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Signlab, Poor Quality design interface?
From the sound of it a lot o people use and like Signlab, so in the end after seeing the fluid mask and vectorising at the show last year I bought the full version V8 Print and Cut and a print dongle as well. But although I still think its brilliant software for many reasons, I can’t get on with it as when your designing you don’t get a full res image it’s not “what you see is what you get” unlike Adobe which is
Does anyone else have this problem or is there a way to change the design window resolution?? I find it that annoying that I’ve stopped using it and I’ve resorted back to illustrator and scripts where necessary, Iam thinking of selling it if I can’t get over this issue Its got such great features but a very poor quality interface, I’ve been developing software for 10s of years and I can’t understand why they limited the interface so much it’s certainly not down to processing power
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16 Replies
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you are not the only developer here 😉 anyway I found Graphicut (a cut down version of signlab) to be pretty basic, it has some good speed but it is not illustrator/corel imo.
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Kev not sure what you mean by resolution
have you got "show reduced bitmaps" ticked?Peter
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quote Peter Normington:Kev not sure what you mean by resolution
have you got “show reduced bitmaps” ticked?Peter
That’s my initial though too.
Signlab’s display is normally native to the resolution you are running on the PC.
(I have 7), but look through the VIEW tab.
Dave
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Heres a screen shot of What I mean
Illistrator appers to smooth its output where as Signlab dose nothing
you will see this if you zoom init might not seem alot but it makes a hell of a difference when designing
my screen res 1600 x 1024 and this image is a good 25% of screen so its a lot worse for small stuff.
Kev
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I have heard of the same problem from others. but it looks ok on my screen.
perhaps I am not as fussy?
Peter -
Illustrator (and Corel who has caught up on the screen quality) can not be compared to a ‘sign making’ program like SignLab, two different beasts imo.
If you want to design brochures of a good quality standard, I would use Illustrator/Corel but I suspect SignLab would actually do a pretty good job, even if the tools feel very different.
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It’s a fair comment, Signlab’s display resolution is not as good as Corel’s at the moment full stop. I use both all the time and Signlab has some tools that are just not there in other software and although I’m aware of Signlab’s shortfall its never affected the way I use it, it’s power or usability. As you have already got the software I would persevere and I’m sure you’ll get used to it.
Alan D -
it is the same with flexi sign, there is a certain type of glow to the screen display which does distort the image slightly and can interfere with your judgment when designing.
For example white text on a dark background will glow so much that your lettering just looks too thick. Where as in reality when cut in vinyl, it is fine.
One way to quickly preview what it will look like in reality is to export as a pdf and view that. I did this at first but now i have got use to the way it looks in flexi sign and i can automatically translate it in my head whilst designing. It’s something you have to get use to, until they improve it in the future i suppose.
Liam
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Hi Kev,
I dont have Signlab – so someone else here may be able to help more – but I think what you are seeing is down to ‘anti-aliasing’.
Illustrator does it, Corel does it – maybe a signlab expert can tell you whether there is another button to click on in that respect (or maybe Signlab doesn’t anti-alias – I have flexi 7.5 and that doesn’t anti alias either which is a pain).
Martin
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Newer versions of Flexi do alnti-alias. There is a slight performance hit though.
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Thanks for your input Guys at least I know its not completely me
"Yes Iam Very Fussy with graphics at times"
Martin yes this is definitely down to anti-aliasing you can see the shading on the left "illustrator" of the screen shot,
I just find it hard to see why such great piece of software hasn’t got this incorporated, there are some really good features in signlab which I like but the lack of smoothing, anti-aliasing spoils it big time
Dose anyone know if CS4 Illustrator, has sequencing built ie variable text fields, or dose it still have to be done with a script,
to do badges like signlab Ive have to resort to distort & Transform and a lot of messing around for cut paths, Ide like to be able to create one decal and with variable fields and specify print layout, in a similar way to software like Bartender, I often use bartender and then import the pdf to illustrator but you still have the problems with cut lines, what do others do when it comes to this type of job. variable data badges/labels/decals ???
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I use the "badges" function in Signlab for variable text and numbering. However, Andy Blackett wrote a tutorial using Corel for sequential numbering. You can see it here
http://www.uksignboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=43285 -
Yes Corel will do it with print merge. As far as SL display I would be surprised if this is not sorted in future versions.
Alan D -
as a work round I always go to ‘send image by email’ and create a quick pdf if I need a better view. This can be on low quality if it’s only vector and only take a few seconds.
G
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Thanks for all the input Guys
at lest its not just me being to picky
I Think I will Sell it while its still the Current Version -
I just wonder if it’s a PC thing, as I came from flexi 5 (Signmate Pro) on my Mac to Flexi 7.6 on my PC & the screen resolution is shocking. So much so that I design 99% of my stuff using my old Mac & flexi 5 & only use the PC when I have to.
Same monitor too, so it’s not that.
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