After 20 or more years of input from their customers, Corel has unveiled the new CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3. It includes more than 40 new and enhanced features that benefit the professional and occasional business users.

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 addition of the new Character and Paragraph Formatting dockers greatly enhanced the text handling. Also, the new Corel PowerTrace has been added to make bitmap-to-vector conversions quick and easy. The Image Adjustment Lab also simplifies the process of correcting image color and tone with professional results.

 

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

This is a professional image-editing application which allows users to quickly and easily retouch and enhance photos, and is designed for use as part of a graphic workflow.

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.

What you get with this package:

Main Applications
CorelDRAW X3
Corel Photo-Paint X3

Supporting Applications
CorelPowerTRACE X3
Corel Capture X3
New Pixmantec RawShooter essentials

System Requirements:

Windows® 2000, Windows® XP Tablet PC, Windows® XP
256 MB of RAM, 200 MB of hard disk space
Pentium® III, 600MHz processor
1,024 × 768 or better monitor resolution
CD-ROM drive

Also included on the CDs:

10,000 Clipart and digital images to meet the needs of design professionals and business users.
1,000 open type fonts, plus 35 Windows Glyph list 4(WGL4) fonts.
100 new creative templates included free of charge.

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.

I want to give a special thank you to Jessica Gould who arranged a WebEX demonstration for me.

Links:

Corel home

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3

Castle Views is a featured column with Staff Columnist Sandra Castle [SndCastie]. Wherein, she reveals interesting books, artists, and software dealing with 3d graphics, through reviews, interviews, and general articles.