Hot Stuff
Weekly Contest
FREE AKVIS Sketch!
CreativePro.com Podcast
Don't miss it! Updated every Monday.
FREE Mags for Creative Pros!
Creativity, Website Magazine, and more!
Draw On It: Corel's Latest Graphics Suite Packs Powerful Punch
For PC users the name Corel is synonymous with solid graphics applications. Led by Corel's powerhouse illustration package, the latest edition of the CorelDraw Graphics Suite doesn't disappoint.
Written by Susan Glinert Stevens on August 13, 2002
Categories: Graphics, Graphics Image Editing, Illustration, Photo Image Editing, Web/Mobile, Reviews
Related Articles
Related Reading
Paint It
We try hard to like Photo-Paint and we'll admit that its tools and features are almost on par with Adobe Photoshop's. The biggest problem we have with Photo-Paint is it just feels clumsy compared to its major rival. Performance-wise, it lags behind Photoshop 7 -- in our beta version there were perceptible delays between, say, moving a layer (or object, as it's called in Photo-Paint), and seeing the result on the screen. This performance hit may disappear in the final version, but we have found earlier versions of Photo-Paint suffering from the same dawdling pace and is especially evident with larger files (those greater than 50 MB). For example, it took 2 minutes 12 seconds to load a 180 MB file on a 1.2 GHz machine with 512 MB RAM; Photoshop loaded the same file in 15 seconds and didn't freeze the computer while doing so. We had hoped that the performance would improve in the released version, but it's still really slow, even with small files. As a result, Photo-Paint can't realistically be used to production print work.
If you can get used to the slightly awkward feel and hesitant performance though, Photo-Paint has a lot to offer, especially for more consumer-oriented projects such as photo retouching and quick and easy special effects. For example, Photo-Paint has a red-eye tool for fixing retinal glare caused by camera flash; an object sprayer for laying down sequences of objects (similar to Painter's image hose); a dynamite filter preview dialog box and lots of built-in creative filters; and a cool interactive drop shadow tool for producing instant -- and customizable -- special effects.
New in version 11 is a Cutout masking tool -- similar to Photoshop's Extract command (see figure 4). You trace the outline of the object you want to isolate, fill in the selection, and Photo-Paint will do the rest. Unfortunately, this feature is underpowered compared to Photoshop's, which contains controls for smoothness, specifying the foreground color, and basing the extraction on a previously saved selection. On the other hand, the lighting filters, which have been tweaked for better control and a wider range of adjustable parameters, are as good as the competition (see figure 5).
Figure 4: Photo-Paint's Cutout feature is basic, but works well on objects that don't have fine detail such as fur.
Figure 5: Photo-Paint's Lighting Effects dialog box is quite powerful and includes a new spot filter and plenty of presets for the time-pressed designer.
One of the most frequent tasks we perform in an image editor is stitching together scanned sections of an oversized image. We usually do this in Photoshop by dropping all the sections into a single image as individual layers, setting the top layer to Difference mode, and then lining them up with the cursor keys. When the alignment is correct, the overlapping area turns black (because of the Difference mode setting). Photo-Paint includes a nice stitching function for piecing together two separate images that functions like my Photoshop workaround: When the two images are correctly aligned in Photo-Paint, the overlap area turns black (see figure 6). Photo-Paint's dialog box is useful for beginners who don't know how to handle layers, but it's nowhere as nice as Picture Publisher's stitching function where you can specify individual pixels common to the two files, resulting in an absolutely precise alignment.
Figure 6: The Stitching function relies on the Difference mode to cue you when the images are correctly aligned.
Photo-Paint includes a few new features specifically for Web graphics: rollovers, better JPEG and GIF optimization, and the ability to slice images into smaller units so they load more efficiently in a browser. These features worked quite nicely and we liked the fact that they are integrated into the program -- to accomplish these actions in Photoshop, you have to switch to the companion ImageReady application.
We also loved Photo-Paint's new JPEG 2000 export filter. This new format is impressive, allowing lossless compression as well as the ability to apply a different compression factor to a selected section of the image. This feature comes in handy when you need to super-optimize an image for the Web.
This program is a good adjunct to Draw and for most image editing tasks, can substitute in a pinch for the pricier Photoshop. But given its performance problems, we won't use it for production-level work.
Share:
CorelDraw's versatility far outweighs any other
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.
barcoding in Corel Draw
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.
There IS another option...
"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.
It comes with plenty of tools that others don't
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.
Another important point for non-english community
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.
Perhaps a little harsh...
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].
Draw Suite 11
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.
Corel's RIPping Track Record
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?
Corel
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.