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| CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 [DVD] | ![CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VF4KhO7lL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | From: Corel
Category: Software
List Price: $429.00
Buy New: $299.07
You Save: $129.93 (30%)
New (32) Used (2) from $199.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  75 reviews
Sales Rank: 235
Format: Dvd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 8.1 x 3.1
MPN: CDGSX4ENPC
Model: CDGSX4ENPC
UPC: 735163119206
EAN: 0735163119206
ASIN: B0012KZKZC
Release Date: February 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Amazing but one needs time to learn all aspects of it April 16, 2008
At work I use Illustrator but haven't been using Photoshop lately and I feel like my skills are rusty with it, so I try to avoid it as much as possible, this program on the other hand is little easier to use and has functions like I have never seen before. For those who like to tweak photos this is a paradise, you can dive in and really make the best wallpapers and backgrounds for websites and personal use with the tools CorelDRAW provides.
I am still figuring it all out, so I will update my review after a few months but so far I am in heaven, if I had all day to sit in front of my computer and draw and play around I would. This is fun and looks gorgeous, works well with Vista too. The fonts and clip are worth checking it out alone!
- Kasia S.
 Review by and for a vector graphics newbie only April 15, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've never used any other vector graphics program so unfortunately, I have nothing other than Adobe Photoshop to which to compare CorelDRAW X4. After a short use, I'd say that Photoshop is better if all you want to do is work on photographs, with a little text thrown in, but for projects such as creating event invitations, business cards, work presentations, etc., CorelDRAW gives you more options. I can't speak to whether this is the best program for professionals so I won't even try. For the serious amateur, this program certainly does everything you could possibly want. If you are completely new to these sorts of programs, however, you're going to need some outside training. Although Corel X4 comes with a number of terrific training videos that are part of the regular installation package, they are largely geared to people who have used previous versions of CorelDRAW. They definitely help, and they are really well done, but even when combined with the wonderful booklet titled "CorelDRAW HANDBOOK Insights from the Experts," which comes with the package, you are still likely to be confused as there is so much that you can do with this program.
There is plenty of onscreen help as well as a Quick Reference Card to help you use the program intelligently. The package comes with a good-sized binder of fonts, clipart, photos, and other objects which are included with the program, which also has a nifty internet lookup feature, which lets you search the web for additional items that you can use at no cost or that you can purchase. There is apparently a direct interface for this lookup if you are using Windows Vista. I am running this with Windows XP, so I can't speak to the enhanced user interface that you get with Vista. Which brings me to a good point - I had no problem installing this program on a two year old lap-top, but ever since I installed it, I have been having problems with my computer. It could be a coicidence, but you do need a pretty up-to-date system with a fast processor and a fair amount of free memory, and you must be running Windows. Check the system requirements before you buy.
Once you figure out what you are dealing with, you can create all kinds of text and graphics and tables using this program. If you're not sure where to start, Corel X4 comes with all sorts of professional templates that you can use as a starting point. So, for instance, if you want to create a menu for a dinner party you can start with one of the ones that is already included as a template and mess around with it, changing the font and the colors, softening the lines of the pictures, easily drawing stars and other shapes, going back and forth between ideas, and free handing anything you like with a variety of tools. If you really like what you've created, you can save it not only as a user file but as an additional template. The program lets you do pretty much everything that you can do in Photoshop, e.g., creating layers, dodging and burning, adjusting lighting, changing the color palette, adding text, etc., but there's a great deal of additional formatting available. From the packaging itself and the quality of the included materials it's clear that Corel means business. It's a gorgeous program that lets you do all sorts of things and gives you just about as much help as you could possibly want for something this complicated. But make no mistake - this is a serious program and if you've never used anything like it before you should probably plan on taking a class or, at the very least, buying an in-depth book or online tutorial.
With apologies for this review, which probably isn't what most people are looking for, I will just finish by saying that there is so much in this package and that it would take someone like me (that is, someone without a lot of familiarity with graphics programs) more than a couple of months to really get the hang of this and do a meaningful comparison with Photoshop. All I can really tell you is that if I needed a program such as this and were just starting out with vector graphics, I would seriously consider this one.
