# Rhinestone help with Adobe Illustrator



## zome (Feb 27, 2008)

I think it'd be good to get a good thread together with tips and tricks exclusively for Adobe Illustrator users. Every thread I review has tons of content for Corel but hardly any for Illustrator and it's hard to weed through all of the comments to get any substance. 

I've read a few tutorials but they were pretty brief and didn't really give enough help. 

Does anyone have any good tips to getting started in Illustrator (beginners) and then any other tips for advanced work? 

I spent several hours last night weeding through the forums trying to find good help but couldn't find any good solid answers. I tried doing blends and fixing them to text paths but too many circles overlapped or it didn't fill completely the thicker parts of the letters, or they weren't squared off right, etc. 

I even went to our art dept today and they didn't have any ideas off the top of their heads with out diving into it deeper. 

I have CS5 and a Roland cutter.


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## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

zome said:


> I spent several hours last night weeding through the forums trying to find good help but couldn't find any good solid answers. I tried doing blends and fixing them to text paths but too many circles overlapped or it didn't fill completely the thicker parts of the letters, or they weren't squared off right, etc.


All of those things you mentioned are issues we face everyday using CorelDRAW...

This may sound like a crazy question... But is there a reason you are opposed to using CorelDRAW?...

The reason I ask is simply put CorelDRAW probably is the tool to use, just because of the info available and the plug-ins available for it specifically for rhinestones... It can be got on the cheap and with the information available and the plug-ins available it's a great choice. 

There just isn't much info on Illustrator... In this industry I would say it's probably a fairly high percentage that are CorelDRAW users thus the reason more info is available for it...

Sorry I can't help with Illustrator though... 

Kevin


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## zome (Feb 27, 2008)

It's because Illustrator is a 'real' design program. Corel is a cheaper design program meant for home based or smaller business'. Design schools teach Illustrator because it is the most powerful tool for design and is meant for serious designers. It's frustrating that most of this industry has been using Corel. 

Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign all integrate very well.


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## jean518 (Sep 23, 2009)

Excuse me??


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## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

zome said:


> It's because Illustrator is a 'real' design program. Corel is a cheaper design program meant for home based or smaller business'. Design schools teach Illustrator because it is the most powerful tool for design and is meant for serious designers. It's frustrating that most of this industry has been using Corel.
> 
> Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign all integrate very well.


Wow!... You come here asking for help and then you slam 95% of us here with your program's superiority? 

I don't think that's the best way to make friends and get your questions answered that's for sure.

This idea that Illustrator is somehow superior is just dumb... CorelDRAW is a very capable program made even more capable by the plug-ins available for it.

Use what best fits your need... But don't slam people because they use a product that meets their needs. I choose CorelDRAW years ago because of the available information on it compared to Illustrator. "Professionals" do use CorelDRAW everyday... There are things CorelDRAW does that can run circles around Illustrator and likewise there are things you can do in Illustrator that will run circles around CorelDRAW... Any program is that way though.

Think what you want... But making such brash statements here isn't going to get your question answered any quicker I can tell you that.

Kevin


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## zome (Feb 27, 2008)

There is a reason I mentioned we should have a thread for Illustrator users and asked for help with Illustrator (from other Illustrator users). I did not ask for Corel users to respond and try to convert me to Corel. I didn't mean to bash Corel, it is just that we work with a lot of top ad agencies that all use Illustrator and they have all communicated with me that they hate working with print shops that only use Corel. All of the art schools teach Illustrator and so it wouldn't make sense to to build a business on a model that requires training new employees on a program that isn't taught in the art schools. Also Corel does not integrate as well with the other Adobe products. 

The biggest thing is it doesn't even work on a Mac. Myself and our whole art dept are on Macs so Corel isn't even an option. 

So back to my original post, do any Illustrator users out there have any feedback on tips/tricks to designing Rhinestones quickly?


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## jean518 (Sep 23, 2009)

I don't think anyone was trying to convert you. It was the "tone" of your post. I hope you find the information you are looking for. Maybe those who use Illustrator have no interest in rhinestoning. There are standalone rhinestone programs that you could import you AI files into if you cannot find a way to do it in Illustrator.


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