CONS of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite Crack

• Windows-only.
• Some ease-of-use issues.

First Impressions

To my delight, Corel welcomes non-CorelDraw users with specialty workspaces, one of which emulates the look and feel of Adobe Illustrator ($20.99 at Adobe) , which helped me feel at home. What’s more, Corel thoughtfully includes tool hover hints, video hints and tutorials, and access to their Discovery Center from the app’s welcome screen.

Corel offers a fully customizable UI environment with choices for desktop and window-border color schemes, icon sizing, toolboxes, and options for how your documents open. Corel enlists working artists and professional designers as part of its strategy to marry a terrific user experience with creativity and productivity.

The result is a highly flexible interface with useful processing enhancements. If you are using older versions of the program, fear not. The CorelDraw Suite lets you import legacy spaces as far back as version X6. If you are hungry for more, you can visit Corel’s developer community website, where you can design macros to suit your workflow.

Although the toolbar and property bar are jam-packed, the features are thoughtfully organized. If you are new to CorelDraw, new to Windows, or simply used to working with Adobe products, you certainly need to devote some time understanding Corel’s tools and layout. For example, some terminology is a little different; what Corel calls a fountain fill is the same as what Adobe refers to as a gradient.

Features

As an Adobe Illustrator snob, I was curious as to what CorelDraw offers that Illustrator does not. To maintain a level playing field, these list is about stock Illustrator, without third-party plug-ins and scripts, thoug I do call out any third-party Illustrator plug-ins or scripts I use to replicate the effects in question.

The following are just some use-case examples where CorelDraw’s offers advantages over Adobe Illustrator:

• Humans gravitate to symmetry.

You see it in the current popularity of mandalas and succulents, in the classical notion of beauty, and throughout the natural sciences world. With CorelDraw’s new Symmetry Tool, you can create your own multi-axis, kaleidoscopic art—in real time. I use the Astute Graphics MirrorMe plug-in and CValley’s Xtreme Path 2 Live Rotate Mirror plug-in with Illustrator to make these types of symmetries.

• Block Shadow

Creating a long shadow (or block shadow) in most programs is a multistep process that involves blending and merging shapes. In CorelDraw 2018, the new Block Shadow Tool does it in a single step. To create long shadows in Illustrator, you need to create a graphic style (a macro) to automate the tasks and then merge and tweak the blend manually.

• Impact Tool

The Impact Tool is both new and unusual. It creates tapered starbursts (Radial setting) and tapered motion lines (Parallel setting). Both effects are endlessly customizable and the resulting graphics respectively create a trendy focal spot or feeling of acceleration. There is no similar tool in Illustrator, so I usually make this type of graphic manually.

• Pointilizer

The new Pointilizer is an awesome custom halftone generator that’s not limited to the regular dots that make up most halftones. Pointillizer uses any shape you like and offers loads of variable parameters. I use Lost Mind’s stand-alone application, VectoRaster, in conjunction with Illustrator to get the job done in my professional work.

• PhotoCocktail

Anyone wanting to make a photo mosaic (a composite image made up of hundreds of photos), can now do so easily. Corel’s new PhotoCocktail feature can take your curated set of photos and create a masterpiece. There are several Mac and Windows programs that also do this, but I like that Corel offers this natively.

Those distinguishing features aside, CorelDraw is an admirable contender for graphics professionals. Though Illustrator has capabilities not found in other applications, I find CorelDraw quite capable, especially when used in conjunction with its suitemates.

Additional Features

Some additional (and useful) Corel features include a simple onboard work timer, built-in QR and UPC code generators, a text statistics reporter, a table builder, 3-point ellipse tool, and an interactive dotted line tool with color control.

My key activities with programs like this are typography and vector illustration and editing. CorelDraw 2018’s features in both areas impress me. For example, I like CorelDraw’s type handling and dedicated Opentype panel for accessing advanced typography attributes, even if it’s not as handy as Illustrator’s pop-up glyph chooser. CorelDraw also has great tools for both simple and complex illustration work. Rest assured that you can find everything you need and more, including advanced color control options and a direct conduit to your WordPress site.

Although not evident from its name, CorelDraw is a full-fledged page-layout application too. It’s like having InDesign and Illustrator in the same program. Corel also adds a dash of Photoshop CC ($20.99 at Adobe) into the mix; it can perform filter-based effects on raster images, create rasters from vectors (and vice versa with the trace function), and more.

Performance

With its 2018 release, Corel focuses on boosting productivity in the creative arena. It empowers users with app-wide workflow and under-the-hood innovation and performance enhancements.

For starters, the application responds quickly when I draw simple lines and shapes with the Surface Pen—I experienced no perceptible lag. To ensure a snappy rendering experience, the new version of the program now allows users to choose GPU acceleration over the default CPU when working with system-gobbling complex vector graphics. Enhanced integration and support for the Microsoft Surface Dial let users interact with an augmented contextual interface and streamline their particular workflow quirks.

Corel even switches from the traditional desktop mode to the touch workspace in tablet mode on my Surface Pro smoothly. It didn’t miss a beat when I reattached the Surface’s keyboard either; the UI reverts back to the desktop mode automatically—and of course, you can customize that process.

Sharing and Output

Production houses are the meat-and-potato users of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2022 v24.5.0.686Crack, so it’s a sure bet that with the mammoth variable mix of designers, production people, file types, clients, vendors, and machinery requirements, Corel has to be on the ball about prepress interaction, file exchange, and output capability. To that end, Corel has improved EPS and third-party PDF importing and use with their GPL Ghostscript feature.

The software exports to 48 file types including Adobe Illustrator, AutoCAD, JPG, PNG, SVG, and TIFF. It can open 35 file types including, Adobe Illustrator, AutoCAD, EPS, HTML, PDF, PowerPoint, SVG, and even old FreeHand files.

More Than One Way to Draw

Years ago when I tried a version of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2022 v24.5.0.686 Crack that Corel briefly produced for the Mac, it was lacklustre compared to Macromedia Freehand (my then-tool of choice) and Adobe Illustrator. I simply didn’t see how it could ever compete with those design industry standards. Now, it’s a divided graphics world, where I have read the raving fan mail of as many devout CorelDraw users as Illustrator fanatics. There is a minority who use both, but my research found that each application has its loyalists.

Indeed, Corel knows its majority user base: service bureaus, graphics professionals in vinyl and signage, fabrication and garment industries, occasional-use office workers, and non-Macintosh enterprises around the globe. Those folks almost universally swear by CorelDraw. On the other hand, designers who grew up with Macs, attended typically Mac-only design schools, or simply have a bias toward Macs (as I do) defend and swear by Illustrator. But maybe we are missing out.

I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend CorelDraw for your use, but Adobe Illustrator CC 2018 remains our Editors’ Choice for vector graphics software. That said, although it’s a Windows-only program, and I’m a Mac-loving designer, the feature-rich offerings of CorelDraw’s latest release have changed my perception of CorelDraw 2018. I think I’ll join that minority who benefits from using both programs.

Conclusion

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2022 is a powerful, capable graphic design app, one that offers some native capabilities that even Editors’ Choice Adobe Illustrator requires plug-ins to replicate.