d'Avid Boutique Blog

Last year, Corel celebrated 20 years from design innovation.

The developers, designers and product managers behind CorelDRAW are continually inspired by the insights and contributions of CorelDRAW users around the world.

Put the power of CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X5 behind your ideas and make a bold impact across any media. This versatile graphic design software has it all—vector illustration, page layout, photo editing, tracing, Web graphics and animation in one tightly integrated suite. Designed for professional and aspiring designers alike, it offers a quick, intuitive workflow, high-value digital content, market-leading file compatibility and graphic design tools that let you do more than you thought possible!

Analyse that!

As a long-time CorelDRAW user, and a graphic designer, I was very excited to see the release of CorelDRAW X5. Although I have the full Adobe Creative Suite installed alongside Corel, I often choose CorelDRAW as my primary vector/bitmap application. That said, I was very disappointed after trying out the demo of X5. It looks like only a slight update (like a service pack to X4) – it is not the revamp I was looking for.

I will likely still purchase the upgrade to X5, but it will not change my impression that Corel is becoming less and less important to professional graphics.

CONS (not going into the full list):
- Not made for Windows 7. Floating palettes in the application are not made for Windows Vista or Windows 7 computers. As such they move around on the screen when the app is minimized, and they do not retain their display state. The floating palette titles are also unreadable when they are minimized.
- Same bugs as CorelDRAW X5. Photo-Paint effect previews are still buggy and often break if you turn on and off the preview (for comparing before and after). If you have a complex feathered mask, the preview does not function.
- Most tools are unchanged. One example is the Huge/Sat/Brightness. It is still the same code since version 10 (with the same limitations compared to Photoshop’s Hue/Sat/Lightness).
- Display is still laggy under Windows 7.
- Drop shadow tool is untouched and still an awful tool. You can’t set a setting that will be consistent across objects of all shapes and sizes (ie, same pixel feathering and distance from edges). InDesign has a great drop shadow support. It’s not rocket science.

PROS:
- Color management has been greatly overhauled and it looks to be vastly improved over previous versions.
- File exporting and image saving are improved and require less steps. This should speed up the workflow.
- Some application speed ups are noticed when running on a quad core i7. The multiprocessing support is a good addition (though a version late).