CorelDraw X3

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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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...

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

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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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.

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.

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

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!

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.

???

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!

OK, thank you Sally, that makes sense in America. In Europe a 4c printing is cheaper than spot color printing, sometimes even cheaper than b/w printing - at least in Germany and Spain. It's weird, I know, but that's the way technology develops. But you are right, many large companies and city halls etc still run spot color, but the process is shifting because of the capabilities of new printing equipment for distributed printing, based on high speed laser printers - it offers much more flexibility.

I too use alot of Spot color in my ads, Its probably a US thing, as I know my Europe Ads always have Full color, where my US ads it really depends on the Publication... Go fig.

Of course I advertise in the Aviation industry which is not lucritive to start with, and so keeping costs down is a prioity...

ONE MORE THING about X3 that I really like...

If you used Artisitc text in ANY version previously you will know what I am talking about. In V12 and prior, when you changed the Horizontal alignment from Left to Center the center point was moved to the previously left edge of the text, now when you do it the Text does not shift, rather it stays where it was and centers like it should.

John

The process that is changing it isn't going to change one thing, that Americans are damn cheap. They want value. And whether a design is done by someone who knows how to make the most out of color or by your everyday graphic artist with the most rank program around, O.K. Microsoft Word, everyone is on an even footing, at least they should be---there will be no spot color and Pantone will curl up its toes and expire. And no one will do Thermography anymore. No automotive shops doing that, I can see that. All full color cards done in Word with reversals in Times New Roman. I suppose in this Brave New World, your average Joe Blow can understand just why you don't use a 6pt Roman face because it fills in even on an offset press because of paper being porous in a reversal. And they will just be happy clams over it. Wrong, the printer will eat it again. It doesn't sound profitable yet to me.

There are lots of reasons why printers in the U.S. can't afford to upgrade as you'd like them to, the main reason is that the customer is always right and even when you print it the way they asked, if they have an error in it and or they proofed it and there is still and error in it, it is always your fault. And then if it is not they go to the next printer, that is the fear. Or that they have racked up such a big bill that if you can't get them to pay, so they just go to the next printer. This only happens with 25-30% of the customers and with that kind of on-going loss, most small printers have older equipment.

And of course the silk screen industry will follow suit and all people who know how to do logos will be out of work because the ignorant with their 72 dpi images will have taken over and can't figure out how come their silk screening is looking bad. But maybe I won't be here, too disgusted to give out anymore advice.

Fabulous new world. When people think of Staples and Kinkos as a place to do their printing, they don't know anything about the print industry and quite frankly, college students turned out with nothing but a steady diet of Adobe programs will push that forward, not knowing how to do any color separatation at all, that is what will change the industry, ignorance. You should see the stuff we get from the graphics department at the college. They think Photoshop does great type. Actually if they knew how to make their .pdf, leave the layers and make the whole publication black and keep their vector type, no they are sure that the printer can handle their color separation. Don't separate Photoshop if you want vector type. Use a coloring layer above it and get rid of it before making your .pdf, then you have vector type. You'd think the college would know this.

Jens, I am just stupid.

And the ignorant will inherit the earth.

But the most people are used to the print industry now aren't going to recommned this change. Not because they don't think mom and pop designs are horrid which they are more than not and offset four color could keep them working, it is because you just don't go and buy a new printing press every day, and the press usually means a new pressman and they make a ton more than graphic artists. But if the graphic artist doesn't do their job right, well the output isn't going to be acceptible. Somehow the steady stream of guest workers entering Southern California are all qualified pressman, so of course this won't up anyone's prices. Understanding that you have to charge more to pay for that expense and the on going nonsense that the printer puts up with, this is the reason we are up to our ears in four color work, only on job runs of 1,000 pieces does it make sense and the alternative is now color copies, and they can run off of Publisher and anything else RGB but they don't take PrintShop files, gee whiz! You have to go to a pricey trade school to learn to run a press and they deserve their wages. I don't get my hand cut off by my computer if I move the wrong way. I don't wear my wedding ring on
as a necklace to keep my hands out of the press.

