Corel Corporation recently released a new version of its flagship product CorelDraw X4 (frankly speaking, other parts of Corel Graphics Suite have almost no value) which still have thousands of users around the world. Most Corel admirers like it partly because of mythic easier learning curve, partly because of lower price in comparison with its main competitor Adobe Illustrator. Some Corel users find invaluable multipage files and use this feature for layout purpose like InDesign (total headache for every designer, especially for people in print shops).

As for me, I actually use CorelDraw just to open and export to other file format works made with this vector editor by clients. When I used CorelDraw X3 for some time, I was shocked how many ‘unexpected errors’ and print bugs it has and how awkward this tool was in use.

Some time ago I visited CorelDraw X3 presentation. Everything went smoothly until the app closed suddenly as the Corel spokesman said about incredible stability of their products. ‘Did you install service pack 1?’ asked he earlier answering to users complaints about product instability. Does it mean that without service pack every new CorelDraw version can’t be used at all?

The worst thing is that Corel developers don’t hear user’s complaints and feature requests. They don’t fix bunch of bugs for years which could be surprise only for CorelDraw newbie. One of my friends still complaints about Corel being often too sluggish though he has most up to date hardware.

Is CorelDraw X4 new features worth to buy it?

While some reviews consider as big improvements even redesigned icons of new CorelDraw X4, there is no any new drawing tool or even improvement of drawing tools in CorelDraw X4. There is no any new docker or effect. There are only features (live text preview, mirroring text, what the font, interactive table tool, paid ConceptShare service, etc.) needed for marketing department of Corel to say how far it goes beyond  the past version.

Why do I need all that new tables and text improvements while there is special software for layout purposes and main purpose of CorelDraw is to draw? Why do I need Corel’s PowerTRACE which is still no match even for Illustrator’s LiveTrace capability while there’s almost perfect online tool Vector Magic.  Why do I need paid ConceptShare service to share my vector work rasterized to jpg?

Tell me, who use Corel layers (which get rid of bugs in X4 version) while this feature is total crap in comparison with Adobe products? Yeah, I know one person who even edits photos with CorelDraw saying that Photoshop is too complicated.

In conclusion, I don’t recommend CorelDraw as a vector editor at all and for amateurs as well (better have a look at free Inkscape). CorelDraw X4 brings only negative emotions as the new version of solid Corel product with almost no real improvements or new useful features except those needed for ad campaign. Yeah, I forget that some people consider that even releases of CorelDraw are worse than odd ones 🙂