| CorelDRAW X4 | 
 enlarge | From: Corel
Category: Software
List Price: £386.58
Buy New: £219.00
You Save: £167.58 (43%)
Buy New/Used from £199.95
Avg. Customer Rating:   (33 reviews)
Sales Rank: 411
Format: Dvd-rom
Platforms: Windows Xp, Windows Vista
Media: CD-ROM
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.7
Dimensions (in): 0 x 0 x 0
MPN: CDGSX4IEPC
UPC: 735163117073
EAN: 0735163117073
ASIN: B0012Q08AS
Release Date: February 22, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Brand New - Full UK Retail Boxed - Exactly the same as amazons - Price includes VAT and invoice supplied.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 Fantastic November 26, 2008
Corel Draw is a powerful grahics and photo editing suite. As I am not a graphic designer or a computer genius (though I'm certainly not a beginner either), I had a few second thoughts before getting something like this. The box it came in was massive, and is filled with some very big and intimidating manuals. On installing the software I realised that it also comes with instruction videos.
Not having used any version on Corel Draw for many many years I did what I thought would be sensible; start the program and assume that I would be able to do everything. Needless to say, I couldn't! So I watched a couple of the intruction videos, browsed the manuals and eventually worked out how to do a few things. After using Corel Draw for just over a month now, I think I know all the basics and am starting to realise just how much this software can do.
I can't comment on this software for proffesionals or people that have been playing with this type of software for years. What I can say is that with a bit of basic knowledge and a bit of patience, most people will find Corel Draw fantastic for getting the best from photos and other graphics.
Comprehensive yet easy to use November 26, 2008
I was concerned about being able to pick up CorelDraw having used Photoshop in the past. Like its competitor, CorelDraw is somewhat intimidating at first glance since it has so many advanced features to choose from. This is despite being split into 3 different programs - CorelDraw, Photopaint & Corel Capture. However, it came with a reassuringly thick manual & I was pleasantly surprised by how useful its hints & tips actually were.
So far, I have only been using it for photo editing & playing around with corelDraw. Having only touched the serface & knowing that CorelDraw is capable of much more, I'm considering buying the x4 Official Guide to help unlock its more advanced features.
 Powerful Software November 20, 2008
Had trouble installing on my desktop PC although it did go ok on the laptop? A very good peice of software and ideal for leaflet design, logos and many DTP day to day things that you would struggle to do in photoshop or other adobe products. CorelDraw also interacts with vector graphics seamlessly too and my only real gripe is that the size and weight of the manuals that come in the box as these are mainly just clipart catalogues and it is just as easy to view them in the software on the PC!
On a negative side of things the menus are a little annoying after using adobe products for years. This aside the software is very good, is it worth the price? It depends how you are going to use it - I would suggest a 30 day trial first.
 Good software, but it's got a small user base, isn't as polished as Abobe's offerings and its buggy November 20, 2008
This pack contains CorelDraw [Vector graphics, and Adobe Illustrators only real competitor], Corel Photo-Paint [a serious rival to adobe's PhotoShop], and PowerTrace [an app that cutely traces bitmaps into drawings]. For a decent review of CorelDraw Graphics Suite X4 just go to techie magazine PC pro's website [pcpro.co.uk], and visit Corel's website for more details. Although CorelDraw and PhotoPaint aren't bad bits of software they are just as difficult to get to grips with as Adobe's offerings but with a far smaller professional user base. This makes Illustrator and Photoshop rather more tempting for businesses and those wishing to gain employable skills. Corel's offering also lacks Adobe's polish, as even with the redesigned interface, it seems to take a while finding what you want. Worse still you get a few errors and crashes [actually not Adobe's strong point on first release either, so install those updates]. CorelDraw seems the better of the two Corel applications, perhaps because I'm less familiar with Adobe's Illustrator than PhotoShop. However if the the latter two didn't exist Corel would be the market leader, this software is that good, so these are excellent packages [but sadly for Corel, Adobe does exist]. Worse still for Corel there's not a massive difference in price [but it is there I suppose].
While Photoshop and Illustrator are just as complex and as time-consuming to learn, their interface is actually more intuitive and reliable [which is saying something given Adobes typically obtuse help]. For home and occasional business use, CorelDraw and Photo-Paint aren't very tempting either compared with the cheaper Xara Xtreme [50] and Photoshop Elements [80]. Plus there's the great Serif X3 applications of DrawPlus, PhotoPlus and PagePlus to consider if you are really on a tight budget [and these are far more user friendly than Adobe and Corel's offerings and can do just about everything most would need to do]. As with adobe though there are cheaper identical 'educational' versions of Corel's software on sale for students, and those working within the education sector. Personally though, at work I'm sticking to my fabulously expensive Adobe Creative Suite Premium CS3 instead, largely as I am so familiar with it now, although I do use Corel Painter IX for 'painting' with my Wacom Bamboo graphics input stylus & pad [but sadly the Corel Painter software isn't included in this graphics Suite].
A very solid contender! November 20, 2008
This product is amazing value for money!
You not only get CorelDRAW X4, Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4, Corel PowerTRACE X4 & Corel CAPTURE X4, but you also get: 10,000 high-quality clipart images, 1,000 high-resolution digital images, 80 professionally designed templates, Over 1,000 OpenType and international fonts!
This package competes head on with Adobe's Creative Suite, and it's almost level pegging!
The only thing that holds it back is that the overall feature set isn't as complete as the Creative Suite CS4 Premium edition, but it's pretty close on the Standard edition, but with a few fundamental differences, Draw, essentially does what InDesign & Illustrator do, leaving Photo-Paint to chase after PhotoShop, which it does fairly well, it isn't as feature complete, but none the less it is very good indeed.
For anyone on a budget I'd say that this is well worth checking out, unless you are a student who has to learn the Adobe software for your course.
The negatives, well really to be taken seriously by the design industry, the applications should be on both PC & Mac platforms, Corel really should rethink this strategy, it is going to consistently make the package seem like it isn't for Pros, when there is everything in the box that you would need for pro level use.
I'd ideally like to give this 3.5 stars for omitting the Mac platform, but overall the package is too good to do that, so 4 stars it is!
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