Over the years, the CorelDraw Graphics Suite has evolved into a powerhouse for graphic designers. Each version has seen changes in content as Corel continues to refine the product mix. Version 11 contains three major applications: CorelDraw, a premier illustration program; Corel Photo-Paint, a competent image editor, and Corel R.A.V.E (Rave), a basic Web-graphics-animation program.
Although Version 11 isn’t wildly different than its predecessor, it includes a handful of new tools and quite a few enhancements that make the programs a little more powerful and easy to use. Suite-wide improvements include optimization for their respective operating system platforms (Windows XP and Mac OS X); tighter integration between the suite components, allowing seamless transport among Draw, Photo-Paint, and R.A.V.E.; and a simplified color management system, including predefined profiles for common output jobs such as press or Web.
Draw It
Corel’s products have long been staples on the PC, and in recent years the company has made aggressive moves toward the Mac market. The suite’s centerpiece, CorelDraw, is arguably the best illustration program on the PC side — it was one of the first to appear for that platform and has matured with it. . Far easier to use than Adobe Illustrator (its only real rival), CorelDraw also sports a robust, agile toolbox and a brilliant interface that is totally user-configurable. This review was conducted on the PC, but apart from Mac OS X-specific issues — and note that version 11 is for Mac OS X only — comments made about the PC version apply equally to the Mac platform.
CorelDraw’s forte is instant live special effects with interactive tools. It’s a snap to apply transparency, gradient fills, 3D extrusions, drop shadows, and distortion envelopes on the fly by dragging the mouse over a selected object and then adjusting the effect’s position, color, and extent (see figure 1). This elegant and efficient method of applying effects makes Illustrator’s ponderous dialog boxes seem pathetically antiquated.
Figure 1: Corel’s interactive tools make it easy to precisely position this radial fill by dragging control handles. You can drag color swatches onto the handles to change the gradient colors, too.
Version 11 (finally) supports symbols — reusable objects that can be stored in a symbol library. The advantage of using symbols is that they do not add significantly to the size of a file because each symbol is merely a reference to a library object. You can easily make an object a symbol by dragging it into the Symbol palette and using a symbol is just as simple — just drag it from the palette to the page. Master symbols may be edited at any time and changes are instantly applied to the child symbols in your illustration (see figure 2).
Figure 2: The new Symbol library supports bi-directional drag and drop — create a symbol by dragging it into the Library and the just drag symbols into your drawing.
We were less impressed with two of Draw’s new tools — the Smudge and Roughen brushes. These both distort outlines, but in a rather crude way. Illustrator’s deformer tools are far superior. On the other hand, we found the ability to convert paragraph text to curves without losing any formatting a powerful new feature. CorelDraw separates text into two categories: artistic and paragraph. Artistic text is basically single lines of type used mostly for headlines or flowing text along a curve. This type of text could always be converted to curves so that special effects, such as natural media outlines and drop shadows, can be applied. Paragraph or block text can be formatted with text styles such as drop caps, bullets, and indention, but you can’t add many fancy touches to it. But in version 11, once you have set the block text to your liking, you can convert it to curves and then apply special effects without losing the paragraph formatting (see figure 3). Of course, you can’t edit the text anymore unless you Undo.
Figure 3: We converted the paragraph text on the left to curves and added a distortion envelope and a fractal fill — cool!
Also new are three tools for precision illustrations: 3-point ellipse, rectangle, and curve. To make a 3-point rectangle for example, you click to set the start, drag and click to set the baseline, and then click to set the height. Corel also included a new poly-line and pen tool (the latter is basically a simple version of a Bezier pen), both of which are nice-to-have additions to the toolbox. And there are lots of little refinements — more control over snap points, a modeless align/distribute dialog box, and improved import and export filters for PDF, PSD, SVG, and DXF/DWG files.
All in all, Corel did a good job with Draw 11 (which is also sold separately for $399), but there’s one really big hole: the macro scripting capability. Beginning with version 10, Corel converted all scripting from CorelScript to Visual Basic for Applications (Windows only). That’s a good thing, as VBA programming is pretty standardized in the Windows environment. Unfortunately, the script recording feature is dreadful and doesn’t record half of what you do. The end result is macros that don’t work because many of the commands are missing from the script. VBA programmers can fill in the blanks, but those who don’t know how or don’t have time to deal with VBA will be at a loss. And we want to see an offset line tool for drawing parallel lines. We’ve been begging for this one for 10 years.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on August 13, 2002
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
Leave a Reply
Can anyone tell me how to start or use Bar Code Wizard in CorelDraw 9 or 11.
I have used it before at some stage, but don’t seem to be able to access it now.
CorelDraw 10 & 11 have been unsubstantially rated within the shadows of Adobe products. When you compare feature for feature it becomes very evident CorelDraw should be rated around a 9.5.
I work on both softwares and have the knowledge to back that statement. Others may base their opinion on current market values and not market trends.
CorelDraw is fast become a Graphics industry leader based on it’s software’s intelligence alone.
