Customer Reviews
Very powerful 
2008-06-12
Why CorelDRAW
I received CorelDRAW Graphic Suite x4 from the Amazon Vine program. I chose this technology because I do not have a full blown photo editing software package. I have only used Photoshop Elements and other simple free programs that came with my computers. Those programs have limited functionality and I mostly used features like crop and auto correct. I also chose this software, too, because I sometimes want to make banners, logos, and special signs at the library. I also wanted to artistically alter some photographs.
Previous Expectations and Learning Experiences
My expectation was that CorelDRAW Graphic Suite X4 would be a powerful and somewhat user friendly product. It is powerful, but not easy for beginners to pick up. The features are not organized in a very user friendly manner and I did not find it very intuitive. I had difficulty finding features and very often the function that I wanted was grayed out. It took long periods of trial and error to figure out why.
This software package includes CorelDRAW X4, Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4, Corel PowerTRACE X4, and Corel CAPTURE X4. PowerTRACE is a feature in CorelDRAW. The package includes a large number of extra fonts, clipart, and photos as well as instructional book and videos. I watched a large number of the videos, several more than once. I realized I was getting little out of them so I began watching them and then trying to copy the moves of the instructor. I spent most of my time in CorelDraw. I tried a few photo editing projects in PHOTO-PAINT. I spent an hour or two trying PowerTRACE and CAPTRURE with little success. Maybe CAPTURE would work on a regular PC, but it did not work for me in Parallels on my MacBook Pro.
Outcomes and Future Plans
I am pleased with the logo and banners that I made in CorelDRAW. I will continue to make them when I have a need for one with this software. They are time consuming to create, but a logo or banner would be in use for some time, unlike a sign that may be used only for a week. I only spent a little time with the templates. They are similar to (but nicer than) the ones in Microsoft Publisher. PHOTO-PAINT can take a photo and make it look like a watercolor or an oil painting. I might use the products with it to make note cards or post cards for a fund raiser.
Conclusion
Since CorelDRAW is a windows product, I can only use it on my work MacBookPro and not on my personal MacBook. Working in Paralels is taxing on both me and the laptop. I will use this product in the future, but only when other products are insufficient or when I want to make something really special like a logo or a banner. I suppose this would be great for people who need to make vector graphics out of ordinary bitmaps. I'm sure I would like this at the 5 Star level, if I were an advanced level user instead of a beginner. So keep that in mind when you read this review.
Impressive, indeed 
2008-06-08
Although I've designed everything from book covers to web sites, I have limited experience with high priced graphics software. If I ever used Photo Shop, it was only because a trial version came with my computer. Once the free trial expired, I relied on Microsoft Paint and, later, a program packaged with my digital camera. Mainly, though, I relied on my own ingenuity. It was my ingenuity, and many painstaking hours of tedious work, that really saw me through, however. So, I was very excited when CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 arrived. Surely, it would make graphic design easier and give me more exacting professional results.
Boy, did it ever. I have yet to explore all of this program's capabilities, but the tools I have used are impressive, indeed. Editing and enhancing images, which are two of my ever present needs, can be accomplished with a speed and precision that wasn't possible when using other, less sophisticated programs. Converting poor quality bitmap images into sharp, clear reproductions was another task that CorelDRAW can accomplish with results that I did not believe were even possible. You can even generate barcodes with this program! And you can draw - I mean really DRAW (providing, of course, you already possess that skill).
I have only touched the surface but one of the advantages of this program are the tutorials and training videos included. They effectively provide answers to whatever questions may arise. Whether you're a professional or an amateur, or somewhere in the middle, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 will probably serve your needs. As someone who is more in the middle but still more amateur than pro, I recommend this program to anyone seeking professional quality in their graphics projects.
Brian W. Fairbanks
A Good Adobe CS3 Alternative 2008-05-30
I got this program for my son, who enjoys technical drawing and has ever touched a professional drawing application such as Illustrator. If you've used Illustrator for any length of time, then yyou know that it has a steep learning curve. What Adobe product doesn't?
I felt, based on the product description and the user reviews, that Corel Draw would be less intimidating for him to learn. Right off the bat, I was impressed by how user-friendly this program was. You can easily create a professional looking logo, business card and matching letterhead in under an hour.
