I bought this machine mainly for cutting out words, names and so on. I do not care for the inkscape program or it’s lack of good fonts to choose from. I am used to printshop. I have tried creating what I want in print shop, printing in. Scanning it in the glowforge and tracing it that way. However, it will not cut, only engrave which is not what I want to do. Any suggestions? Anyone else been able to use a program other than inkscape?
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Wow, PrintShop is still around? I had version 1.0 back in like 1986!
I’m not sure what export formats it supports, but I would think it could export as PDF, and the GFUI can accept those. If the designs are bitmap (made of dots), though, engrave is going to be your only option. Scoring and cutting require vector (line) images.
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I haven’t used PrintShop in over 20 years, but looking at the user guide for release 4, I’m not sure it will work. It doesn’t mention anything about saving/exporting SVG files.
The Print Shop 4.0 User Guide - Saving your Project
You can probably use it for engraving raster images, but if it doesn’t support SVG files, you cannot use it for cutting.
Thank you, are you aware of other programs besides InkScape?
Thank you. Do you use Inkscape?
I use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. You could look at Affinity Designer. It’s much cheaper than Illustrator and has most of the functionality.
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Affinity Designer is a low-cost, but not free, option a lot of people are using.
As for fonts, I wonder if Inkscape isn’t looking in the right place? Fonts should be pretty much system-wide.
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Awesome! Thank you!
You can load any font you want onto your computer and Inkscape will normally read it. I don’t know how Printshop manages fonts. I do recall back in the day they had lots of options though and it was handy. As @jbmanning5 says, it might be an issue of where your fonts are residing.
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I’ve been playing with Affinity Designer, and I’m liking it a lot.
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I still have and occasionally use Print Shop. Have no idea how long I’ve had it, but it’s been a long time. I still love it.
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AD is what I’ve been using the whole time I’ve had my Glowforge. I tried some of the others, but this one ended up being my favorite and the price was right.
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While you are exploring software, give a trial version of Corel a once over.
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I recently purchased the newest version I love the ease of it.
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i don’t know anything about print shop, but can you make a PDF from it? if so, you may be able to make it work. GF will import both SVG and PDF.
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It looks like it supports PDF, but that doesn’t mean it supports vectors.
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that part i can’t answer either.
Good grief! There’s a new version? I’ve been looking for years to see if they were putting one out and never see one. I would love to buy it.
I still have my copy of PrintShop from early '90s… not that I can use it on any of my computers! (yes, I have a cluttered studio!) Every once & a while have wanted to get it to work, but hadn’t found a new version–but think I just opt to use PhotoShop to get what I need vs. look for (or rather pay for) the new version.
And PhotoShop is easy to get the jpeg files to upload to the GF.
@boxwoodcreationsaz
Just took a look around and Print Shop 4 for Mac is not available…either on the developer site nor at Amazon.