As someone who started out on CorelDRAW 3 in 1995 and moved on to Illustrator/Photoshop I am surprised at how much I am enjoying my return to the Corel fold. In my work as a broadcast designer I have not found PhotoPaint to be significantly slower than Photoshop and with its incredibly customisable workflow I feel that I am more productive with it than with its Adobe rival.
Whilst Draw is undeniably powerful I feel less comfortable with it than Xara X, still my design tool of choice. That said, I do turn to it surprisingly often for more mundane, print type tasks.
After a few months back with Corel I find that I have become very impatient with Adobe’s clumsy GUI to the point that I recently uninstalled Photoshop and Illustrator from my workstation. If anything I think this review was unfair as it ignored some of PhotoPaint’s more impressive features like it’s interactive navigator and the ability to turn the undo [history] list into a script [action].
If your native lanuage is different than english and some of the common languages in computer-world you can buy Corel products with closed eyes. Their skilled programmers uses every aspect of Windows environment perfectly. If your windows has a support for YOUR country for keyboard and font settings Corel Draw perfectly follows these like Turkish specific fonts just similar to Microsoft Word. Never try these with Illustrator, it has even do not have any code page or other support apart from some selected common languages (You cannot print specific fonts even in Windows XP using Unicode or Opentype fonts).
An important property of Adobe and Quark-like applications that your design will halt somewhere in the middle that you will realize some type of costly plug-in or additional software is actually necessary to reach an end… (If you use illustrator you will need Photoshop, Streamline, Borcode support, Type manager etc). For Corel Draw suite you draw vectors, paint photos, Trace images, capture images, create textures, duplex printing jobs, impose pages perfectly, navigate fonts with perfect font navigator, use thousands of quality fonts, clip art, pictures bundled with product, do color seperations and produce pdfs withous distiller, create international type barcodes for book,cd covers and many more in only THE ONE product. I would like to thank Corel from Turkey.
Yes it’s true, The ever problem with Corel draw, even in 10 version, is that it don’t RIP 100% well, unlike Illustrator and Freehand (I worked with them too) that were made to RIP good. But believe me, if Corel Draw would manage the PostScript fine, it could be the absolutly best illustration program on the PC platform. I say this because i’ve been working with Draw since the version 4 in 1994, and watching all the improvements and new tools that have been added. For example, I make the imposition right from Corel (a very outstanding feature that Freehand n’ Illustrator don’t have), and workaround the RIP problem by printing my jobs into a PDF file with Acrobat Distiller. Please make an article talking about the improvements in RIPping (if them exist). Thanks.
“Far easier to use than Adobe Illustrator (its only real rival)…”
Have we forgotten Macromedia Freehand? I have found Freehand’s features superior to and its ease of use much more intuative than either Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. Granted, that opinion is quite subjective and I am sure there are those that would disagree with me — but, to dismiss Freehand out of hand and not even count it as a rival of both Illustrator and Corel Draw diminishes the article’s worth considerably.
Having worked both sides of the desk, design and electronic prepress, I have steered clear of Corel and basically all the PC versions of design software because of the difficulty in getting files to RIP successfully. In fact, many commercial presses do not support Corel at all. By far, Mac platforms handle fonts and PostScript much better than Microsoft. We keep a Dell to check compatibility issues on files we send for our clients’ internal use, and frankly, I still see that Microsoft relies heavily on screen data, not the actual coding that would drive a RIP. This review did not address that clearly. Has Corel made improvements in the last 2 years that would change my opinion?
I am responding both because I think the reviewer has been quite fair, and because I don’t really agree with Matt007’s comments. I have been using Draw for some years now, and once you learn how to use its rich feature set, you have an awful lot of power at your fingertips. PhotoPaint’s speed and stability has been a bit of a weak link, but AFAIK I have never had it crash Win2k (which I also run – check your video drivers instead). I hope to have a chance soon to see whether PhotoPaint11 is faster. If you want to know how Draw really is, visit its newsgroups and see what problems users are having (bearing in mind that there will always be a few frustrated newbies who vent their distress on the product, and not on their own ignorance). The regular users will be the first to tell you the truth about the program, and its strengths and weaknesses, and even show you what the product can do.
As Canadain I am not to happy to say that Corel like many Canadain companies leave me cold.
I used Corel Photo Paint from version 3 to 9 at version 10 they placed it inside the “Corel Graphic Suite” were it became unavailable to past PC users as stand alone product.
Photo Paint is still bundled into the Corel Graphics Suite in verse 11 and unlikely to ever to become available to PC users again as a stand alone product.
I think they have a hate going on with Bill Gates or something so they pulled this very dumb action and dumped on the PC users. Any ways..
What did I do – the right thing and the smart thing. I save my pennies and moved to Adobe Photoshop and I am glad I did. There are far, far, far fewer buggies in it and has more powers in it and available for it
than what is Photo Paint.
Corel Photo Paint is the only program that could crash my Windows 2000 system and believe me, I ran my system for days without a crash – untill I ran Photo Paint.
As one of the orphaned user of a Corel product – I can only say, watch your Apples or you may be adding a lemon of a program and Company to list of head aches.