This is the start of a category of posts that I call the best software that you’ve never heard of.
I’ve used Corel Draw since the ‘90’s with version 5. Corel Draw is a vector drawing program. This means that everything you create is stored as a mathematical description. All those lines, curves, boxes, ellipses, fills, whatever you draw is kept in the computer as an object or description. The advantage of this is you won’t get the jaggies or blockiness when you zoom in. This makes it ideal for things from greeting cards to poster art and anything in-between, That’s because you can easily scale your artwork from small to huge with no introduction of jaggies. Any changes you make to your artwork is easily reversed or altered unless you convert an element from vector to raster(bitmap).
The downside is the all your artwork that you want to scale needs to be created. If you introduce a photo into the artwork, it will suffer when scaled especially compared to the line art you’ve created.
The big question is which vector illustration tool is the best. Obviously I’m stumping for Corel Draw, but most people will steer you towards Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is admittedly the industry standard. If you’re submitting artwork to a printer, they’re going to want an “.ai” file; most won’t take a “.cdr” (Corel Draw) file. But that’s OK, Draw can export to the “.ai” format as well as a dozen others including “.pdf”. If I owned a graphics company, I’d probably swallow and buy Adobe Illustrator.
But, for small home/office use let’s cost this out. On Amazon, Corel Draw X4 currently clocks in at $282($179 upgrade), Adobe illustrator is a heart stopping $583($196 upgrade). Let’s look a little deeper: Corel Draw is actually a suite of programs including PhotoPaint(an excellent multi-layer photo editor, which also doesn’t get it’s due, although admittedly also not the industry standard), Corel Trace ( for converting bitmaps to vector art), and Corel Capture (screen capture tool). And usually, on any given version there will be different additional software, for awhile it was a 3D modeling program, then a flash editor, the next version (X5) will apparently have a different flash editor).
Adobe’s DRM/licensing scheme is notoriously draconian in its implementation putting it on par with video games to limit their software to one machine/one user; if you want to use an Adobe product on your home computer and your laptop, better plan on buying to two copies. Corel’s license is the same, but the DRM is not there. I’m currently using X4 and have had no problems using it and previous versions on different machines. (Please don’t interpret this as an excuse to throw this on a thousand machines). The secret that nobody seems to talk about is that the upgrade version of Draw will install just fine on a fresh computer without looking for a previous version with no problems.
Corel Draw is insanely popular on two different fronts: vinyl cutting (sign making) and pattern design. If you go to youtube and search on these you’ll find hundreds of videos.
What have I done with Corel Draw? I’ve made maps,flow charts, logos, layouts for security presentations, nicely formatted resumes, flyers, business cards, and just general art.
Is illustrator better? Maybe, but I’d argue that Corel Draw has about 70 to 80 percent of the abilities of Illustrator for half the price. You really got to need that extra 20 percent to pay the premium. I have access to Illustrator CS4, but I always go to Corel Draw, because I can bang something fast and decent without frustration.
If you can’t even afford Corel Draw, an alternative is Inkscape, a free open source vector drawing program. I hate to dismiss it, but It’s slow to load, and bogs down after a fair amount of elements are introduced. I’d recommend getting a used copy of Draw (version 9 or better) from EBay and be on your way.





