However, I wasn't as impressed with the photo filters in the Draw program. Plus I couldn't preview the filter result before I clicked OK, unlike Photoshop. That said, I liked how I didn't have to mess around with a Lasso tool (or equivalent) to select objects that I needed to change. For example, if I wanted to change the white stripes on a zebra to purple, all I have to do is select the color in the color palette, and then click on a white stripe. Hoila! Instant change with minimal preparation.
Other features I enjoyed were the ability to manipulate text with the drag of a mouse while previewing it in real time. Corel has a multi-page preview feature that Adobe doesn't, which is wonderful if you have multiple versions of, say, a three-page flyer. You don't have to open each file to see which one is correct with Corel Draw. As a designer, I really appreciated the Concept Tool because it allows you to gain feedback on your designs from other Corel users.
The video tutorials are some of the best that I've seen. I recommend that you take the time to watch these first, although you can learn the basics just by poking around for a bit. Highly recommended for beginning designers. Recommended for experienced designers.
The new Paint Shop Pro, plus Capture and Draw/Publisher 2008-05-23
I have been a fan of Paint Shop Pro for many years, and when Corel bought them and released Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI, I was anticipating a big step up in performance, effects, options, etc. It fell flat. I had nothing but problems with it and eventually uninstalled and wrote off the loss.
I was therefore skeptical with CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4, which includes the following products: CAPTURE, PHOTO PAINT, DRAW.
CAPTURE: just what you would expect. Capture a window, the desktop, whatever you have on your screen. It's pretty much the same as the Snipping tool in Vista in my opinon, although it does integrate with the rest of the suite vs just creating an image file.
PHOTO PAINT: it's just the next version of paint shop pro with a slightly new look and feel. In fact, if you've used any of the latest version of PSP, you're likely not going to notice much of a different at all in terms of use and feel of the product. But I will say that this one actually WORKS, as opposed to what they did with PSP XI. So for that reason alone, it gets a win from me.
DRAW: it's basically Microsoft Publisher on steroids. You can pick from templates to create announcements, posters, newsletters, web pages, and more. Or you can start from scratch with amazing layouts, do all the normal effects, fonts, and colours, and shapes. You've got a wide assortment of tools for line drawing, freehand, and admittedly a very nice and wide range of shape, bitmap effects, and font options too. It's like a blend of the PHOTO PAINT tool and a high class publisher software. If you're familiar with things like publisher or adobe, then you'll be familiar with what DRAW has to offer as well. Converting shapes to curves is one of my favourite tools, because it allows for very powerful design into any shape you like. Whether you're designing a document, a room layout, brochures, posters, whatever, it's got pretty much everything you need.
All in all, the products integrate well, they run and load quickly, and actions are easy to find in the menu system. It's not really anything SUPER ADVANCED, it's just the next version of their standard offerings.
Powerful drawing program 2008-05-22
This is a very powerful, yet easy to use, drawing program for the computer. Plus it has many options for working with images. I have found it to be invaluable in my web development work in a very short period of time.
Exciting Graphics Program 2008-06-26
I just received this software a few days ago and installed it, so I'm still going through it learning how to use it. But the photo editing software is pretty cool. I think it's better than paint. The features are definately easier to use and the book that comes along with it helps you out if you get stuck along the way.
Again, I just received it a few days ago, so I'm still going through it learning how to use it. But the program I've used first was Photo-Paint. What you can do with a photo is pretty amazing.
I cannot wait to see what else I can do with the other components of this graphics suite. Pretty impressed so far.
Over my head 2008-06-24
I ordered this product with the idea of becoming a graphics wizard. In retrospect, that wasn't such a great idea.
This is a fantastic product, with more bells and whistles than you could find in Santa's toy shop, but it's way over my head. Perhaps someday...
awesome possibilities 2008-06-19
i had to run this on my newer computer. runs on a lot of memory. used it for comic book creating applications and photographs. really has a lot of great and creative uses. never had a program like this before and really don't know how i got along without it. it was a little intimidatig at first. still getting to learn my way around it. love it.
