Is signlabs 9 an improvement over version 8

[Peter Normington]

Stephen
Designwise the main improvement is that SL now supports transparencies, so fades etc, are easy to do even with vectors. and has some improved line style effects. not much has changed for cut vinyl though.

the rip is a better especially for print and cut, in SL8 you had to rip a print and cut job before rotating it etc. SL9 also recognises and you can assign different line colours for different types of cut, (die contour etc)

The new menu design tool does not work very well though but if it did would be good. There are a few differences in the text handling dept.

I found one think that has changed for worse though, it is now not possible to place reg marks around repeats as an array set, so if doing long cut label jobs you can only do a few meters at a time if you want to stay spot on with regististration.
Quite a few other thing have been improved, cadlink have some demo videos on their site, worth taking a look.

peter

[Stephen Morriss]

Thanks for the quick reply Peter.

So most of the improvements are in the print area.

I don’t use that part very much and as mine is vinyl pro I don’t have a rip, I do sometimes use it to do designs for export and then print from versaworks but I find the colours in signlabs hard to work with.

I’m maybe not using it right but Corel is much easier to pick a colour for printing, I think I’ll have to investigate it a bit more.

Steve

[Alan Drury]

Peter has pretty well summed it up – print and cut user can see improvements but vinyl hasn’t changed that much. Text is slightly different regarding where different tools are – not sure I’m that keen on that – generally I like it but I’ve always liked Signlab.
Alan D

[Stephen Morriss]

Ok great.

I’ve had a quick play with the filters in version 8 and I never realised the effects you can get, some of this stuff I’ve been messing around in Corel trying to do and with one quick filter it’s done.
The chrome effect on lettering is easy and I’ve spent ages in corel trying to get that effect!

My next customer ‘ll have to watch out, if they ask for something a bit different I’ll just got crazy 🙂

Steve

[Jason Davies]

Just received signlab 9, thought I’d give it a go. Anyone used Engravelab Photolaser plus??