Highly recommended! April 15, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I must admit to being something of a Luddite when it comes to technology. I don't have a digital camera, I don't text-message, I don't pay my bills on-line, etc. However, products like these are slowly dragging me into the 21st century! However, I am something of an amateur genealogist, and one of the things I use my computer for is organizing the things I have collected, including old photos. CorelDRAW allows me to take in and enhance those old pictures, bringing out details you can't see with the naked eye!
My kids like CorelDRAW as well, with its ability to combine and edit images. Yeah, we find it a very useful and entertaining program. I have a desktop PC with Windows Vista, and we had no problems with installation or use of this program. If you have a newer computer, and wish to buy a top-of-the-line graphics program, then I would highly recommend that you get CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4. We have found it to be very useful, and we highly recommend it!
Still a dependable graphics package April 15, 2008
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
CorelDraw and and its Suite have been around for a long, long time. Since the late 1980s, in fact. At one time, CorelDraw was the leader of the pack and made its founder Dr. Michael Cowpland a very wealthy man. Dr. Cowpland was long ago replaced after he led Corel into hard times.
For many years, CorelDraw offered tremendous bang for the buck. Not only was CorelDraw a competent vector illustration program competing with Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand, it came with 10,000 mediocre, but usable, clip art images and 1,000 fonts.
Almost 20 years later, it is still in production - and that says a lot. Not many software products have accomplished this.
The CorelDraw Suite includes CorelDraw X4, Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4 (a PhotoShop workalike), Corel PowerTRACE X4 (a bitmap to vector conversion program), Corel CAPTURE X4. Bitstream Font Navigator, a print duplexing utility and a service bureau pre-flighter.
Much to their credit, Corel still includes a reasonably comprehensive printed manual. There aren't a whole lot of third-party books on Corel products and the programs are complex. The printed manual is welcome.
CorelDraw is still widely used, particularly in the industrial market. It is less expensive than equivalent Adobe products, though not necessarily easier to use.
I'll cursorily treat the lesser applications first. Bitstream FontNavigator is a great tool for managing large numbers of fonts. Simple to use, dependable and capable. Corel CAPTURE is a screen capture program and nothing to write home about. SnagIt V 8.2is far more capable. The service bureau prep application is fine for those who need it: most won't. The print duplexing application is okay, but not as sophisticated as some other standalone applications.
Installation on a moderately powerful AMD based Windows XP computer was trouble free. Response from all programs on a basic nVidia graphic display adapter was adequate. On a state-of-the-art computer, these programs should fly.
CorelDRAW is an excellent vector graphics illustration program. It is the equal of Adobe Illustrator. In some ways, it is easier to use than its Adobe counterpart - but in others, it is not. One thing should be kept in mind - this program is not for those who expect to learn it in ten minutes. But for a newcomer willing to work with the manual, CorelDRAW can be learned reasonably quickly.
CorelPAINT is a competitor to Adobe PhotoShop. But it is not a strong competitor. It is just about as capable as PhotoShop and a lot less expensive, but the interface is not as comfortable as PhotoShop's. PhotoShop is also supported by dozens of third-party books and tools that will teach you how to do everything and anything with PhotoShop. Corel PHOTOPAINT lacks such support, though you can learn from the PhotoShop materials.
Overall, the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite remains a formidable competitor. It offers nearly all the capabilities of Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop in an affordable package with the added benefit of the extras like the fonts and clip art. For those who need high-end vector and bitmap editing capabilities, the package should definitely be on your short list, particularly since Adobe merged with Macromedia.
A good buy, worthy of consideration.
Jerry
A great program at a great value April 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This review is for the full retail version of Coreldraw X4.
Reviewer Information:
I owned and used Version 8 of Corel Suite for years until XP came out and incompatibilities made it unusable. I've also used version 10. Most of my experience has been with Photopaint, the image editing software. I have less experience with Coreldraw (the layout and design software) as it has less practical applications for what I do. I've also used Photoshop (the competing program to Photopaint), both in its full suite and Elements versions.
