Does anyone here use CorelDRAW or the CorelDRAW suite?

I may be buying it for my daughter who wants to start in graphic design and would love to hear any thoughts from those who have experience with it.

I love coreldraw, it has more intuitive tools than illustrator. Export quality is excellent. Vector tools far ahead of illustrator. The only thing I like about illustrator is the bitmap trace feature...

Be warned though that coreldraw does not automatically calibrate the workspace for you. I had some pains doing it right the first time. Workspace does not default at 100% screen size but document size. Bitmaps pasted are not wysiwyg. If your document is 96 dpi and you paste a 72 dpi image, you have to resize it. Color management needs tweaking too... But the tools are the best

i like corel i use version 10 and R.A.V.E is a killer , IT RULES. way easy and proffesional. highly recommooded

I love Corel Draw too. I've been using it since version 9!!! I'm currently using v.12. It's very powerfull but very easy to get into. For me its the best illustration tool out there.

I've found Illustrator to be tedious and definetely not suited for a beginner. I recommend it as well!!!

OK I beat you, I've been using CorelDRAW since it was in version 2! This is back in the days when you could only edit things in wireframe mode and occaisionally see a preview of it if you were lucky.v 9 is still my current version.. must upgrade...

I love CorelDRAW and have become very familiar with it and Photopaint too. I've tried Photoshop and Illustrator, and while I think Photoshop is worth the re-learning effort as it is immensely powerful, Illustrator just does't compare to Corel. It's got a whole load of flashy stuff like image spraying tools that I would only ever use once in a lifetime, and yet basic things like curve editing are a pain in the neck. Drawing bezier curves in CorelDRAW is much easier - you use one tool and some buttons to edit instead of the two or three tools that are necessary in illustrator.
Other things, like being able to edit a regular polygon into a curved shape while maintaining symmetry appear in Corel, with no equivalent in illustrator at all.

Picking up the basics of Corel is quite easy - I remember there was a book with version 2 that taught you the essentials in 8 sections. Anything more advanced is usually found in a menu somewhere, with a sensible name that tells you almost exactly what you can expect it to do.

I now work mainly in CorelDRAW, and still use both Photopaint and photoshop.

if shes not gonna do vector, etc. dont get corel draw. photoshop is better in other aspects, i really depends on what you are going to do.

I am using CorelDraw 9. I bought it about 5 years ago but only really started tinkering seriously with it about 3 months ago. I have always heard (or maybe just assumed) that Ilustrator was better than CorelDraw. It's good to know that I'm not the only person who thinks CorelDraw is a very good product. Are there many major differences between version 9 and 12?

If there's anyone who has used 12 who can answer that, I'd be interested to know also - I've been using 9 for years.

i seem to find these threads way late to join the conversations...lol....but i have used and make a living with coreldraw since version 3. i also have the plug-in program for it called "drawmate" nothing works better for vector graphics than this product...period....i have Illustrator because i need to open files from clients...but it falls short in so many areas compared to Draw..can't compare Draw to P/S that's apples and oranges...but if your just starting out and want both a vector and bitmap program...the Corel bundle is hard to beat for price and functionality
Mitch

What does drawmate do? I had a quick google but didn't turn anything up, do you know where I can find it?

Drawmate is an product from Stahl's lightning graphics division...it is a ulility program for Draw that provides alot of time savers for the print industry. for starters..it allows you set in printing what is called a "trap"..it is a small margin increase to a solid fill color so that it extends slightly into lets say a border or outline ...so when the graphic is printed(in an offset house or screen printer) there is enough "underlap" that if the machine goes slightly off register it will not show "strike through gaps" in the print...it also allows you to instantly set-up 2-up, 4 -up and 6-up prints on different sheet sizes for printing and cutting(with cutter and printer's marks)...it has a time tracker for billing art work...an object cleaner that scans and rids a file of errant nodes or if you wish small groups of nodes and fills...it has a very extensive clip art library basically designed for screen and sublimation printers. it also has a very user controlled printing definition for printing on velluim or sublimation paper and also is the interface for our plotter/cutting machines. but i think what makes it stand out most of all is it's vector tracing program, which to me is the only thing corel draw as a stand alone sorely falls short on. It has the power of adobe's Streamline but just not quite as good...it is however a little on the pricey side for a utility program costing somewhere in the $500.00 range and a licensing agreement...hope that helps
Mitch

It cracked me up to see this thread revived again. We bought the Corel Suite within a couple weeks after I started this topic and my daughter is glad we did. It's some good software.

Sorry, I have 12 but wouldn't know how it compares to 9 since I've never seen 9.

Thanks for your opinions, though!