Entered CNET Catalog: 01/22/2006
SKU: CDGSX3ENGPC
Manufacturer: Corel Corp.
Manufacturer description
Transform ideas into professional results with CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3! With this comprehensive graphics suite, you can confidently tackle a wide variety of projects - from logo creation and Web graphics, to multi-page marketing brochures, or eye-catching signs. From new bitmap-to-vector tracing in Corel PowerTRACE, new photo-editing features in Photo-Paint, new suite-wide learning tools, and enhancements in illustration and page layout, this suite combines design capabilities, ease-of-use, and affordability that cannot be matched by any other graphics software.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 03/08/2006
The biggest difficulty in installing the suite is deciding what to install. The program discs include CorelDraw, the main vector drawing package; Corel Photo-Paint, an agile image editor; Corel PowerTrace, a fast and powerful raster-to-vector tracing program; Corel Capture, a screen-capture utility; Bitstream Font Manager, for viewing and organizing fonts; Pixmantec RawShooter Essentials, for converting raw camera format files; and a duplexing wizard, for printing two-sided documents. In addition, there are two CDs with 10,000 pieces of clip art and images, 1,000 OpenType fonts, 25 Windows Glyph fonts, and 100 templates, as well as help files, tutorials, and videos. And in case you think Corel is being stingy, there's a comprehensive user guide and a beautiful handbook showcasing stunning samples from expert users of this suite.
Power users gain greatly enhanced EPS and PDF import and export, color management, spot color support, and output. The toolbox gets five more tools, two of which are star makers: regular and complex; a Fillet/Scallop/Chamfer tool for CAD-esque curve shaping; a handy Crop tool for removing unwanted object areas; and a Smart Fill feature. There's a new Bevel docker, but it's a bit underwhelming. You have basically two choices--innie and outie--and objects may have only solid fills. The new Step and Repeat docker is more impressive, letting you set vertical and horizontal offsets for repeating objects.
The other big news in CorelDraw is the new and improved desktop publishing tools. First, new Character and Paragraph dockers provide easy access to text-formatting settings such as kerning, typeface selection, and justification. Controlling text flow is much easier as well, now that you can insert a variety of spaces, breaks, and dashes via the Text menu. The enhanced Fit Text to Path tool works more smoothly and intuitively, too.
We've never had much of a performance issue with CorelDraw, and X3 is no different. Even on a 1.1MHz machine with a complex document, the program runs fast with no stability problems. Photo-Paint's performance is much improved over that of earlier versions, and during our testing, it processed complex filter effects about 20 percent faster than Photoshop CS2.
Corel X3 is your basic terrific graphics suite. It's easy enough for beginners to learn but powerful enough for all vector and image design. The additional clip art, font, and image libraries and utilities make this package a bargain. Users of older versions will want this upgrade for the improved spot color, EPS, and PDF handling; the new tools; and the freshened clip art. In sum, this package is appropriate for any graphics task, be it vector drawing, image editing, or midlevel desktop publishing.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4
User Rating: 
4/10
Slow and inconsistant
Pros: Low RAM/Computing/Windows power requirements
Cons: Poor execution of style sheets, pallettes, toolboxes and almost everything else.
Review:
The CorelDraw Graphics Suite is best suited for one-person, one-project at a time operations - the minute you send something out to a third party, problems will begin. It is unsuitable for professional quality printing or layout work due to its poor style sheet execution, and other erratic behavior.
Draw actually embeds bitmaps in the documents it generates, causing them to bloat in size, from less than 1 mb to 50 mb in size if you are not careful. While Draw can do multi-page documents, they are not stable after fifty or so pages.
Paint, the bitmap editor, isn't much better. It lacks a degree of precision and accuracy needed to quickly edit photos.
In short, the only reason that this is the best alternative to the rock-solid performance of the Adobe suites - is because it is the ONLY alternative. And it isn't a very good one either.
Draw actually embeds bitmaps in the documents it generates, causing them to bloat in size, from less than 1 mb to 50 mb in size if you are not careful. While Draw can do multi-page documents, they are not stable after fifty or so pages.
Paint, the bitmap editor, isn't much better. It lacks a degree of precision and accuracy needed to quickly edit photos.
In short, the only reason that this is the best alternative to the rock-solid performance of the Adobe suites - is because it is the ONLY alternative. And it isn't a very good one either.
User Rating: 
9/10
Just awesome
Pros: Great interface, many effects and options
Cons: Takes a while to get to know
Review:
This interface is very easy to use, although, it still takes a while to understand, but doesn't take anywhere near as long to figure out as photoshop does. And this suite does just about everything photoshop does, for half the price...
...A whole graphics suite that costs less than just photoshop, and does the same stuff and more?
Sold.
...A whole graphics suite that costs less than just photoshop, and does the same stuff and more?
Sold.
User Rating: 9/10
Genius But Still a Bit Unstable
Pros: Amazingly intuitive. You can do most anything in so few steps!
Cons: It likes to crash or bug out from time to time.
Review:
I've been buying the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite since version 3 and they have made some excellent improvements! I remember emailing them a request to use a specific type of binding on their clipart book (the pages would fall apart) and they came out with my request in the next version. They LISTEN to their customers!
Compared to Adobe products, I've always felt Corel is more intuitive, easier to use, can do things in one-fourth the steps, and SO much more valuable! You get your bang for the buck here. It's like buying a Lexus.
I showed an Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator fan my Corel products over Thanksgiving and he just about cried. He was so amazed at the things I could do in so few steps!
Only thing is the stability. Ever since version 3 they have been really weak in their stability. It loves to crash on me when I've made some good progress. Or I'll try to undo a couple steps and something gets buggy and I can never really get back to where I want.
The masking tool is the best! The wineglass tool for transparency saves SO MUCH time! The tracing feature is thebomb.com. I don't understand why anyone uses Adobe Photoshop any more! Oh... it might be more stable. But that's all they have on Corel! That's it!
I love Corel.
Compared to Adobe products, I've always felt Corel is more intuitive, easier to use, can do things in one-fourth the steps, and SO much more valuable! You get your bang for the buck here. It's like buying a Lexus.
I showed an Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator fan my Corel products over Thanksgiving and he just about cried. He was so amazed at the things I could do in so few steps!
Only thing is the stability. Ever since version 3 they have been really weak in their stability. It loves to crash on me when I've made some good progress. Or I'll try to undo a couple steps and something gets buggy and I can never really get back to where I want.
The masking tool is the best! The wineglass tool for transparency saves SO MUCH time! The tracing feature is thebomb.com. I don't understand why anyone uses Adobe Photoshop any more! Oh... it might be more stable. But that's all they have on Corel! That's it!
I love Corel.
User Rating: 9/10
Best Version Yet
Pros: Easier to us than competitors
Cons: I miss a few of the old tools that have been eliminated
Review:
I may be biased since I have been a staunch CorelDraw user since I started with Version 3 many many years ago. I have used every version of Corel Draw eversince. Due to the nature of my work I also use and I have used all of the competitors programs as well, but I seem to always revert back to my Corel Draw, because I have everything that I need to do the job in one package, unlike all the competitors, especially the big 'A', where you have to use several of their packages to do the same job that you can do in Corel. The Biggest Plus however is the cost of this complete product and there it Wins Hands Down over the competition.
%20-%20Illustrations%20-%20CNET%20Archive&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/illustration/coreldraw-graphics-suite-x3/1707-3633_7-31682938.html){kind=small}