CorelDRAW X3 Graphics Suite

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It isn't just DRAW's core drawing power that has been tackled. Long-term users will be pleased to hear that Corel has finally overhauled DRAW's text handling with new dockers for managing character and paragraph formatting. Plus, there are now menu commands for adding bullets, tabs, non-printing characters including 'em' and 'en' spaces and optional hyphens. In practice, though, the changes prove disappointing, as almost all of this power was already there in the conveniently centralised Format Text dialog, which has also now been dropped. At least the new real-time dynamic preview for text-on-a-path effects is completely fresh and really does make it much easier to quickly produce attractive end results.

SMART FILL

Also new, for DRAW users at least, is the Smart Fill tool. Like Illustrator CS2's Live Paint capability, it lets you quickly fill any area enclosed by overlapping lines with a single click. The sketch-and-fill approach this opens up is far more intuitive than having to build up your drawings as enclosed shapes and proves particularly useful when working with traced drawings. Again, Corel doesn't offer the same power and control as Adobe, as the region must be completely enclosed and the effect isn't live, so that if you move the surrounding lines the fill doesn't update automatically. However, there's no need to set up Live Paint groups first, so for most jobs the Smart Fill tool does all that you need. It's a shame you're restricted to applying only flat colour fills, though you can always change this afterwards.

IMAGE EDITING

Another major introduction is X3's Image Adjustment Lab. This is a new dialog that provides instant access to all of the most common colour-correction commands for managing temperature, tint, saturation, brightness, contrast and so on. It also offers the ability to explore options by saving snapshots of the current state of an image in a strip at the bottom of the dialog - click on one and its settings are instantly restored. Centralised control is certainly a step forward but, unlike Illustrator, all adjustments are applied destructively so you can't call up the Lab and return to an earlier snapshot, and you can't apply effects to vector objects as well as bitmaps.

output

In terms of final output, X3 sees a number of advances. When it comes to commercial print, there's a new onscreen preview that attempts to simulate overprint settings. Spot colour handling is also more viable than before, as vector effects such as transparencies, mesh fills and blends can now contain both process and spot colours. Export to PDF has been enhanced, most noticeably with greater support for security and permissions. More generally, file compatibility and workflow integration with Adobe's PostScript (EPS, PS) and Illustrator (AI) standards, not to mention Corel's own DESIGNER (DES) and Paint Shop Pro (PSP) formats, have been improved.

CONCLUSIONS

There's no escaping the continued trend - more dropped applications, more dressing up existing features as new and, in some cases, making too much of very niche power. And there's no avoiding the fact that where it used to lead, CorelDRAW now follows. After all, the two most exciting introductions in X3, PowerTRACE and Smart Fill, aren't innovations but simply copies from the latest Illustrator. Moreover, despite the advantage of being a considered response, neither feature improves on its rival.

On the other hand, for non-professional users, ,maximum power and control aren't necessarily the be-all and end-all. PowerTRACE and Smart Fill are much simpler than their Adobe equivalents and so easier to take advantage of. Most office-based and occasional users will happily settle for 80 per cent of the power if they can produce acceptable results in half the time. Throw in the fact that the X3 suite includes PHOTO-PAINT, 1,000 OpenType fonts, plenty of clip-art and that, unlike Illustrator, the main CorelDRAW module can handle multipage publications, and it's clear that CorelDRAW still has lots to offer.