Rating: 
Summary: Downgraded back to CorelDraw 9
Review:
There is a rumor that Corel saves the most important upgrades for odd-numbered versions.
I used CorelDraw 8 in the past, and CorelDraw 9 IMHO was a big improvement - less crashes and more useful features. There wasn't anything better about CorelDraw 12, however there were things that I didn't like about it, particularly the UI. For example, centering an object relative to another object took one double-click in v9, but in v12 that's impossible. It may seem like a little thing, but there are *many* such little things, which make the new software harder to use.
- Someone listed Windows XP support as one of the benefits of switching to CorelDraw 12. I am running CorelDraw 9 under Windows XP Professional, without any problems.
- I did not find the new Photopaint to be any faster, however I did find that my old scripts (written for v9) stopped working, and frankly I very much dislike the new UI.
- Enhanced snapping is more of an annoyance, than a useful feature.
CONCLUSION
If you are considering buying CorelDraw for the first time, I suggest you give CorelDraw 9 a try. It is available from various on-line stores and eBay for as little as $50 (as of October 2004).
Rating: 
Summary: Not much different--or better--than other versions
Review: "Enhanced snapping", "dynamic guides"? Who's Corel trying to kid? These are not substantial upgrades and are certainly not worth what Corel is charging for them. And "PDF enhancement"? I think Corel writes that on every package now. I bet if Corel made a breakfast cereal, they would put "PDF enhancement" on the box. Actually, Corel should start thinking about making a breakfast cereal, as their products have been totally eclipsed by superior products from Adobe and Macromedia. So, the upshot is if you're looking for a good vector illustration or photo-editing package, stay away from Corel and buy something from proven and reliable companies like Adobe or Macromedia. At least their new product releases are actually NEW product releases.
Rating:
Summary: Not much different--or better--than other versions
Review: "Enhanced snapping", "dynamic guides"? Who's Corel trying to kid? These are not substantial upgrades and are certainly not worth what Corel is charging for them. And "PDF enhancement"? I think Corel writes that on every package now. I bet if Corel made a breakfast cereal, they would put "PDF enhancement" on the box. Actually, Corel should start thinking about making a breakfast cereal, as their products have been totally eclipsed by superior products from Adobe and Macromedia. So, the upshot is if you're looking for a good vector illustration or photo-editing package, stay away from Corel and buy something from proven and reliable companies like Adobe or Macromedia. At least their new product releases are actually NEW product releases.
Rating: 
Summary: Good bang for the buck...
Review: I am an amature photographer and painter. And I love using photoshop too. But I can't afford photoshop. Adobe makes great products but they are overpriced. This is why I got Corel Graphics Suite. It supports all the plug-in's for photoshop, does pretty much everything photoshop and illustrator can and all for a cheaper price. If you are just starting out with computer graphics this is a good alternative to Adobe. Or if you are a student with little or no money and need a legit image suite this is the way to go.
Rating:
Summary: Sluggish Perfomance
Review: I am an expert in designing., the major software I use is CorelDraw for magazine desinging. I use photoshop for image retouching. My system configuration is Pentium 4 2.7 GHz, 1 GB RAM with 266 MHZ speed and 120 GB HDD. Win XP Professional
We had recently brought CorelDraw12 to replace its version 11. Though there are some cool features added to the new version, I am greatly disappointed because
1. Corel draw 12 of bitmap handling is worser than ver 11.
2. ver 12 CRM deadly error : recovery manager pops up so frequently, an imprudent and irritating error. It happens when we open/save files or manipulate some graphics/bitmap
3. The clipboard handing is damn poor. A copy paste of a small graphic takes a hell of out time...
4. While saving is faster, opening big files takes so much of time.
5. Some bitmaps get tampered while re-opening.
6. File copy error: the file wouldnt save if it is of big size. This is certainly grinding my adrenals.
7. Drop shadows and opacity for bitmaps is very sluggish
8. Smart draw tool is a cool feature but rarely or never of use
9. The colour management goes off while printing the files
There are so many other annoying errors in this software which I never encountered in ver 11.
Speaking about the merits,
The text display is very soft and clear than ver11
Dynamic guides feature is good
Enhancements in snapping saves time.
