: Difference between InDesign and CorelDraw? I work in CorelDraw. I also want to learn Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. I think Illustrator and CorelDraw are similar. Output is same. But

@Hamaas979

InDesign is in its starting period. It doesn't allow us full freedom of content writing for anything like magazines, leaflets, books as other applications does and they're more friendly. InDesign is such a nightmare for beginner graphic designers. The only the good thing is layout, master pages and Illustrator support. If I have to create a cover page for my magazine I prefer to go to Photoshop or Corel Draw, for book page maker, Corel Draw and InPage for Arabic and Urdu publications. So suggestions for InDesign please consider this issue with serious note. Do the needful for better performance, we are doing our job with InDesign forcefully. We also could not generate the barcode what InDesign.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Vandalay110

CoralDraw is a very reliable, robust and versatile, package. And don't forget it is well linked with its other image manipulating packages like 'Paintshop' and can handle photo tools like levels, curves, conversion, etc. on the go. It also works well with Inkscape, GIMP and Photoshop..

CorelDraw is created with both, the designer and printer (RGB n CMYK or Offset) in mind.. Good for a single page or screen / poster or multi-page publication. I have not gone beyond a 30 pages file.. The best thing I like about it is its micro-accuracy layer layout ability. Its major drawback is the text format. If you have a Word file document for copy - paste, the text layer becomes unstable and requires more attention.. Better get a Notepad text import or type directly in the text layer of the package.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Ogunnowo857

You're right that Corel Draw is like Illustrator.

InDesign is for larger, sometimes much larger publications and when combined with other Adobe applications is incredibly robust. A few key features that InDesign provides. I've never used Corel Draw so this is compared to Illustrator but did glance online to see which of these Corel Draw offers and believe my list is accurate. Anyone with additional Corel Draw knowledge is welcome to edit.


Master Pages
Data Merging
GREP / Regular Expressions / Regex
Hyperlinks for things like PDFs and ePubs (CorelDraw has these but Illustrator doesn't)
Character and Paragraph Styles (CorelDraw has these but Illustrator doesn't.)
The ability to create .INDB (book) files and keep things organized
Packaging Deliverables to give to a printing press
InCopy (comes with Creative Cloud and gives writers / editors ability to make simple changes without breaking things)


There's probably more but these are some of the main ones that come to my mind that make InDesign the program of choice for publishing and differentiate it from a Vector Based Illustration program.

On the other hand there are limits. InDesign doesn't do a very good job with Masking for example, only has basic vector tools, no real Photo tools such as Levels and Curves, and lots of other weaknesses. For the vector illustration and logo stuff you'll continue using Corel Draw (or switch to Illustrator as you mentioned) but for layout it will greatly improve your workflow.

On single page ads you can get away with Illustrator/CorelDraw (or really even Photoshop a lot of times) but once you have a multi-page book (could be 8 pages, could be 500 pages) you'll really appreciate the more robust features InDesign offers

Edit: Per comments CorelDraw unlike Illustrator does have some of those things I listed but not all and those it does have are not as robust as InDesign. So some features you can't get elsewhere such as GREP Support and InCopy, others are just better in a dedicated program.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Debbie163

The basic idea

Corel Draw and Ilustrator are mainly for vector based ilustrations. This is very broad, it can be a logo, and icon or inclusive almost photorealistic vector based images.

It can also be used for layout. This is for printed materials, flyers, posters, etc. This can combine photographs, vector based images and text.

On the other hand, the main purpose of InDesign is to make multiple pages layout, like a magazine or a book, based on master pages that contain information on different basic grid designs and styles of titles and paragaphs. This is to make the publication consistent.

Also, the basic workflow of a Layout program (InDesign) is to have the source files linked; mainly Photos and text, so if theese are edited, the changes are reflected inside the publication.

Some history

Historically Ilustrator was not multipage, this is in early versions only handled 1 page.

The program that handled multiple pages was PageMaker. Later Adobe started to make a new program, Indesign.

Corel Draw on the other hand since early versions could handle multiple pages. The company aquired a program called Corel Ventura, to have a speciallized program for multiple pages, but the program did not last for long.

Can I use it for

Corel Draw is suitable to make multipage publications, a small magazine for example, where your articles dosen't extend a lot across multiple pages. In this case, CorelDraw is also a layout program.

But there is a point where the files can get very big, and the program is not very stable to handle them. (I don't go beyond 24-32 pages on a Corel Draw File)

A DPS, Desktop Publishing System or Layout program, like Indesign or Scribus are optimized for this task (multiple pages). Yes you can draw some basic shapes to frame texts, titles, etc, but you don't make elaborated ilustrations on them.

Ilustrator now can use multiple artboards, this way you don't need to make 2 separated files for the front and back faces on a flyer.

Categories

So in the design world the main categories to put a program are:

Vector based
Corel Draw, Ilustrator, Inkscape, Draw Plus, etc.

Photo Retouching
Photoshop, Gimp, PaintShopPro, etc.

Layout Programs
InDesign, QuarkXpress, Scribus, Serif Plus, etc.

Other
Painting programs (Painter, Photoshop), animation, web layout (Dreamweaver), Photography (Lightroom), 3D modeling, animation and render, video...

We can extend on that topic. You can handle a program to do things beyond the scope of it. But the programs are more speciallized on some tasks.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Chiappetta793

As per the Adobe InDesign website:

InDesign is a page layout tool.

The program allows you to collect graphical (raster and vector) and textual content into a layout, enabling easy multi-page processing and powerful exporting options for both print and digital purposes. And I feel like an Adobe salesman now.

InDesign has powerful tools for easy workflows laying out large amounts of content over multiple pages in a publication. Its text handling tools far outshine those of Photoshop and Illustrator. Since it doesn't embed raster or vector files into its native file, it allows you to use preliminary versions and refresh those with the finals at a later time.

The main difference with Illustrator is that Illustrator is optimised for the creation of vector shapes and, well, illustrations, while InDesign has very limited vector tools but excels at multiple-page layout and handling text.

Illustrator makes you a logo, poster, flyer or maybe folder. InDesign makes you a leaflet or a book.

Vote Up Vote Down

@LarsenBagley460

Put simply:


Illustrator is for creating vector graphics, logos and single page layouts.
InDesign is for creating single and multi-page layouts using elements created in illustrator/photoshop/corel etc


Yes you are correct that CorelDraw is basically very similar to Illustrator.

Vote Up Vote Down