CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X7

X7 v17.0.0.49 (2014)

406 MB 32BIT

456 MB 64BIT

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X7

Twenty years ago, Corel effectively owned PC-based design with its all-singing, all-dancing CorelDRAW Graphics Suite – but that was before Adobe arrived on the scene. Now, with Adobe moving its market-leading design applications, Illustrator CC and Photoshop CC, behind a subscription-only paywall, Corel has a golden opportunity to reclaim its crown.

The new X7 suite’s core application is the vector-based CorelDRAW, and this has seen a significant redesign. Key here is the new tabbed document environment, which makes it easier to create new documents and to switch between open documents.

the Welcome Screen with its access to resources and update notifications has also been turned into a permanently available docked tab, and you can now undock documents and drag them outside the application, which could prove handy if you use multiple monitors. If you’re using a smaller tablet device, the improved support for high-DPI displays and the introduction of overflow buttons to quickly access hidden options will be especially welcome.

The biggest interface advance in X7 is the introduction of workspaces, which let you quickly switch between customised working environments. Workspace presets include a Lite option for beginners, an Illustrator option for those shifting allegiance from Adobe, dedicated options for Page Layout and Illustration, and a Classic option for those who liked things the way they were. You can also create your own workspaces and, to help make this easier, you can now quickly customise toolbars on-the-fly via the new Quick Customize command icon.

Corel has also introduced new dockers, providing greater control over document setup. The first, Guidelines, lets you precisely manage the placement of horizontal, vertical and now angled guidelines. The second, Alignment and Dynamic Guides, lets you take full control over which interactive guidelines CorelDRAW X7 shows onscreen, which can be handy for aligning, sizing, angling and distributing objects as you draw and transform them. There’s also a new Align and Distribute docker to help you organise the placement of the elements of your design.

In terms of core drawing functionality, there’s been some reorganisation and rationalisation of the toolbox, but only one new tool has been added – the Smooth tool that lets you retrospectively reduce the number of nodes and the jagged appearance of existing lines.

You can also now control the positioning of an object’s outline so that it appears inside, outside or centred on the object’s edge. The new option to position the outline within an object is particularly important, since it makes it far easier to create an object at a precise size

The main focus in CorelDRAW X7 is a complete overhaul of its handling of formatting. In terms of solid colours, there are new options for finding and modifying sets of complementary colours through harmony rules. The Colour Styles docker has also been enhanced when it comes to managing colours in your document, most notably with a Hints view that indicates which objects are using a particular colour style, and a Page Sorter view that lets you see how multiple colour changes in the Harmony Editor affect the publication’s overall appearance.

Further changes are found in the handling of CorelDRAW’s fountain fills. It’s now much easier to apply linear, elliptical, conical and rectangular gradients, and to quickly customise the effects both on the object and within the Object Properties docker. You can also set the fills to repeat and mirror, and can also now pick an opacity setting for each colour stop.

The biggest changes are found in the handling of pattern fills. At last these have been split into clearly defined bitmap and vector options rather than the previous mess of two-colour, full-colour and bitmap sub-options; this was a hangover from how CorelDRAW handled things back in the early 1990s.

Further rationalisation is seen in the revamped Fill Picker dropdown, which no longer throws all patterns together but splits them into categories – abstract, animal, decorative, fabric and so on. You also now have far greater control over how tiles are mirrored and made seamless in the Object Properties docker.

Significantly, these pattern fills are now made available via the cloud through Corel’s new Content Exchange. The downside of this online handling is that there can be delays as thumbnails are updated and fills downloaded, but the benefit should become apparent over time through community sharing. To encourage this, it’s now much easier to create new patterns directly from the Object Properties dialog, and when you do you’re given the option of uploading your file for others to use.

Further encouragement to create and share your fills comes from community-based features such as voting for your favourite fills, and a new iOS app that lets you turn photos into seamless tiles that you can upload to the Content Exchange in Corel’s new FILL format.

To round out its new formatting capabilities, CorelDRAW X7 adds a new Edit Fill command, which brings all fill types – including the now downgraded fractal textures and postscript patterns – under a single, central dialog. Even more useful is the ability to manage not only fills from the Object Properties docker but transparency too, complete with the option to apply transparency effects to an object’s fill, outline or both. You can also instantly save transparency effects as a reusable style, and the Object Styles docker now shows a preview of all styles before you apply them.

Other changes in CorelDRAW X7 include a revamped Insert Character docker complete with character filtering, which is especially useful when working with graphical glyphs and symbols. There’s also an entirely new docker called Font Playground, which lets you set some sample text and then explore multiple typeface options, and you can now embed all fonts within your file.

To round out the upgrade there’s the ability to add scalable QR codes to your print designs to provide quick smartphone access to websites, and updated support for the latest Adobe and Microsoft file formats.