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Just had an email about Corel Draw 2020.
The price is £599 including 20% VAT (I guess for our US friends it's about US$ 550 ? ).
Who on earth would pay that for it?
..or you can rent for a year - £299 ( US$ 250 ).
These guys are in Adobe territory. Are they crazy?
..or am I wrong?
The last time I used Corel Draw was in 1996, the year I started using Corel Xara.
At the current exchange rate, you are looking at US$731 for GBP599 ...
But, yes, I'd go with crazy!
I took the VAT tax part off for the US. I was too lazy to look up the actual exchange rate..Quote:
Originally Posted by ss-kalm
these things are relative - I won't bore you with how much Toon Boom Harmony Premium costs, but it's a lot more than Corel Draw
of course TBHP is 'industry syandard', real alternatives are thin on the ground.... and it's Preminum version node system is worth the extra in itself in my opinion because of the time it saves and the ease in which changes can be made on the fly..
I understand that corel draw is a lot more precise than xara when doing work such as blueprint design - xara can be very fast, but precise [in the engineering sense] it is not
and of course if you work closely with others who use a particular program it is usually better to have it yourself - time spent is money, it's not how fast/expensive the programs are for a given task that counts in these situations, but how efficient/cost-effective the process is overall - something xara are well aware of with their cloud approach I am sure
context is king
The thing that surprised me is that at this price-point it's nearing Adobe territory and I have yet to meet anyone working professionally that would own up to being a Corel Draw user.
It seems to me that the Affinity Suite may be match for Corel Draw at a much lower cost.
I'm sure there'll be a host of reviews coming.
I think it's always been on a par with adobe pricing
as to whether one program is better than another - it all depends what you are trying to do
for example, on a very simple level - CD has a bitmap tracer, AD does not [that said, I have not used CD for a year or two but last time I did, I prefered Illustrator's Livetrace/paint feature]
workflow is important too
I am surrounded by some very expensive pieces of kit, from two cintiq tablets to valve amplification and midi consoles - cost is a red herring, what counts is value for money; can't always get that right of course, but until you have a specific set of tasks to perform then whether one app is better than another is theoretical
look at it the other way round - who are these programs targeted for?
Corel Draw is targeted at Corportate Business for whom, in good times at least, £599 + VAT, might not cover the cost of a business lunch [ditto Adobe]
Affinity is not targeted at these people - it is targeted at those who have been priced out of the Adobe Market by Adobe's descision not to sell perpetual license any more - at least Corel still does this
I suppose the attraction (if there is such a thing) is that the asking price is for a program that one can keep and not have a monthly/yearly subscription after the purchase (at least I assume that is the case). I used to use the program before discovering Xara and liked it at the time. It does have features that I wish Xara would adopt, but that's highly unlikely to happen...
Ctrl + R to repeat the last step. I have asked for this for year to no avail.
Corel's new investors are smokin' crack. It's not a sustainable price structure. Version 2019 was, from all/every account, unusable. To have reasonable pricing, one needed to pay $249 + a $99 "upgrade protection" fee. Thereafter CD cost $99/yr. Version 2020 has less bugs, but they are there.
I got off the CD merry-go-round at version 2018 as I refused to pay the roughly $350 to get 2019 (which I wouldn't have been able to use anyway due to bugs and removed functionality. Upgrades had been roughly $175 (and sometimes less) for several versions but ended at v.2018.
Illustrator as a single app subscription is $20, but Adobe can be talked down a smidge. The whole CC suite can be had for about $35 to $50, depending on if one can get a deal. I do get ID jobs once in a blue moon and cannot use my CS6--I do subscribe for a month. Though I haven't need to rent for a few years now and just use QXP.
I sometimes think this of magix, but for slightly different reasons...Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
I think Corel Draw is targeted to the embroidery, large graphic, t-shirt, sublimation markets. I used it and Xara in the '90s and early 2000. It was very good at using images across different products. I abandoned it because, at the time, only Xara could easily bend a line. Corel, then, had to convert a line into a different object. I still think it can't bend a line. My sublimation friends use it extensively.
There was a 320$ Cad offer for the whole suite when I visited, big price variation.
While I don't love the Corel Draw interface, they appear to be making useful improvements of creation tool.
It seems it becomes more and more difficult as a program mature to do so.
Attachment 127055
I wonder if Corel Draw 2020 is good.
Just like.. the problems are laid out in a way such that going around them is fun. Does this make sense?
BTW: Is there no disc version of it? CD 2020 is only "ESD"?
