CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 review

Susan Glinert Stevens CNET

Published: 12 Feb 2004

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 is a stable and flexible suite of three programs -- CorelDRAW, Corel Photo-Paint, and Corel RAVE -- for editing all types of graphics, including vector, bitmap and simple Web animation. CorelDRAW itself has incredible muscle. It can handle complex illustration and multi-page desktop publishing, and it's tightly integrated with the suite's powerful image editor, Corel Photo-Paint. All of the applications are easy to master, thanks to a wonderful interface and tutorial CD. Plus, the suite is dirt-cheap compared to similar Adobe design programs; and with its ability to import/export to Adobe apps, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 is a complete graphics package suitable for anyone. However, with only minimal enhancements to Corel Photo-Paint and Corel RAVE and the expensive upgrade price, current users may want to think twice before switching versions.

Setup & interface

Year after year, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite returns to compete and hold its own against the major players in the field, Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop. And no wonder; the award-winning suite is a superstar graphics package with a brilliantly designed interface. Version 12 is no different. All three of its applications -- illustration (CorelDRAW), image editing (Corel Photo-Paint), and animation (Corel RAVE) -- sport highly usable, totally configurable interfaces. For example, you can create separate work spaces and toolbars for specific tasks such as brochures or creative illustration, and then save the entire setup to reuse later. As a result, the whole package lends itself to increased productivity.

The suite ships on four CDs, with the three major programs contained on the first CD. High-quality clip art, photos, templates, fonts and training material fill up the other three CDs to round out the package. It's a terrific value at a fraction of the price you would pay for similar Adobe applications (£421.82 inc. VAT versus £927.08 for Adobe Creative Suite Standard containing Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign). However, although the full-package price is reasonable for what you get, we do think the £210.32 (inc. VAT) upgrade price is a bit steep.

Features

CorelDRAW, Corel Photo-Paint, and Corel RAVE cover the entire gamut of graphics tools -- enough to complete whatever task you have at hand. Corel has added some powerful drawing tool additions and a handful of suite-wide tweaks since its last version, such as better font control (easy Unicode character access) and import/export support (export to Microsoft and WordPerfect Office, enhanced SVG AutoCAD, Visio and HPGL filters). The suite also retains its import/export capabilities for Adobe file formats, such as EPS and PSD.

Integration among the three major applications is very good. For example, if you have a brochure with a bitmap image, you can double-click the image in CorelDRAW to launch Corel Photo-Paint and make necessary edits. Once you return to CorelDRAW, the updated image will already be there. Similarly, you can drag the image to Corel RAVE and add animation effects.

The new features in the CorelDRAW suite centre on ease of use. For starters, CorelDRAW now includes the Smart Drawing tool, which tries to resolve sketched input into common shapes. For example, if you draw a lopsided, wiggly circle with the mouse, the Smart Drawing tool uses its built-in knowledge to recognise the shape and transform it into a perfect circle. The tool works best when sketching circles and rectangles, but in our tests, it did a decent job with more complex shapes such as arrows. It didn't do such a great job with polygons, but it's handy for quickly sketching organisational charts or presentation templates.

CorelDRAW's second major new addition is its CAD-esque snapping functions. Turn on Dynamic Guides, and you'll see temporary blue lines when the mouse travels over specific points such as an object's centre. These guides are extremely helpful for placing objects in relation to each other.

The other two programs in the suite didn't see much major enhancement in version 12. Corel Photo-Paint adds a touch-up brush for removing defects (dust, scratches, wrinkles) from photographs. Unfortunately, the tool just seemed to smudge pixels in our tests -- not impressive. Corel RAVE gains a symbol library for storing frequently used objects. Symbols are defined objects that you can reference many times in a document, thus reducing file size.

Service & support

All registered CorelDRAW Graphics Suite users receive Classic technical support, which provides phone support (you pay for the call) for 30 days following the first call. If you require more than this, you'll have to invest in the Premium support package, which provides incident-based telephone support for 10, 25 or 50 incidents and runs for a year.

Fortunately for the cash-strapped user, the Corel Web site also has a searchable database of FAQs and a mammoth assortment of newsgroups where you can post questions and receive answers from other users.

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