There is no patch or upgrade to solve these issues. Which is another disappointment. I suggest buy 11 and then upgrade if possible.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing product with unbelievable low price
Review: I am new in vector drawing. I've tried Adobe illustrator first, I cannot quite understand why I have to go through so much trouble to do simple things like draw a line. I decided to give coreldraw a try. Now I am hooked. Coreldraw shows that you can get into vector drawing and still keep your common sense. Coreldraw is so easy to use! After a few months, I can do very sophisticated drawing now.By buying CorelPainter 8 and CorelDraw 12 Upgrade, I've spend only a fraction of the cost of any Adobe product to get EVERYTHING I need for computer graphics at professional level. Adobe products maybe powerful, but compare to what I got from corel, they cannot justify their unreasonable price tags. Also I think Adobe illustrator and photoshop have unnecessarily complicated and cumbersome interfaces, whoever designed them should be fired!
Rating:
Summary: In response to objection about the PhotoPaint
Review: I am upgrading from version 10, and version 10 already has a way to make your default units in Photopaint Pixels. There is also one user that has reviewed this three times with a bad review. C'mon, now. Just press Ctrl-J and change the default units to pixels. Simple. One of the greatest things about CorelDraw is the active help you can get from expert users at http://www.egroups.com/community/cdug If you had posted this question there, we would have shown you how to do this 3 years ago.
Rating:
Summary: Ugh.. Don't buy this till they fix it.. Try the trial first.
Review: I downloaded a version of Corel Graphics Suite 12 to check it out before I bought it. I've been using Corel since 7 and have a copy of Draw 11 but did'nt get the Graphics Suite and was really looking to upgrade my Photo Paint to 12.
I took some screen captures and when I created as new image in Photo Paint 12 they were all dim and blurry. I thought maybe this was my capture (alt + printscreen) that was the problem so I used the Corel Capture in the Suite and it was the same. Nothing I did seemed to aleviate the dimness and slight blur to the image. I tried opening the images in Windows Paint and they looked fine, so I requested help on the Corel site to see if the service pack fixed this problem with the Screen captures.
They said there is no fix for this in the patch. So I started checking more and saved the picture in Windows paint as a .jpg and opened it in Corel Paint and it was blurry. I took a different screen shot and opened it in paint and saved it as a .jpg and then opened it in Windows Paint and it was fine.
When I updated my problem ticket with the new information the guy just re-iterated that there was no change in screen captures in the patch. I would have waited for them to fix it to buy it but with irritating tech support that's obviously not reading the whole help ticket I will be avoiding Corel from now on.
Rating:
Summary: Superior CorelDraw outperforms the Industry Standard
Review: I have been a diehard CorelDraw an Photopaint fan since version 5.0 and have been designing with Corel for the last 10 years. I am currently working on my degree in Graphic Design and I have a certificate in desktop publishing. I have had a chance to compare Corel against the Industry Standard software applications that are taught at my school. In my opinion, Corel applications are light years ahead of the competition. Their products are intuitive easy to learn and use. You get all the funtionality of Illustrator and Photoshop with CorelDraw and Photopaint plus loads of extras including built-in multi-page layout capability without spending an extra $500-$1000+ on Quark or InDesign (you will be amazed--it really works great!) A real nifty feature is that I can open, edit, and save Illustrator, Photoshop and Adobe PDF files in CorelDraw or Photopaint--I do this quite frequently when my Illustrator of Photoshop homework assignments give me fits. Corel even does a better job a making PDF files than the Adobe Distiller. Don't let your service providers debunk Corel. Chances are they haven't revisited Corel applications in years. I wish more employers of graphic designers would use CorelDraw and Photopaint. You can't go wrong with these applications and you will save lots of money and help your staff to be more productive.
Rating:
Summary: This Product ROCKS!!!
Review: I have been a user of CorelDRAW for more than 10 years and have often used many other graphics products including the so-called industry leader Adobe products. After using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 I believe I can finally rid myself of all these other products and stick solely to this suite. All the new features are incredibly useful and time-saving. All the applications work well with one another, and I've pushed it as hard as I can with some huge files, and it hasn't had any problems at all. This truely is an incredible release... thanks Corel!!! PS. If you don't believe me, download the trial from Corel's website and try it for yourself (www.corel.com) Jim
|