Edit: Oh, there is a disc version. Corel CDGS2020DEHMDP Amazon has it for 579,- EUR
And does CD 2019 need internet at all? Internet is not listed in the requirements on the Amazon page.
And the requirements list for CD 2020 has internet in it, for activation purpose.
So, CorelDRAW 2019 did really not need internet for activation? Or did Amazon Germany just forget to tell customers it needs internet?
The first and only reviewer seems not to like CD 2020 because of subscription model things.
I don't really get it.
---- Got an answer from Kamal from Corel.
CorelDRAW always requires internet connection for activation. Program requires for login email ID and password, which requires active internet connection.
-----
So, Amazon Germany just forgot to mention it and I was dreaming.
Still, activate once, use forever, offline. Only, ... that reviewer says, collaboration functions are not in then. But ... don't need collab, so that would be okay. Just need it to go from splash screen to main application, and things like that.
amazon are very much cavet emptor when it comes to the description of products - even the ones they supply themselves direct; there is a system in place to report errors
the same goes for their reviews, you have to be careful to check they actually refer to the specific product you are looking at
this from a prime meber who uses amazon a lot...
Sadly CorelDRAW is not what I was looking for anyway. I think I should not post the following, because it looks like I want to stretch a point or something.. but...
redacted version of my chat from just now
me: (I'm bad at creating english sentences)
[asking how often I need to go online with CorelDRAW]
Corel support: (exact words)
"you must connect at least once a month with CorelDRAW"
me: (exact words)
"Oh, and with 2019 version?"
Corel support: (exact words)
"with Any commercial version from Corel you need that"
-----
*sigh*
I was hoping it's not like that. I know from someone's online posting somewhere, that X6 or so could keep running (opening it, no updates, just drawing) virtually forever, I believe.
Anyway, they said 'once a month'. So... it's like Illustrator. It's no real problem.. just.. hm.. Windows 10 starts doing internet-things, install-things, I just ... just hate it. :o
you could try inkscape - you don't need activation for that and it's free
https://inkscape.org/
.... or if you prefer raster to vector krita, also free
https://krita.org/en/
Tried CorelDRAW 2020. Have Corel decided not to do anything about the artistic media tool? Or I am too dumb.
I can't parametrize any of the line profiles (have no wacom etc, guess it would take line width input from it), so the least I would want is to convert the line thing to shapes so that I can adjust line thinkness by hand. But CTRL+K does not break apart any artistic media into shapes, it does nothing, and I can't find any option like that. So all it offers is line thinkness doing things between [0 and 1] instead of let's say [0.3 and 1]?
Also, it drops down the artistic media drop-down do upwards outside the screen. I mean... it also displays the first entry to the left, the others to the right. And I cannot see what it offers, because the GUI is broken.
When it's like this I could just use Inkscape, also only offers constant line profiles.
Attachment 127453
Also, I tried to use no feather, because I guess it's a slow effect, but the right shadow on the smurf house is done with a huge blur effect thing via feather, so I hope it's not slow. It's weird that the highlight thingy on the left side of the blue house body is doable with a elliptical transparency, but the anti-thing on the right side just won't ever look okay with any of the transparency tools, so I used the feather-feature.
In Inkscape all blur things are very slow. But actually if it works in CorelDRAW I could just ignore any of my prejudices about how fast it is.
I have not understood the line thing in CorelDRAW in 2004 and now it's the same, I have no clue. Need to find "break apart media" somewhere.
in inkscape if you press the left or right cursor key [arrow] on the keyboard as you draw, the line width will change - this does take some getting used to...
corel will break shapes apart but you need to 'convert to curves' first and then 'break curves apart'
Thanks, I'll try!
I started with CorelDraw 3 back in 1981 I think (the software came on stiffies for those who remember).... first design software I used and I was very happy with it. If you wanted to upgrade in a year or two's time, all well and good - you purchased the CD (wow) and you got a discounted price. I went from 3 to 4 to 7 to 10 and finally to X4 in 2008. All outright purchases. (I was on Windows machines, so Adobe wasn't even an option.)
Even back in '08 its colour management, text on a curve, advanced text formatting tools, mesh fills etc. etc were way ahead IMO of Xara's v16 has.
In 2013 I upgraded my system to win 8.1 but Corel X4 wasn't happy playing with it - colleagues recommended X7 but by then the software was becoming really bloated and I swapped over to Xara which like all software, has it's strong and weak points.
But agree with the OP - the pricing/subscription rates are crazy, but I still now a few designers who use it.