CorelDraw X3

[AjIsCoool]

Corel has released the new CorelDraw Suite X3

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...me=Corel3/Home

i downloaded the Trail from the site to test the application

from reading and watching some of the new features

i think that Corel did not produce a big upgrade to compete with Illustrator or Xtreme X

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[jens g.r. benthien]

I think they've produced a rather 'big' upgrade: I'd say it installs with at least 200 MB on your hard drive. Compare this to xtreme. And their new features - well, who'll need all the extras? Example: more precise 'text on a line', because it is an often requested feature for logo creation. Hm, I never needed a 'text on a line' feature for a logo in the past, so this is kind of a weak attempt to put some sand in the eyes of a user...

The new PhotoPaint might be interesting, but since I'm using THE GIMP for Windows and Linux now, I don't have any reason to install a monter on my HD.

Just my 2 cents...

[Koinonia]

Reading the order of the new features; Power Trace, etc. - leaves me thinking how good a choice Xtreme is!
I have had CD12 for a couple of years now.
Started with CD 8 back in the late 90's. CD8 was my very first Vector program.
Chased around Washington DC one hot summer (while our family lived on board a sailboat anchored in Washington Harbor) looking for a certain "Corel DRAW Studio Techniques" by David Huss & Gray Priester.
That book sparked my interest in things - vector!

Can't forget how much Corel & Gary's book taught me - then I discovered CorelXara.
Looked it over but kept "struggling" with CD8 then CD9 and then XaraX came on the scene. It (demo version XX) spoiled me! Xara is so USER-FRIENDLY!!!!
The images in XX had a clarity - a visual smoothness and well if you've used Xara you already know what it can do!

Wayne D

[AjIsCoool]

last week i was playing with X3

and it truley faster and better

but as i said - yet not to many new features

but the sad news is eliminating CorelRAVE

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[sallybode]

The text on a line was a feature Corel has had for a long time. I have noticed a big improvement in tracing function, it lets you merge colors and specify spot color. There are many more bells and whistle in Trace. Still lots more nodes than you need. It would be handy to tell the program which sides are lines espeically on diagonals, way too many nodes. However, if the bitmap is pretty good, it produced a pretty good vector equivalent. It seems the best way to get a good vectorization is to improve the bitmap as much as possible first.

There is a new crop function that crops both vector and bitmapped art but it is always a rectangle. The PowerClip is more useful in many reguards. If a person didn't know how to use trim and merge and simplify, it might be more of an attraction.

In PhotoPaint, it has some automation which is nice if the presets are good for you, and with the fade feature, if the adjustment is too strong, you can reduce the effect.

There is improved node editing. That is if you like node editing that is akin to AutoCAD. Not all people using DRAW will like a change in this function because they don't like change.

I noticed RAVE is gone, but never used RAVE before.

[sallybode]

Thought I'd check out text on a curve function, it has some pretty cool innovations. Again, very AutoCADish. but I know how to use CAD and the tools and the way the screen behaves is quite the same but your background is white, unless you like working on a black background.

Jens, I have to use CorelDRAW at works and the tracing feature which allows you to merge several tones to one and even specify spot color is a time saver.

Don't get me wrong, I love Xara, and I have it installed at work and use it when I have actual illustrations to do and then import to DRAW for my page layout. Since nearly all of our library of work is made in DRAW, it is convenient to look up the work.

I am the only one who knows the benefits of Xara. So consequently, the time savings that Xara is, I still have to convert it back to DRAW for the sake of the other workers. The other girl is a typesetter and can't draw much, the other artist works part-time and is addicted to Adobe products, won't try anything new. To be so set in one's ways in your twenties isn't good. Non-conformist then, still a non-conformist now.

Since I keep my C:\ as empty as possible, a big program doesn't give my system fits.

With DRAW X3, so far I have been impressed.

Everything isn't for everybody, certainly.

[okfoz]

So far for the most part I like the X3 upgrade, I ahve been using it for about a week...

What I like:
-The new Bevel Tool
-THe Smart Fill Tool
-Fillet, Scallop, Champher option.
-It seems to have corrected an anoying problem in 12 that would randomly put the wrong font into paragraph text... Should have been a hot patch in 12.
- THe snap function seems to have improved drastically, over 12.
- I like the Font Preview in the drop down better in X3, in all versions up to this point they just have the name, at least now you can see what it looks like, it will help finding the font you want faster.
- Crop tool looks like it might be useful.
-THe Hints docker might come in useful, might give me some ideas, but not my favorite new thing...


Neutral:
-THe new node editing is just different, not better or worse... THe biggest benefit I can forsee is it may be easier to find the handles. Beyond that there is little change from what I can tell.


What I do not like:
-If you want to add leaders to a Tab there is no docker, I personally liked it better before, now its a PITA to do... managable, but not preferable. I also find it more difficult to get my paragraph text to do what I want, although its all there its just in a different spot and less intuitive.
-The loss of Corel Rave - I will have to use Rave 2 I guess.

I have not had a chance to work with everything, but so far I think the pluses outweigh the minuses... I use the program for my comapnies catalog, kind of like a publisher program, which its really not intended, but it works. I have not had any stability problems...

I think if you want to stay on top, its definately worth $150 for the upgrade, (I got mine Amazon.com (Also get your free Wacom tablet)...

