CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4

Most importantly, X4's PowerTRACE now adds support for centre line as well as outline tracing. This is essential when you're attempting to recreate technical illustrations as it means that each traced line is output as a single easily editable path rather than as an inflexible outlined stroke.

Even with these improvements CorelDRAW's PowerTRACE is still no match in terms of power and speed for Illustrator's LiveTrace capability, but it's a great addition to your graphical toolkit and especially useful when trying to convert legacy paper artwork.

Text handling

Where tracing usually falls down is with text, as to recreate readable and editable characters you really need to have access to the original font, and working out the typeface you need is difficult.

CorelDRAW X4's "WhatTheFont?!.." command, however, makes this ludicrously easy. All you do is choose the command, draw a selection box around your text and the resulting screen capture is automatically sent off to MyFont.com, where an online wizard quickly helps you indentify the typeface ready for purchase and download.

Of course the main credit for this solution belongs to MyFont, and you don't need CorelDRAW to take advantage of it, but it is certainly handy having it integrated like this.

CorelDRAW X4 has plenty more to offer when it comes to handling typefaces, starting with its included fonts. The new version provides over 1,000 OpenType fonts, which can be quickly viewed, installed and uninstalled using the bundled copy of Bitstream Font Navigator 2006.

Most impressive of all - and our favourite new X4 feature - is the live text preview. Select some text, open the typeface dropdown on the Character docker and, as you hold your mouse over an installed font, your text's typeface automatically updates so you can rapidly explore what various options would look like in situ.

Other text-based advances include the ability to mirror text blocks horizontally and vertically, improved quotation mark handling and improvements to CorelDRAW's print merge capability.

Tables and pages

Most striking is the new support for table handling via a new interactive Table tool and new dedicated Table menu and property bar. These offer all the expected commands for merging and splitting cells, inserting rows and columns, managing borders and so on.

It's certainly far easier to manage text tables like this than through the tabs of previous versions, but the fact that the resulting grid is fixed and doesn't adapt to its content is a major limitation. On the other hand you can place design elements in cells so there are various graphical uses to which the tables can be put.

CorelDRAW X4's text handling is improved, then, but it still lags behind Illustrator's in most ways. There's one exception to this, but it is a very important one: unlike Illustrator, CorelDRAW offers multiple page handling. This is a massive advantage, not just for producing multiple-page publications such as brochures, but also when trying out different concepts.

In the past the way CorelDRAW did this was confusing: whenever you added a layer to one page, an empty version appeared on all others. Now, using X4's revamped Object Manager you can add layers independently to each page, which is a far more intuitive approach. In addition, it means that you can now add non-printing guideline layers tailored to each page, reserving the master page for layers and guidelines that you want to see throughout your project.