What do you think is the best graphic design/illustration program for Mac?

I am looking for a good graphic design program to create projects such as posters, brochures, artsy illustrations, note-cards, and such. Two of the ones that I am considering are Corel Painter, and Adobe InDesign. I will need to be able to work with both text and images. Can anyone tell me which one of these programs would be the best for those jobs? Are there any others that would be better?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

I would suggest Adobe Illustrator, it is made for illustrating and working with type.

InDesign is good if you want to make books, brochures, posters, etc. but it doesn't illustrate. That is why I suggest Illustrator, and it operates in vector so all of your illustrations will look clean regardless of the size.

the leading industry standard at the moment for any graphic designer would be the CS suite and quarkXpress

InDesign is a good program but it still just doesnt compare to quark. quark handles much more, InDesign just looks like it does =D and you wont be able to do everything in just one program you will need multiple programs the CS suite includes Photoshop for editing your images, Illustrator for creating Vector, Dreamweaver and Flash for web etc.
But it also comes down to price, but professional grade would be the CS suite and quark.

Good Luck

pixelkiller said:

the leading industry standard at the moment for any graphic designer would be the CS suite and quarkXpress

InDesign is a good program but it still just doesnt compare to quark. quark handles much more, InDesign just looks like it does =D and you wont be able to do everything in just one program you will need multiple programs the CS suite includes Photoshop for editing your images, Illustrator for creating Vector, Dreamweaver and Flash for web etc.
But it also comes down to price, but professional grade would be the CS suite and quark.

Good Luck

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in terms of money, you'd be shelling out an awful lot to get both CS(3) and Quark. Buying the suite would give you Indesign, so paying extra for quark seems pointless from the budget perspective.

I haven't used Quark in years though. In my opinion, I find Indesign easier to work with. On-screen previews are much nicer to look at, and since it's Adobe, knowing Illustrator and/or Photoshop makes it just that little bit easier to get the hang of.

I always used to use Quark though - but that was in the days when Quark didn't even have layers...

Back to the point - an Adobe CS3 package would probably be best for what you're after. You'd get all the programs to be able to do everything you need.

pixelkiller said:

the leading industry standard at the moment for any graphic designer would be the CS suite and quarkXpress

InDesign is a good program but it still just doesnt compare to quark. quark handles much more, InDesign just looks like it does =D and you wont be able to do everything in just one program you will need multiple programs the CS suite includes Photoshop for editing your images, Illustrator for creating Vector, Dreamweaver and Flash for web etc.
But it also comes down to price, but professional grade would be the CS suite and quark.

Good Luck

Click to expand...

Whew! I'm guessing you don't use CS a lot, right? I have been in the printing industry for 34 years... seen a lot...

I've beta tested Quark, Freehand, Illustrator and InDesign (when it was code named ""KK")..

HANDS DOWN, the creative suite wins... on a budget, you could get just InDesign as you can do 75% of what you would use Illustrator for within InDesign... you can illustrate with the same tools within InDesign.. so, you would actually get pagination as well as illustration... (albeit, the illustration part would be less than getting Illustrator)...

Quark is an $800 program that if you spend around $4,000 on various extensions can get some jobs done... The ONLY thing I believe it does better is create web documents (down and dirty)... other than that, it will probably soon die away... Currently, we receive 99.9% InDesign native or created files and I think the last Quark file I saw was over two months ago...

So, I would recommend to NOT buy into a dying system....

definitely Creative Suite; I have quark and it's a v. good program but Indesign does a v. good job too and is included in the Creative Suite package.

pixelkiller said:

InDesign is a good program but it still just doesnt compare to quark. quark handles much more, InDesign just looks like it does =D

Click to expand...

AS a long term quark user, and a designer now using InDesign I would say that Indesign beats Quark in so many ways. Quark haven't even bothered to create a scale command in the last 15 years, as for tables in quark - they are a joke!!!


So for me - Creative Suite wins hands down

Ditto the vote for InDesign. I used Quark for years until they failed to release an OS X native version when most everyone else was doing so.
Since switching I've never looked back. But..to each his/her own.

Kat

Thanks for the opinions everyone. I think that I will be able to get a big student discount on whichever one that I decide to get. Right now, I am leaning toward Adobe CS3. I would like to get dreamweaver too if I can get it in a bundled discount. Does anyone know if it is possible to install CS3 onto two computers without having to pay for two separate licenses? I would like to be able to instal it onto both my desktop and laptop if that is possible.

I have used CS2 and the Macromedia suite. Adobe Photoshop cannot be beaten, and I like Illustrator also. I would use photoshop/illustrator for arty stuff and maybe posters, but as soon as you have words in it Macromedia Freehand is where its at. InDesign does have more features, but imo for 99.99999% of people and designers Freehand is more than adequate, and also has advantages like it runs super fast etc, i love freehand!

Now I want Freehand! Is it a part of the CS3 Web Premium?

I think Adobe bought out the Illustrator competitor just to kill it. I don't think we'll ever see Freehand again.

Adobe is still selling the latest version that was made, mind you, but it's PowerPC-only and for OS 9 right through to Panther 10.3, the end.

As for the licensing issue, Adobe's license agreement does let you install on two computers (a desktop and a laptop for instance), read the EULA for the conditions

CS3 design suite all the way, I don't know any pro's including myself that don't use it...

The Adobe crew has been doing a pretty good job finding out what functionality Freehand users really miss when operating Illus, I think some of Freehand's nicer features will become part of CS4?

Still having some issues w/ CS 3's handling of DCS2 images and it's inability to deal w/ multiple swatches w/ the same name.

My vote would be either Illus CS3 standalone or the sweet and No on Quark.

Adobe Illustrator hands down. And CS4 is probably coming out at Photokina in September.

The Adobe Creative Suite is the professional standard for graphic designers and that is because it is the best. Having all 3 is best for graphic design, but for illustration it is Illustrator of course, although a lot can be done with Photoshop also.

I've not used CS3 yet, but I have the CS2 Premium Suite which I heavily use Illustrator for vectoring etc and Photoshop for the rest. I love it. It cannot be beaten!

I'm not sure what your school charges, but I just picked up CS3 Design Premium at my school book store for $600. That includes everything you would need- Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Pro, and Bridge.

I will be ordering mine online.http://www.academicsuperstore.com/cs3_info.html The price will be about the same as yours, maybe a little more once the shipping is added.

I am trying to decide whether to get the CS3 Web Premium, or the Design Premium. I will probably go with the design premium so that I won't have to get InDesign separately.