John

[sallybode]

My company does a lot of printing in spot color on business cards, brochures, flyers and posters. The new support for spot color is great. Spot color now works in drop shadows and it also works in the Mesh Tool and it works now with transparency! Before because of Post Script not having any true transparency, I was just thinking this could not be done. I don't know how they did it, but it works when I make it into a .pdf. If the spot separation holds in a .pdf, then it is certainly going to download properly to our digital platemaker. So Duotones work now, and even though they apparently worked before, they didn't work in .pdfs so the same technology translating to the platemaker, it didn't work there either. This makes a big leap forward for what can be done in spot color design. This is more than InDesign can do, even though InDesign can do a drop shadow in spot and so can Illustrator. CorelDRAW, the tools are interactive, not in a diaglogue box and many more types of shadows or glows are capable than with the Adobe method.

The new bevel tool also can use spot color, and when used with transparency, it can increase the depth of the spot color, as a bevel in Reflex Blue looks a little anemic.

I haven't tried this yet, but the new X3 is supposed to correctly detect ligatures. 12 displays them correctly and prints them fine to a non-postscript printer but you get some wierd type in tied letters such as "fl" or "fi" it comes out "f?". When I preview or roam plates before I make them, you can't scarecly read the type and the other view is so enormous, it is hard to find anything. We reran a job twice before it dawned on me that it was a font problem. 12 did not tell me that it needed a special font, the regular Adobe Garmond displayed and then printed "f?" all over our tax document brochures. I really was disgusted at that.

Adobe just would love it for everyone to buckle down and use their stuff. If I worked in Illustrator and then put the same work into InDesign, the length of time to complete the job would go up by almost twice. That's not because I don't know how to use Adobe's tools, I do.

I can work in InDesign but InDesign is designed to remain expensive. Our plate maker was on the low end of what AB Dick sells and so it didn't come with its own imposition software. But since Corel does all the impositions for us, we didn't get the more expensive machine. InDesign will do impositions with a very expensive plugin and the one for the AB Dick is about the same amount.
So we prefer .pdf's already booked on jobs coming in from the outside. It is immediately apparent when in .pdf format if they are properly color separated. It always amazes me how often clients do check their sizes, interior and exterior fold sizes are the same and should be opposite, they don't include bleeds, the list goes on. If we printed it that way, they'd refuse to pay us.
Doesn't make sense to me.

QuarkXpress, of which we have very few actually who use this, is awful when it comes to spot color. It is very hard to find errant spot color and the client just insists it is our stupidity. We have to get negs on those jobs and then pay extra for the job to be fixed as we are using PC's and the translator software doesn't extend to fonts. These jobs are costly to us.

There are still things that I wish that DRAW had that work so easily in Xara, but unless I am working in full color Xara isn't as handy because of the lack of spot color support.

The amazing blends that Xara can do and brushes with soft edges can be simulated with shapes with null fill with drop shadow applied however. If the shadow is separated from its object, you really have a bitmap you can't edit. This technique of getting a shadow in places which would naturally occure in or because in real life you have more than one light source and have pent umbras often you can add more realistic shadows and now also with spot color. This tecnique can add a soft blush to the cheek of a girl because it can be any color. And now also combined with transparency. This is really cool.

Went looking for the transform palette in Illustrator the other day, we get in business cards in .eps format and designers think putting them on 8.5" by 11" artboard is the thing to do. We outsource four color cards to service bureaus that do gangruns and it is less expensive, we can offer a competitively prices business card in 4/4, 4/1 of 4/0 with U.V one side, both sides or spot U.V. but the company only takes cards correctly sized to do this. Resizing in Illustrator is rather convoluted. I find the Property Bar indespensible, and multi-paged indespensible to me, most of our files are multipaged documents. It was quicker to import the card into DRAW and fix it and send it off, I was done in two minutes. Took the other fella who works part time who knows Illustrator right well ten minutes to find the palettes, the Scale works by percentages. Phooey!

[jens g.r. benthien]

Sally,

interesting post about spot colors. However, I don't understand why you are working for so many jobs with spot colors. In times of relatively cheap full color printing it doesn't make sense to me, unless the spot colors define a certain color for a logo.

???

[sallybode]

Most of our in house business cards are spot color. We not only do business cards, but also newsletters are predominantly done in one or two spot colors plus black. Many churches print their letterhead and envelopes in spot color, so do realtors, schools, the list goes on and on. Tickets, flyers, theater programs, sports programs for football, photographic studios prom books, all printed in spot color. We have one press that is devoted to nothing else. Another does nothing but run black all the time. The bigger press, can do four color but it mainly does the bigger spot color jobs for newsletters and letterhead on 11 x 17 10,000 copies at once wacked in half. Spot color is used more than four color process for most all business publications. Every envelope that is delivered to your home, every form you fill out, ever piece of printed material coming in the mail from pizzerias to oil changes is done in spot color. America does not just do business with car dealerships, it is broadbased small business that keeps printers running every day, including your city halls, your school districts.

Not everyone needs full color for all jobs and that is why with what I know I have work and other graphics artists may not. Spot color is big and is going to stay big because it is cost effective. Even for large companies, they don't run their letterhead in four color process.

Jens, wake up and smell the spot color!