CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 Upgrade [DVD]

List Price: $199.00 Discount Price: $179.99

Features:

• Powerful, versatile and affordable graphics suite that includes everything you need for professional graphics illustration, layout and digital image editing
• Innovative design tools, including advanced layout tables, live text formatting and separate layers per page, to optimize your workflow
• Easy-to-use interface supported by learning videos, tutorials and intelligent Hints-Dockers
• Market-leading file compatibility with over 100 import/export filters to make sharing your designs with colleagues and clients easy
• Trusted by millions of professional users, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 is recognized as the standard design application in many industries

Customer Reviews:

Overall great product but they miss key areas... [Posted on 2008-03-28]
I come from the sign industry and a lot of sign shops use CorelDRAW. However, it would be NICE if Corel realized that they have such a following in that niche and would optimize DRAW for vinyl cutting. Phew! I've always wanted to get that off my chest.

Having said that it was worthwhile upgrading from version 12. I'm not sure that upgrading from X3 would have been worthwhile.

CorelDRAW's interface, particularly in editing bezier curves, has always made it my choice. I used Illustrator every single day at work but I have yet to figure out curve editing on it. :-P

Corel still does not match Adobe in the colour management area. They need to take this a little more seriously!

Corel needs to stop buying up companies and trying to market their products. Why did they buy Paintshop? They should have just continued to update Photopaint. Paintshop is just a drag on their developement resources and takes their programing team away from their core products.

Also, Corel is not taking website design integration seriously. They need something to compete with Dreamweaver. "Get with it guys! It is not just a print world anymore!" Also, why the devil did they stop developement of RAVE??? It disappeared a couple incarnations ago and doesn't look like it'll return.

Having said all that CorelDRAW X4 is a great vector illustration program and I can still do professional raster image editing with Photopaint. Their bitmap to vector tracing module can't be beat. All for much less than Adobe products.

A Graphics Suite that will Suit Just About Everybody [Posted on 2008-04-05]
You get a lot of good stuff with this package, besides just the Graphics Suite. Lots of folks will appreciate the 10,000 clip art images, but I didn't need them, so I deleted them from my hard drive. I also didn't keep the 1,000 high res photos from iStockphoto. I do use a lot of professional photos, but I have an account with iStockphoto and so I didn't need any extras cluttering up my hard drive. HOwever the 1,000 OpenType fonts, those I kept and I'll most likely used them a lot.

The user guide is easy to understand and the video training that comes with the program is, I imagine, helpful, though I only looked at it for a second as I'm pretty familiar with graphics programs, so I just dove right in. CoralDRAW X4 was easy for me to understand, though I'm an old hand at both Freehand (Mac) and Illustrator (Mac and PC), so I didn't expect any problems and didn't get any. If you don't have those programs, then this could easily be a drawing program for you. Corel PHOTO-PAINT was also pretty easy for me to figure out, though I use their Painter program a lot and am a dedicated Photoshop user. Again, if you don't have those programs and they are are expensive, and if you don't have a need for all the tools at your hand in Photoshop, then this suite just might be for you. It's easy to figure out, but if you need help there is plenty there. All in all, I'd have to say this is a graphics suite that would suit just about everybody.

Easy to Use with a Clean and Intuitive Interface [Posted on 2008-04-05]
A lot of people use Adobe Illustrator, but there is another very fine drawing program out there and this is it. Like with Illustrator you can design and create logos, ads, illustrations for websites and so much more. The program ships with a gang of royalty free software, 10,000 clip art images which you can use in your projects, 1,000 first class photos which you can also use. And 1,000 fonts, which is good for all of us who cannot afford the very expensive Adobe Font Library.

The interface is clean, intuitive and the program is easy to use, though I did watch the videos which came with it and they helped a lot. Also, this is a full fledged vector based program, just like Adobe Illustrator, but you can do page design with it as well, like you would in Quark Express or Adobe InDesign. However, sadly I don't think Photo-Paint in the suite measures up to Adobe Photoshop, but still, it's a useful part of the program.

All in all, I'd say you'll get your money's worth with CoralDraw X4. You can use it instead of Illustrator or Quark and InDesign and that's saying a lot, it really is.

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