Others say...

"CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 remains a core member of my software arsenal."
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.



"An excellent program suite"
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.

"Some nice improvements, but buggy as always"
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.

"Easy to Use with a Clean and Intuitive Interface"
A lot of people use Adobe Illustrator, but there is another very fine drawing program out there and this is it. Like with Illustrator you can design and create logos, ads, illustrations for websites and so much more. The program ships with a gang of royalty free software, 10,000 clip art images which you can use in your projects, 1,000 first class photos which you can also use. And 1,000 fonts, which is good for all of us who cannot afford the very expensive Adobe Font Library.

The interface is clean, intuitive and the program is easy to use, though I did watch the videos which came with it and they helped a lot. Also, this is a full fledged vector based program, just like Adobe Illustrator, but you can do page design with it as well, like you would in Quark Express or Adobe InDesign. However, sadly I don't think Photo-Paint in the suite measures up to Adobe Photoshop, but still, it's a useful part of the program.

All in all, I'd say you'll get your money's worth with CoralDraw X4. You can use it instead of Illustrator or Quark and InDesign and that's saying a lot, it really is.

"A Graphics Suite that will Suit Just About Everybody"
You get a lot of good stuff with this package, besides just the Graphics Suite. Lots of folks will appreciate the 10,000 clip art images, but I didn't need them, so I deleted them from my hard drive. I also didn't keep the 1,000 high res photos from iStockphoto. I do use a lot of professional photos, but I have an account with iStockphoto and so I didn't need any extras cluttering up my hard drive. HOwever the 1,000 OpenType fonts, those I kept and I'll most likely used them a lot.

The user guide is easy to understand and the video training that comes with the program is, I imagine, helpful, though I only looked at it for a second as I'm pretty familiar with graphics programs, so I just dove right in. CoralDRAW X4 was easy for me to understand, though I'm an old hand at both Freehand (Mac) and Illustrator (Mac and PC), so I didn't expect any problems and didn't get any. If you don't have those programs, then this could easily be a drawing program for you. Corel PHOTO-PAINT was also pretty easy for me to figure out, though I use their Painter program a lot and am a dedicated Photoshop user. Again, if you don't have those programs and they are are expensive, and if you don't have a need for all the tools at your hand in Photoshop, then this suite just might be for you. It's easy to figure out, but if you need help there is plenty there. All in all, I'd have to say this is a graphics suite that would suit just about everybody.