I hope I am in the right place and sorry for the long post but we are under the guns here.
To make a long story short, a friend of mine has his own company and this company creates mug designs, calendar designs, keytags, etc. Graphic design on a simple, small scale. Now, here's the situation. About 18 YEARS ago, he purchased a proprietary program designed for what he does (silk-screen printing). This program is called Laser Positive.
Now, the company that made Laser Positive went out of business about 10 years ago. This program, which works very well when it does work, requires a hardware "dongle" plugged into the ADB bus. WIthout it, it doesn't work.
OK, these dongles cost $5,000 each 18 years ago and he bought three. Only one works now. Plus, this program is very unstable on OSX...even running Classic 9 in the background. For years we have done everything we can to keep this program hoping along. Well, the last dongle is starting to not work and the computer is about to crash. We MUST find a new, standard program to use.
Now, let me tell you what kind of designs they do. Basically, each design is no more than 2 colors (sometimes three). They are spot colors printed in seperations. In other words, a design might have a brown dog with a gold fill. The gold is printed on the mug first then the brown is printed next in a two-stage print. VERY basic stuff.
I am familiar with Photoshop and Illustrator. But I think those programs are over-kill.
So, I am asking for suggestions. I am recommending they keep using the OSX machine but a program that also works on Windows would be nice too. I would like something from Adobe or some other company that is going to be around for a while.
Thanks for your help
cbmeeks
To make a long story short, a friend of mine has his own company and this company creates mug designs, calendar designs, keytags, etc. Graphic design on a simple, small scale. Now, here's the situation. About 18 YEARS ago, he purchased a proprietary program designed for what he does (silk-screen printing). This program is called Laser Positive.
Now, the company that made Laser Positive went out of business about 10 years ago. This program, which works very well when it does work, requires a hardware "dongle" plugged into the ADB bus. WIthout it, it doesn't work.
OK, these dongles cost $5,000 each 18 years ago and he bought three. Only one works now. Plus, this program is very unstable on OSX...even running Classic 9 in the background. For years we have done everything we can to keep this program hoping along. Well, the last dongle is starting to not work and the computer is about to crash. We MUST find a new, standard program to use.
Now, let me tell you what kind of designs they do. Basically, each design is no more than 2 colors (sometimes three). They are spot colors printed in seperations. In other words, a design might have a brown dog with a gold fill. The gold is printed on the mug first then the brown is printed next in a two-stage print. VERY basic stuff.
I am familiar with Photoshop and Illustrator. But I think those programs are over-kill.
So, I am asking for suggestions. I am recommending they keep using the OSX machine but a program that also works on Windows would be nice too. I would like something from Adobe or some other company that is going to be around for a while.
Thanks for your help
cbmeeks