CorelDraw or Painter11 vs CS4 and Lightroom?

[Goldie Green]

Looking into purchasing Corel Draw or CS4, I hear mixed reviews and even arguments about the two programs...which is better, etc.

What I need to know is which program will ultimately do better for me, because I cannot decide.
My background I am an artist and photographer, I do a bit of both and am trying to get my system running smoothly from shoot to finish, (or paint to finish in some cases.) I have not used either program, but recently bought Lightroom 2.6 for my iMac desktop. I need a program that can handle a pro photographer work load and be compatible with LR2. As well as image manipulation for artsy edits, and full blown create from scratch digital artwork, and also brighten my hand painted /sketched works to be uploaded. Text/Vector functionality is also very important as I do Tshirts randomly.

Up until recently I have learned on The Gimp and tried the Corel Paint Pro trial, it was ok but I have not used CorelDraw yet. From a few reviews I hear that Corel is sooo much better at many things, but once it goes to the printer that's where it fails.

Please fill me with knowledge! Life is a Constant Upgrade!

PS: I really like the idea of the Corel Painter 11 but does it work with photos much?

[Clickhead]

You jump from Coral Draw to Coral Photo paint... these are 2 different applications.

Some quotes for you:

CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation It is also the name of Corel's Graphics Suite. Its latest version, named X5 (actually version 15), was released in February 2010.

Corel PHOTO-PAINT is a raster graphics editor created by Corel. The current version is Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4 (14), a part of the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4.

As of version 11, Corel increasingly gave attention to the PC photography user; support for the Windows Image Acquisition-interface and Exif was introduced then, as was a Red Eye Removal Tool. The latest version available for Macintosh is version 11. Version 9 was also made available for Linux, however it was less of an actual port as it depended on Wine to run. It was released as freeware and could be downloaded directly from Corel's website, although CorelDRAW 9 for Linux was not freeware.

PHOTO-PAINT functionality can be extended by Photoshop-compatible plugins. They are listed in the 'Effects' menu, below the built-in effects.

CorelDraw is a brilliant graphics package.. and amazing things can be done with both graphics and images in it.

But the standard for high end image editing the world over is Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation software, and is the flagship product of Adobe Systems. It has been described as "an industry standard for graphics professionals"[1] and was one of the early "killer applications" on the Macintosh, later also for MS Windows.[2]

Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS4 is the 11th major release of Adobe Photoshop. The CS rebranding also resulted in Adobe offering numerous software packages containing multiple Adobe programs for a reduced price. Adobe Photoshop is included in most of Adobe's Creative Suite offerings.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a photography software program developed by Adobe Systems for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, designed to assist professional photographers in managing thousands of digital images and doing post production work. It is not a file browser like Adobe Bridge, but rather an image management application database which helps in viewing, editing, and managing digital photos.
--------------------

Standards?...who cars about standards.. use what you feel comfortable using and works for you.