The computer I used this software on is an Intel Quad Core processor with 4 gigabytes of RAM, running Windows XP, which is high above the specs required to run the suite. The software runs absolutely beautifully on my machine, though CorelDraw did crash to desktop (that is, completely shut down without warning) on one occasion when I had both it and PhotoPaint up.
Package:
Coreldraw X4 comes in a large box and includes the DVD-ROM, a manual, an insight handbook, a font and clipart reference book, a quick reference card and a CoralDraw sticker. The manual is quite beefy for manuals these days, and contains a great deal of information that would be useful to newcomers to the program. Of course, the manual is nice, but with the mass of detailed online help, tutorials and hint menus available in the programs themselves, it's going to be mostly useful for the newcomer. The suite comes with a large collection of clipart and textures and fonts, so the book of clipart thumbnails and font samples is a nice tool as well.
I was impressed by the wealth of information available in the programs themselves. Much effort has clearly been made to make the programs user friendly despite the obvious learning curve. It's loaded with detailed help descriptions and the DVD has over 2 hours of video tutorials for the new user.
Of particular use for me was the optional hint window that appears to the left of the screen of Photopaint and Coreldraw. Depending on what tool you're using, it will provide information and tips on how to use it. Another helpful tool in the help menu is one that will highlight all the new features that have been added to the programs since older versions. New features will be highlighted in menus and toolbars in a light orange, indicating them as a new feature since the version chosen. Users may select versions as far back as 9. It's quite a useful feature for people migrating from older versions.
The suite itself also contains several programs beyond the main two.
Bitstream is a program used to navigate through fonts. Since the power user will probably have a lot of fonts from elsewhere, Bitstream allows one to navigate fonts by type and style as well as create font groups for organizational purposes. Of course, CorelDraw itself also incorporates a real-time feature that updates highlighted text on the screen with the font shown as you scroll over different ones in the dropdown menu. Man that makes life easier.
CorelCapture is a screen capture program designed specifically for screen capture (taking pictures of what is displayed on the monitor). It has numerous customization options for screencapping, including changing the DPI of the sceencap, the image type and even the scaling used. It allows the user to dump directly to a printer, to Coreldraw itself or to a file. Out of interest, I tested this with a couple games, and it seemed to work with all of the games I tried.
The suite also includes a profiler program to create profiles for professional workflow, as well as a duplexing wizard to simplify double sided printing on printers that can only print one sided.
CorelDraw
CorelDraw is a graphic arts drawing tool with layout and vectoring capabilities, similar to Adobe Illustrator. I played with it a bit, doing a few drawing and graphics layouts with it. I'm not a power user by any means, but I found that some of the tools appear to not be as intuitive as they could be. Of course, that could be my lack of knowledge in this area. The sheer complexity of what it is capable of makes it powerful enough to do the complex vector based drawing that some professional users might need.
PhotoPaint
I was quite impressed with this iteration of Coreldraw. As other reviewers have mentioned, there will be a bit of an adjustment for people who move from Photoshop to Corel Photopaint. Menus are laid out differently and some things are labeled differently as well, though I found some tools easier to find in Corel as it has some of the obvious choices in the main menus, rather than forcing users to drill down into submenus.
As a genealogist in the midst of a photo scanning project (which involves scanning 19th century photographs), I've spent the past few weeks using it extensively for both basic and advanced photo editing. It's become my photo editor of choice, replacing the program I was using previously. Some features, such as the straighten tool, which puts images onto a grid background and then allows you to pull a slider to turn it with the grid, make life a lot easier when you're doing a lot of photograph scanning and you photos are weird sizes. The various clone tool options are fantastic as well.
Photopaint is a powerful image editing tool and as far as I can see, certainly has the capability of matching much of what Photoshop can do, from image painting to professional grade image editing and restoration. I personally found it a fairly intuitive program and not hard to use.
Bottom Line:
Coreldraw X4 is clearly designed as a mid range end competitor to Adobe's products and from what I can see, it succeeds well in that regard. For the serious hobbyist or the semi-professional looking for a high grade, lower cost option over Adobe, Coreldraw Suite X4 is definitely a good value for the money. For the professional users, Adobe is still the way to go, but for the rest of us, Coreldraw suite is a great choice.
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