Rick Altman has an interesting analysis of what the Adobe/Macromedia merger means for the for graphics software market and how Corel should respond to it.
I’m a CorelDraw user because the Draw/Paint combo does all I require, and a whole lot more, for far less investment than other equivalent applications. The main attraction when I first purchased a licence was its combination of powerful vector and bitmap tools in one package which no other product could match, at the price, but that was a long time ago.
My first impressions of CorelDraw were both intrigue and confusion. I was fairly new to computers and an office where I was contracting had CorelDraw on the CAD machine I was using. Being used to CAD applications I found the interface familiar (editing vector objects) but was amazed and overwhelmed with the capability, editing options and effects available. That was with CorelDraw 3!
Over the years & versions I’ve grown to love CorelDraw and regard it an essential tool for CAD/Graphic work. I’m not a professional graphic designer, artist, image editor or illustrator but have used CorelDraw for all these tasks at times. It’s the ultimate graphic toolbox dealing with the multitude of support tasks that are required in my various roles. As a CAD user its image filters and bitmap editing tools are invaluable when preparing scan or material images for CAD use. As a CAD Manager I use the screen capture, illustration and publishing tools in Corel for documentation and other graphics. It’s often frustrating to see colleagues struggling to produce graphics in office applications that are a snap to create in Corel. I probably annoy them with the line “Word is for words, that’s why it’s called Word” but its true.
CorelDraw has been though good and bad releases (5!) and Corel has survived tough times as a company. Some were its own making, some market driven, but poor strategic decisions and loss of direction all seemed to contribute to neglect of the core Draw/Paint products. The first CorelDraw licence I owned was version 4 and I found enough value to buy upgrades through to version 9. I use a company licence of CorelDraw 10 at work but have only recently upgraded my own from 9 to 12 after a recent promotional offer. There just wasn’t enough to in 10/11 for me to justify spending the money.
Today Corel seems to be back to its core business; graphics and business applications. Rick suggests CorelDraw is developed and promoted as the ultimate graphics toolbox for all office application users. It makes sense to me: it’s exactly how I use it and every day I see others who need it.
As Adobe’s Shadow Grows, Is Corel Better off or Worse? ~ R Altman Digital Consulting
Can Corel play in Adobe’s ever-increasing sandbox?
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