CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3
January 20, 2007 9:22 pm
They have communicated with their customers to get better ideas of what they needed and what their concerns were. They had employees observe as the users worked on various projects which has helped them simplify the design process for their day-to-day work. Application stability, speed, and ease of use were the main priorities during this development process. The support of transparency and spot colors has undergone a major revision as well. Also, the additional compatiblity with other industry-standard software and formats such as PDF, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Illustrator, and Microsoft Office has insured that users can collaborate and exchange files with confidence. ![]() CorelDRAW
X3 ![]() The new tools like the Star, Complex Star, Crop, and Smart Fill save users valuable time along with the new Fit Text to Path tool which adds text along a curved path. This is especially great for design professionals who create logos. ![]() Photo-Paint
X3 ![]() The spot color channels which is built on the power of Corel KnockOut makes it so much easier to work with multichannel and multicolor images. There are many professional designers who often get poor quality bitmap images from clients, but with PowerTRACE X3 they can quickly and accurately convert them into editable vector graphics. ![]() Corel Capture X3 This is a one-click screen capture utility that lets you capture images from your computer screen. The new Pixmantec
RawShooter essentials tool provides the highest
quality and fastest conversion of any of the raw converters on
the market today. It gives you excellent results with minimum
effort. System Requirements: Windows® 2000,
Windows® XP Tablet PC, Windows® XP
Also included on the CDs: 10,000 Clipart and digital
images to meet the needs of design professionals and business
users. You also get the user guide, the handbook Insight from the Experts, Digital content guide, quick-reference card, help files, and last but not least, the lynda.com training videos. I am enjoying learning all
the new things included with these programs they are well worth the
money. I would highly recommend this Suite to all. Links: copied, printed, or reproduced in any manner without written permission. ![]() |
Article Comments

I've used PhotoPaint (although I don't have the new X3 Suite) for years and strongly recommend it as something which is equivalent to PhotoShop (although I'm sure there are some differences). I've always thought of the relationship between PhotoPaint and PhotoShop as being like that between WordPerfect and Microsoft Word -- the same general capabilities, but only one dominates the market and the other is much less expensive. Corel pushes the Suite in terms of the more popular CorelDRAW, which is fine. I think CorelDRAW is equivalent to Adobe Illustrator, although I confess that I have never been able to get the hang of vector-based graphics programs. I do like Corel Capture a lot. There are plenty of screen capture programs flying around, from simple free ones to more complex programs with built-in editing. Core Capture doesn't have any editing capabilities (at least not version 12), but that is fine with me since I automatically dump my screen captures into PhotoPaint anyway. The version of CorelTrace I have (12) is entertaining on rare occasions, but I have never actually used for much. However, having read here and elsewhere about the new PowerTrace that strikes me as being much, much more useful. There have been many occasions when I repeatedly tried and failed to increase the size of a simple shapes without either fuzzy edges or blocky, pixelated edges. If I had the cash I would upgrade right away. It's not that expensive compared to PhotoShop and Illustrator, and I think well worth it, but for the moment I'll have to stick with CorelDraw version 12.

Great review Sandy! I have to say, I really love this program. It was great for putting together our Media Kits. It was real easy to use. I had the hang of it in just a few minutes. I also liked being able to export as a pdf. Very helpful feature. Thanks, Lillian

Photo PaintX3 is excellent, but Draw has the same, maybe a bit less, problems of developin when one is going with high memory. Then, the application 'Comes inestable'. With PhotoPaintx3, one has an interface exceptional, as always, to work with big views. Hope they never change this interface. Corel Capture, and the rest of X3 programs i dont use them, so i couldnt give my IMO.

Corel X3 is a VERY mixed bag compared to past versions. The increased compatibility with Adobe products is fantastic opening most Illustrator & Acrobat files flawlessly. However there are MAJOR performance problems, specifically with font handling. Text has to frequently be changed to curves to print properly (I've waisted many plates learning this the hard way) Also the font selection pull down menu has been updated to show the font names written in the respective font. However I have had to wait up to 60 seconds for the menu to drop before I could use it. The new features are great, but be wary of the performance issues.