We do send work out for gangruns and there are people out there, printers printers doing work for less because they do it in quantity. And they get by with hiring people who can't figure out too much, you better get them just what they need because if you don't the work will not come out right. Gee, I still have a job correcting other people's work. Do that at least an hour or two on a daily basis. Even four color work done in Illusrator, did you know that some people don't know that a U.S. business card is 2" x 3.5" ? You tell them 1/16" bleed. You get all kinds of bleed.

Perhaps the Europeans are dealing with smarter people but judging from the headlines, the new influx of people into Europe, there again, the ignorant taking over.

There are also the people who are sick of the design work of Kinko's then defraud the printer of design time taking a design that they did not pay for and printing it even though it is not top quality on their own desktop printer.

But judging from when I tell people how to do their own work when it is submitted, we still end up eating it, even when the results are bad and it is not our fault. They don't understand resolution unless it is a New Year's one to get better value at the printer.

Ignorance is bliss or so I've been told. And my next top flight job will be at 7 -11 because I truly don't know anthing. Of course, I can do CAD so I will find more gainful employment. I don't think builders and the industry really want someone making parts who cannot be precise.

Spot color has its niche. There are some colors you can't get with CMYK that a solid pigment can. Bright neon colors, metallic colors etc. Here in the US, prices on full color haven't come down enough to throw those spot color jobs out yet. :)

Sally!

Stop it! I didn't mean to write an offence - you are absolutely correct. And you are right about Europe with the downhill economy - especially Germany. I just mentioned the facts.

Let's face it: most printing companies in Germany (those who survived the last decade) purchased new and newer and newest equipment to be ahead of the competition. Then they have to lower prices - which will drive them sooner or later out of biz.

But let's face it: why should I take all the hassle with spot colors if a 4c print costs the same or is even cheaper?

I have to fight with the same customers as you, believe me. The customer wants a certain green from a snippet he turned in. But if it's printed he yells and tells us: that's definitely not 'my' green.

Let's face it: every a..hole thinks he is a designer because Corel was installed on his PC. Or because he knows how to drop images in Word & Co. Every a..hole thinks he is a great photographer, because his 3 megapixel digicam delivers such fantastic results - but he never heard about dpi, lpi, screen angles etc. He thinks: well, if I can print it on my $ 49 inkjet, it can't cost much more to have it printed in offset.

<yawn> I could write books about it.

I'm developing products. I know how to handle CAD. But there is always a bookkeeper or beancounter who pretends to know better. Too many smart brains running around!

And when I ask them why they didn't come up with the idea, the answer is: I almost did...

Let's face it: making a living on design these days is almost like commiting suicide. No value in the biz anymore. The Chinese companies offer new product development for free if you send them a contract to manufacture the products. And so on...

If you are not in a large company, you better start selling Nurnberger Sausages or find someone who will promote you :D

Yikes! Looks like my previous post got right in the middle of the wrong spot. If only I had posted it just a minute before. :D

I don't have to worry about being replaced. My boss thinks I am able to solve every problem, not always right off the bat. Plus I am doing twice the load of the last graphic artist.

I am a problem solver.

Sorry, I am not feeling well, didn't mean to vent, been having the flu and working through it, my husband has bronchitis and after four virtually sleepless nights so he could recooperate, I came down with it. Hard to focus when I am so stressed. That and I could use a transfusion right about now. Menopause is so much fun. NOT!

Learning more than what's in the book and finding new ways to apply it, is what really is fun. Of course, if I ever leave. I have no idea if the next one to pick up the pieces could figure out how some of what I have done has worked.

Irregardless of the program, I take some from all the programs I know to make the whole work, I just know how to take the best of what each is offering, and make a finished product under a deadline. Hardly ever missed a deadline except when there was an equipment failure. Not bad.