Customer Reviews

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 Upgrade [Old Version]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

I've been using the CorelDRAW suite since version 2, so I like the product. But I get tired of new versions being so buggy--I sometimes find myself feeling more like a beta tester than a customer when I upgrade. While this version is supposedly optimized for Vista, it locks up for no apparent reason from time to time and sends me running back to version 12 in order to get things done. Still, if you're a Corel fan like me and you want compatibility with the latest files from Adobe CS3, this is where you need to be.

Since I upgraded from version 12 and skipped X3, I'm not sure whether some of the changes to the symbols used on the toolbar icons are new this time or were last time, but I'd have preferred to continue with the familiar ones and don't see an option that would allow me to do so. Ditto for the new arrow-like appearance of the nodes in DRAW.

I like the new option for straightening scans, but with Adobe Acrobat able to do that automatically (when it performs OCR), I'm surprised Corel hasn't found a way to do the same.

Overall, I still prefer Corel to Adobe's suite--it's a more intuitive interface and I can do pretty much the same stuff, often faster than my colleagues who use the Adobe suite--but it always irks me that it takes a couple of fixes and revisions to achieve stability whenever I upgrade.

I have been a user of Corel for many years. I've appreciated the product and was disappointed that the version I had been using could not work on my Vista machine. So, I upgraded and have been happy with the new version of the product too.

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 [DVD]

A highly under-rated program given its capabilities, ease of use... it is no less than Adobe's industry leading programs like Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign... it has the combined capabilities of all three and yet shines over them with not so insignificant free add-ons like a myriad of filters for importing and exporting various formats, bar-code generator, a large library of fonts and clip-art, etc., which in the case of Adobe need serious money to make them as complete as CorelDraw. I use all of them, but the comfort level and efficiencies offered by CorelDraw are unequalled. I can never figure out why CorelDraw never made it to becoming an industry standard.

The place I work at recently got the upgrade in the hopes of improving the graphic design process.

While it remains easy enough to use, a number of critical issues have arisen. The "TABLES" feature, which we needed to simplify the creation of many documents barely works and is missing key features we needed. The "EXPORT" command does not work very well in creating files that other, non-Corel programs can use. It does not like to open up old files from the previous version of Corel, and font substitution in those older files is a chronic problem, even though the actual fonts are on the machine.

We have returned to the previous version of Corel for our production work, and I do not plan on upgrading any Corel product if I can help it.

Now if only we could get a refund for this one.

I just purchased the newest version of CorelDRAW 14. I have been using CorelDRAW almost since its inception. My first version was CorelDRAW 3. They really went all-out then and included art created by their users, etc. I've used Adobe products, Photoshop, etc. and still believe, to this day, CorelDRAW has it hands-down with its products. So much easier to use, more transparent, no contest!!! Will always keep purchasing CorelDRAW. Just love it!!!!!!

this new corel version is the worse I ever work with since I star with corel 9. it crashes for anything and the program is too slow .and frustrated. even if you rise the ram on the memory still pretty dawn slow .not recomended

I'm a long-time fan of Corel graphics products. I've been using the graphics suite since version 3.

With version X4, the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite remains a professional-grade graphics production software. As a professional graphic designer, I've used Adobe products and find Corel's products to be more intuitive and flexible, not to mention much more affordable. I love being able to work with native Illustrator / Photoshop files with more ease and speed than using Illustrator / Photoshop / CS3. And I've also had no problems providing Adobe-only service bureaus with Adobe files created from CorelDRAW / PhotoPaint. My production software arsenal will continue to have CorelDRAW Graphics Suite at its core.

Version X4 seems quite stable; I've not used all its capabilities yet, but will eventually and have complete faith in the suite's integrity.

I came over to Corel Draw X3 in a job change, and it compared faroably to the now-defunct Freehand program.

This upgrade -X4- though is fairly slow and unstable. It tends to hang or shut down during simple commands like Import, and does not like working on older documents out of the previous version. The long-awaited Tables feature is also buggy and limited compared to MS Excel, where I had been creating tables and bringing them in as graphic files.

I imagine if you are new to this, it will be a good alternative to Illustrator, if you are drawing. For graphic design or page layout and better typographic controls, check out Serif PagePlus.

As always, Corel really needs to do better beta-testing their products before unleashing them to people who have to use them for a living.

Addendum: Since installing the update, I have gone back to using the previous version of Corel Draw - but the update seems to have 'poisoned the well' of the previous program- files I export now tend to cause Windows to crash, where before it was rock solid. This is a lot of work that will need to be redone thanks to Corel's poor product.

We put off my updating to CorelDraw X4 until it was a "must do", thinking it would have a learning curve but not so. Installs went smooth and no gliches as of 2 weeks later. We've focused on using the new CorelDraw X4 fonts, so we don't get stale in desgin layouts and logos for our customers.

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