CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 Student & Teacher Edition Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)If you are accustomed to using other versions of CorelDraw, you may not want this version. Fact is, they have made many so-called "improvements" which I find are incompatible with other software that I have used in the past. It does not convert to encapsulated postscript (eps) files properly, and will crash programs that traditionally work well with eps figures. By contrast, CorelDraw 11 worked well. Hence the "improvement" has rendered the software a nuisance. If you are accustomed to pasting figures into other software, forget it. CorelDraw X3 will not retain the integrity of the original figure, and it will look distorted and crummy. Any prior version of CorelDraw worked well. Again, the "improvement" has made the software a nuisance. On top of that, it crashes a lot.
I contacted their "customer service" about a year ago when I first discovered these differences. I was assured that they knew about the problems and were working on them. Well, a year later, with no patches to correct these differences, I am now being told that it is everyone else's fault (software manufacturers) that CorelDraw is not compatible. I was also told that they have no intention to correct these problems because they do not consider them problems. There is an example of their customer service for you.
I have been using CorelDraw for a long time, starting with 6, then 9, then 11. This is the worst of the bunch by far. I am going back to a previous version.

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With this comprehensive graphics suite, students and teachers can confidently deliver graphically rich school projects, personalizing their work and transforming ideas into professional results -- fast! CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 delivers the ultimate combination of design capabilities, ease-of-use, speed, and affordability that cannot be matched by any other graphics software.
Included Applications
CorelDRAW X3: An intuitive graphic design and page layout application that meets the demands of today's busy design professionals and occasional business users. It delivers results fast, whether you're creating a company logo or working toward demanding production schedules.
Corel Photo-Paint X3: A professional image-editing application that lets users quickly and easily retouch and enhance photos. It is specifically designed for use as part of a graphic workflow.
Corel PowerTRACE X3: Professional designers often receive poor-quality bitmap images from clients and face the challenge of turning these into high-quality vector images for business cards, brochures, promotional items, or signs. The new Corel PowerTRACE solves this problem by letting users quickly and accurately convert bitmaps into editable vector graphics.
Corel Capture X3: A one-click screen capture utility that lets users capture images from their computer screen.
Pixmantec RawShooter essentials: This raw workflow tool provides the highest-quality output and fastest conversion time of any raw converter on the market today. It gives designers and business users excellent results with minimum effort.
Content: More than 10,000 clipart and digital images individually selected to meet the needs of design professionals and business users; 1,000 OpenType fonts, plus 35 Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4) fonts; and 100 creative templates.
Quality Layout Results CorelDRAW X3 provides significant improvements to text handling that make it easier for users to select, edit,and format text. New controls have been added for alignment, drop caps, tabs, bullets, and columns. For more flexibility and accuracy in design, users can now specify text size in inches and create hyperlinks for specific characters. In addition, the application works better with text from other sources.
The new Character Formatting docker makes formatting artistic and paragraph text easier than ever before. Thisconvenient new docker includes easy-to-use controls for adjusting kerning, changing the angle of selected characters, and applying character effects, such as Underline, Strike-Through, Uppercase. Meanwhile, an enhanced Interactive Fit Text to Path tool now makes it easier than ever to attach text to a path with precision. A common effect for creating logos and signs, this new tool lets you interactively control text placement in order to get your desired results.
New Tools for Illustration With CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3, designers can take advantage of tons of new tools and features that increase their productivity without compromising on their creativity and flexibility. For instance, the new Star tool lets users quickly and easily draw perfect stars, while the new Complex Star tool makes it easy to create complex stars that have intersecting sides and produce unique results with an applied fill. You can also specify the number of points and can sharpen the points of a complex star.
A significant time-saver, the new Crop tool quickly lets you remove unwanted areas in objects and imported graphics -- both bitmap and vector. This handy addition to the CorelDRAW X3 toolbox eliminates the need to ungroup objects, break linked groups apart, or convert objects to curves. Meanwhile, the unique, new Smart Fill tool lets you apply a fill to any enclosed area by creating a new object from an enclosed area. Unlike conventional fill tools that fill only objects, the Smart Fill tool detects the edges of an area and creates a closed path so that the area can be filled. For example, the Smart Fill tool can fill the loops of a freehand line that crosses over itself. The Smart Fill tool creates a path around the area, so the filled object can be moved, copied, or edited.
Powerful, Accurate Tracing CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 provides a more streamlined, integrated tracing solution that delivers accurate and optimized bitmap-to-vector tracing results.
Integrated with CorelDRAW X3, the new Corel PowerTRACE allows users to quickly and easily convert bitmaps into editable vector graphics. Design professionals typically face the challenge of turning bitmap images into high-quality vector images to create logos for business cards, brochures, signs, and promotional items. For control and flexibility, Corel PowerTRACE generates a color palette that lets you easily pick which colors appear in the traced result and quickly convert them to the appropriate color mode, including spot colors. You can also choose from several preset tracing styles, color modes, and background options. With three different preview modes -- Before and After, Large Preview, and Wireframe Overlay -- Corel PowerTRACE makes it easy to analyze the result and adjust the settings used to trace your image.
Efficient Photo Editing CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 puts the focus on providing design professionals with more efficient, intuitive, and accurate photo editing.
Corel Photo-Paint X3 is now significantly faster when working with large images and applying photo effects, resulting in better real-time feedback and improving overall workflow efficiency. Improved object handling gives designers more precise control in rotating, skewing, or distorting objects. For large images, improved use of image cache provides significantly increased response time for previewing most effects and for manipulating objects.
The new, integrated Image Adjustment Lab saves designers valuable time and is accessible from both Corel Photo-Paint and CorelDRAW. Design professionals often work with files that have poor color balance and contrast, and they need to use multiple tools to make adjustments. The Image Adjustment Lab addresses this problem by uniting a number of manual and automatic controls for common color and tone corrections, providing an intuitive and fast way to achieve professional image adjustments. The Image Adjustment Lab also lets users create snapshots of their adjustments with just one click. The snapshots appear below the working preview, which lets users easily compare each snapshot against the original and choose the best result.
Built on the power of Corel KnockOut, the enhanced Cutout Lab includes new controls to simplify the process of cutting out image areas and to improve accuracy. The new Add Detail and Remove Detail tools make it easy to refine the cutout area. For easy reference when defining the cutout area, users can preview their cutout against the original image, or transparent, white, gray, or black backgrounds. For maximum flexibility, users can choose to save the cutout object and discard the original image, save the cutout object and keep the original image, or save the cutout object as a clip mask added to the original image. In addition, the Cutout Lab includes Undo and Redo buttons to quickly correct any mistakes.
Enhanced Compatibility CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 provides enhanced compatibility for more than 100 commonly used file formats, including Adobe Illustrator, Photocells, Corel Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Office, JPEG, and PDF. Users can now seamlessly edit and exchange files in those formats. Outstanding support for spot colors has been added for Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop, and PDF.
Student and Teacher Edition Purchase Information To purchase education versions of shrink-wrapped software, purchasers must be: accredited schools, faculties, full- or part-time registered students, academic supervisory organizations, hospitals, libraries, museums, and nonprofit charitable and religious organizations.

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