful toolset, and can take on most anything publishing related that you throw at it. I personally have found that it doesn't do too well with reflowable eBooks (like for Kindle Amazon), but it retains that capability.

It is a perfect suite of applications to finish presentations and create beautiful layouts for design. It is very useful both for graphic design and for architecture design when you want to draw a realistic idea of a project without being a rendering or when you need to present both images and vectorial drawings.

Incentivized

• Customization - With Adobe InDesign, as well as many other applications in the Adobe Creative Suite, I can fully customize my workspaces and save different workspaces. This makes it easy to navigate through my project and have the panels and tools I need easily accessible and configured based on my project needs.
• Styles - Adobe InDesign has character styles, object styles, and tables styles. This speeds up my workflows and allows me to easily apply the same format across multiple elements. This is super helpful, especially when working with length documents.
• File compatibility - I can easily export my files into so many different file types.
• The Book feature - This feature is really helpful when creating books or very long documents with multiple sections.

Incentivized

• Easy to learn - especially if you have experience with other graphic software. It is fairly intuitive which is helpful.
• Creating high resolution graphics is a breeze with this software - and it has the ability to export into a large variety of formats!
• I am able to import a wide variety of file formats. I have also had success with importing and editing PDF files which has been helpful.

Incentivized

• Ordering the pages with dragging is a bit counter-intuitive
• The "Links" section needs improvement - it might be very beneficial to have the links displayed (and saved) in the "links" sections for dragging and reusing without having to re-insert
• I think the relinking option works well - Would it be possible to the automatic relink to work even if file was renamed? A prompt will be [shown] to the user to help them approve or disapprove of this action.

• The bitmap edit feature to edit images. The pop out is clunky and with it was a bit more integrated.
• Trace - Would love to see this strengthened. We love to scan in hand drawn things to turn to vector and would love to see the accuracy increased.

Incentivized

I've had great experiences with the product and plan to continue to use it. It has been my go-to product for designing and creating materials. I have had great luck with it and have been able to create all of the needed marketing materials that have been requested for our company.

Incentivized

If you know what you are doing it is an amazingly granular and powerful application. You can control pretty much any aspect of the design and layout of your documents and make changes globally and rapidly. But, if you don't know what you are doing...you will be staring at your screen in bewilderment for a long time. You can learn it, but be ready for a hefty time investment.

Incentivized

Just like any design program or suite, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't do graphic design professionally. If you're not adept at learning a program or experience, it isn't a program you can just pick up and start using easily. Outside of the learning curve, it's a nice program with a decent user interface.

Incentivized

I've needed Adobe InDesign team very little which is a bonus in and of itself.

One of the advantages of Adobe InDesign is it is faster and less glitchy than Microsoft Word.

Adobe support is ok but not great. Chat support often doesn't initially understand the question at-hand and it takes awhile to get to the right agent. Phone support has long wait times, and though I've had more luck there, it does take quite a time investment if you are looking for help. However, Adobe does have some online learning solutions available as well as a knowledgebase for frequently asked questions. If you're looking to learn how to use the platform, there are lots of resources which can typically be found in a few Google searches. If you have a technical issue with the system, that's going to be a bit more of a time investment as far as getting a tech's assistance to resolve the problem.

Incentivized

Overall, CorelDRAW meets all my needs as a researcher and allows me to create beautiful and clear graphics to illustrate the main ideas for publications. It does not lack any functionality for my needs; however, it has some bugs that impact productivity, such as the color drag and drop that sometimes stops working and needs restarting, and crashes, especially when working with large bitmaps.

Incentivized

Attending Adobe MAX each year is extremely valuable.

Incentivized

The online training works well and is not wholly necessary as it is user-friendly and you can learn by doing.

Implementation was smooth and easy.

Microsoft products do not match the aesthetic tools that [Adobe] InDesign offers, cannot support the customizable options available for export, and do not produce documents with as high a degree of accessibility. That said, they do have their place in collaboration in a team- I'd consider Office to be the first step and [Adobe] InDesign to be the final product.

Incentivized

Although other softwares are good in there field but CorelDRAW is very good when it come to ease of making the designs. We can create designs in it very quickly and efficiently and also it us Avery easy software to learn, anyone can pick it up at good pace. Also it is more widely used by vendors here for printing, so its a better choice.

Incentivized

Working in a cloud environment makes it easy to scale and share resources.

• Adobe InDesign has allowed us to tackle more projects in the same amount of time because of how well it integrates into our group's workflow.
• For awhile, we struggled only with a slowdown in digital guides. Because, as I mentioned earlier, there is not a clear way to combine individual documents into one document quickly, some editors were forced to spend a long time transferring each page into the final document that would be used with Publish Online. We have since found a workaround that does not include using Publish Online.

Incentivized

• Ease of use reflects on less time to train new users, a positive impact in investment and productivity.
• The practicality to make new designs results in less time needed to do them, again a positive impact.
• The integration with other graphic programs could be better if needed to finish a rendering using the design made in Corel Draw it's needed to export in formats that don't carry all information and the process is not that simple.

Incentivized