Yeah illustrator makes dpi and size easy. recreating the graph not so easy. But now done.

[On edit] Not actually criticizing Illustrator. A powerful program, much of whose functionality I don't understand (that is I don't understand a lot of what it accomplishes as opposed just not knowing what features to use to accomplish those things.) So for example if you want a graph in Illustrator you first go to the object menu to set the graph type on the toolbar and then drag the graph from the toolbar to where you want it. Not hard to do once you know it, but not intuitively obvious to a first time user. And once the graph is ungrouped, turning it into essentially just another illustrator drawing, OK I can select a line. And then I click on the color tool bar to change colors and the thing does not change colors. Finally I figured out you have to hit the shift-key and click the "stroke" menu and then you get alternative "stroke" menu that lets you change the color. OK, *really* not intuitively obvious. And that alternative "stroke" menu still gives you a limited choice of colors, and there are probably some other choices that would let you changes. I wonder if even long time users like that particular interface feature.

Still I suspect that once you get used to it, Illustrator probably is something where you can get your work done quickly. Like any really powerful multi-purpose tool it has a learning curve. And heck, I managed to figure it out enough to get what I had to do finished in a day, so probably that does not leave me a lot of room to criticize it for lack of intuitiveness.

I've never been able to get how Illustrator works. Years ago I worked with Corel Draw and loved it, but I changed jobs and the new place didn't include it. I've gotten to know Photoshop and work with it pretty well, except it's a raster program.

Typo, fyi, if you can get your graphs into PowerPoint, you can save them as TIF files - they're not especially high-res, but I've used it as an interim step to creating a print-able image.

How does Powerpoint help as an intermediate step? I mean you can import excel images directly into most graphic programs, it is just that they are low res and using the high res features just turns them into a high res image of a low res image which has no advantage over a low res image. Is a Powerpoint image easier to enhance in Photoshop or whatever?

Here is what I'm thinking long term. I'm going to watch for opportunities to get Vizio on sale. Native charting module, high resolution, a learning curve but not a horrid learning curve. From what I hear, one of those programs you have to "get" and then once you understand the core functionality everything else becomes easy to learn. One learning curve, not multiple learning curves. So it seems like a good way to produce high resolution attractive charts in the future. Plus you know, building layouts and flow charts and all the stuff it was originally intended for, cause line graphs and pie charts not the main point.

True? False?

Sounds like a good idea - I was just suggesting PP as an interim step if you needed something quickly. It exports TIF files that are better than what you can get from Excel. On reflection, probably not good enough to get up to 600 dpi and usable for print.

For immediately illustrator worked. I was desperate because I thought I was not going to find anything free or cheap that made graphs natively and could produce high res output. For all its problems I was able to get what I needed from Illustrator. Also in the long run I suspect if I'm going to be a professional writer of non-fiction, the need to supply high quality graphics will be ongoing. Intermittent use, not continuous. So user friendliness more important than maximum productivity once mastered. At one time I would have said "Aldous Pagemaker" but if that program still exists I doubt it is current. What is today's equivalent of Aldous Pagemaker, powerful, user-friendly but not necessarily the highest productivity for large jobs or repeated tasks? A lot of handholding for people who don't know what they are doing. Someone who does know what they are doing may curse at the high number of steps some tasks take, but even as they curse there is a way to get those tasks done.

What sort of hassle would I be looking at if I wanted to set up a partition on my currently-used Mac Mini that booted Tiger instead of Snow Leopard? I'd rather not have to wipe the whole thing and start over again from scratch, but since I have Time Machine backups on a network drive, maybe that wouldn't be such a big thing. I am, however, exceedingly lazy.

(The reason I'm wanting to do this is that Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 doesn't play well with Snow Leopard. I know, I know, it's outdated, but it's a darn expensive batch of software that I don't use enough to justify buying the new version.)

...Incidentally, for my first publication in grad school I totally did the Excel graphs -> PowerPoint -> TIF thing. I still can't believe my advisor and the publisher let me get away with that.

Typo Boy, Adobe bought Pagemaker. [link]

Is Pagemaker still current? I thought it had been outcompleted, and fallen way behind in capability.

OK, 7 was the version from 2001. Officially does not run on Windows 7 though I bet it does. I don't care about obsolete if I can get my work done.

Pagemaker hasn't been updated since 2004. From what I understand it won't install on anything newer than WinXP, which means even Win Vista is out of the question. On the Mac side version 7 will only install into OS9, it won't work at all on Intel Macs, and it doesn't run very well in Classic mode under OS X, so Adobe's best recommendation on the Mac is to run it on a Mac that can natively boot in OS9.