Great program, versatile, competitively priced 2008-06-14
The Corel Suite X4 Installed on my Windows XP Pro system with Service Pack 2 without any problems. Then I started the program and it loaded... and loaded.... and loaded. It took several seconds for it to finally come up to a screen where I could do something. While startup was very slow, I was satisfied with how the program ran from that point forward. It appears that a lot of stuff has to load to get it started but when it is done it works fine. The only problem I had with the program was that it hung on two occassions. Unfortunately, it hung the system so bad that I could not even use control-alt-delete to get access to shut it down. Nothing responded. The second time it happened I pulled my USB drive out before powering it down and the system returned control to me! I don't know the source of the problem but after some testing I could get it to hang consistently when the SanDisk USB drive with U3 was in the computer. It did not do it with my Toshiba without U3. So, maybe it is a U3 thing, maybe a SanDISK thing, or maybe the combination.
The first thing to note in the program is the very intuitive user interface. The more advanced a program is the more cluttered the interface tends to become. However, this Suite was fairly uncluttered given it's advanced abilities. This is not to say there is no learning curve because there is one, but it was not as steep as I had expected.
This Suite includes CorelDraw, Photo-Paint, PowerTRACE, CAPTURE, Font Navigator and a few other utilities. The two components that impressed me the most were CorelDraw and PowerTRACE. The CorelDraw application competes well with Adobe Illustrator at a considerably lower cost. It has the ability to do very advanced illustrations with multiple layers and multiple pages. It does a good job of page layout and allows different layers on different pages as well as master layers that are consistent across all pages. Many professionally designed templates come with the system but it could use more. The problem is that many of the templates are not much more than basic variations of a similar theme. On the other hand it comes with a huge set of royalty-free photos, clip art, and fonts. It even includes a large book of the available fonts that you can browse through to select the right one.
With strong import and export functions it can import over 100 different formats including pdf. They have also included a link to the WhatTheFont Web site. If you are trying to identify a font in a publication or graphic file you can copy an example and paste it into the web site. The web site then tries to identify the font. This is nice to have available with a simple click instead of having to open a browser, enter the web site address, etc. CorelDraw also has an excellent preview function and live-editing that allows you to drag an image and see immediately how the text flows around it as you move it.
The other standout in the package is the PowerTRACE program for converting bitmap images to vector graphics. I tried several logos and basic graphics with various levels of quality and found it to work very well. Some of the conversions were not perfect but were easy enough to clean up to a really superb end product. This was a really impressive product that performed better than expected.
The Photo-Paint product is a bitmap-editing program that has very few features that make it standout from other similar programs. It is a solid intermediate to professional level product that does not have all the features of the high-end products but has much more than many other products. One of the things it does really well is the support for the RAW camera format. Other than the vendor's viewing program, this is the only program I have that supports the RAW format for my camera. Interactive histograms also works well and lets you preview image adjustments.
In summary, I would highly recommend this program because it is priced as a middle level product but supplies programs that are at the upper end of the quality scale (CorelDraw) or upper middle level (Photo-Paint) and then throws in a great utility for those times when you need to convert a bitmap logo into a vector graphic. It is worth the price for the CorelDraw alone so it is a great deal to have the other products added as part of it. A great product with sufficiently high quality features that I can overlook the slow startup, and highly recommend it to anyone.
Initial Impressions 2008-06-12
I use Photoshop CS3 and Capture NX to work with digital images. I welcomed the opportunity to work with and review CorelDRAW graphics Suite X4, during my short inclusion as an Amazon Voice member.
Let me start by saying that this is a very complex piece of software, not for the novice. As soon as I opened Corel Photo Paint (the software consists of two main pieces of software: 1) Photo Paint and 2) Corel Draw) the interface looked intuitive and simple. But when I began to try and do some things that I typically do in PS or NX, I was LOST! This should not be surprising, these are all different pieces of software!
That said, within a few minutes I had discovered some of the elementary image adjustment functions and really liked how they were arranged. To adjust color, saturation, brightness, and a few other parameters, open up the image adjustment lab and go.
The program runs VERY quickly on my Dell XPS 720, Windows XP SP3 box with 3 meg ram, fast HD, and decent video card.
The software is vast and this review only chronicles my initial impressions. It takes time to get used to new software but my initial impressions lead me to believe that I will be exploring this software further.
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