Corel Graphics Suite 10

Rating:
Summary: Even Corel doesn't use Corel
Review: A story in an Ottawa newspaper (the Citizen, I believe) recently ran a story that revealed that Corel used Adobe Illustrator to design the packaging for Corel Graphics Suite. And no wonder. The Corel suite is just plain painful to use. A clunky interface, super slow re-draw time and truly wacky text handling make the Corel experience a truly frustrating one. So I, like Corel, will continue to use Adobe.

Rating:
Summary: Make No Mistake: Corel is NOT Adobe.
Review: After years of using CorelDraw (versions 5-9) on the Windows platform, suffering with frequent crashes and quirky tool operations, I assumed that the move to Corel 10 for Mac would be pleasant. Unfortunately, it was not.

Corel 10 for Mac is a dreadful program. It is horribly slow. I'm using a 466 G4, so I'm not expecting lighning, but dear God, it is a painful ordeal to try to edit text. There are a number of strange tool problems which reinstalling several times has not solved, even after downloading the 23-megabyte "patch".

-The Caps-Lock key doesn't work in text editing mode.
-The open and import dialogue windows are too small (only a portion of the file names are visible), and attempting to expand them makes the program crash.
-The program envrionment can easily become corrupted, forcing the user to revert to the default envrionment and lose all of their customization.
-The program appears to be unable to deal with white spot colors.
-The "support options" are awful. The only way to get support is by calling a long distance toll number... there is no e-mail support, and the online support database doesn't have a section for the program. By searching, one can find 3 articles about Draw 10 for Mac. I was unable to access the Usenet discussion groups.

There are also problems with arcing text that go back to the earliest versions of Draw I used on the PC. Corel seems more interested in adding new features than fixing problems with old ones.

On the plus side, the customization options are very comprehensive, allowing the user to do whatever they want with the interface... also the program seems to be able to import any kind of file. Sometimes the results are strange, with Illustrator files sometimes having mysterious white outlines around everything...

Overall, if Corel can speed it up and fix some problems, this program would be a pleasure to use, but don't get your hopes up.

Rating:
Summary: CorelDraw vs Illustrator
Review: Lightyears ahead Illustrator, Coreldraw came a long way since the first version. Since the hole graphic design industry was based at the time on the MAC, Illustrator became the standard, while Corel got stablished into the Windows plataform.

But now that both plataform got so similar, The truth is that after this unspected shift, Illustrator got so afraid of Corel that they started to pay people to create positive reviews of the software.

Corel was using interactive transparencies, Text envelopes, 3D extrudes & amazing Printing Options while Illustrator was still in dippers. Even more, after so many years of "Illustrator" the program is still incapable of showing Font Previews. It even tried to poorly imitate Corel's Text Envelopes but it does not get even close.

In CorelDraw you have many interactive tools that do the job, while in illustrator you need a many to acomplish the same. This forces you to deal with an interface crowded with useless & unecessary tools, no wonder it was finally recogniced by Macworld as Best of Show at MACExpo.

There are so many features in draw that Illustrator lacks that you'd need a book to enumerate. The only reason the graphic design industry does not like it is just because it comes from windows & they don't like to learn better ways to do the same thing. It's true in the past Corel was unstable but after version 7 the Illustrator got way behind.

The truth is that you can do basicaly anything with any of this programs, the only diference is that with corel you can do it way faster. Besides, you get more for your money, Rave & PhotoPaint, this last two programs do a decent job thou I personally like Flash & Photoshop better. As you can see I' not an Anti-Adobe I just state the obvious.