CorelDRAW 6 is a great multi-program powerhouse. Its vector drawing program, CorelDRAW, can perform any drawing feat you can think of with ease and accuracy. Its other programs and utilities, including an outstanding bit-map editor and a presentation program, round out this useful suite. The 32-bit programs are designed for Windows 95. No version is available for Windows 3.1, although prior Corel versions (3, 4, and 5) are available at reduced prices. New to the suite are several three-dimensional drawing and animation programs. (Corel Ventura, a desk-top publishing program that Corel sells separately.) This review will concentrate on CorelDRAW, the vector drawing program. On CorelDRAW 6's 4-CD package are several major programs and utilities, as well as innumerable graphic images and fonts.
The major programs in the suite are: CorelDRAW, the flagship vector-based drawing program. It has extensive text-handling and drawing features: PHOTO-PAINT, a paint and photo retouching program for bit map images; PRESENTS, a presentation program for printed and on-screen presentations; DREAM 3D, a three-dimensional illustration program; DEPTH, a three-dimensional program that lets you create special effects with text; MOTION 3D, a three-dimensional animation program; and OCR-Trace, a combination optical character recognition program and tracing program that can turn bit map images into vector images. The suite has some useful utilities: FontMaster, font management; CAPTURE, a screen capture; MultiMedia Manager, image management; and MEMO, to insert notes and bit map images into any program that supports OLE 2; SCRIPT, to automate tasks in CorelDRAW and PHOTO-PAINT.
Installation. The minimum requirements are a 486DX with 8 megs of RAM and a CD-ROM drive. Corel recommends a 66DX2, 16 megabytes of RAM, a super VGA monitor with 256 color display and a double-speed CD reader. The full installation requires 185 MB of disk space. If you follow the custom installation and install only what you need (I suggest CorelDRAW, PHOTO-PAINT, OCR-Trace, FontMaster, and all the symbols), it will take about 80 MB. As with most programs, the more memory and hard disk space the better. You might want to pick up some of the 16 MB SIMMs and 2+ GB hard drives that keep dropping in price. The installation was typical of Windows 95 products. You insert the CD-ROM, select the configuration you want, and wait about 10 minutes while the installation program does its work. Although you can still get the program on 3½ inch diskettes, you'll spend a lot of time shuffling the 50 diskettes in and out of your drive.
Documentation. Corel's printed documentation is good, but terseconsisting of one moderate-size volume. The book explains how to use CorelDRAW by explaining useful drawing projects such as creating a logo, calendar, and brochure. This tutorial approach is followed in the printed documentation for the other programs. The on-line documentation is well written and fairly comprehensive. It contains tutorial and reference information in the much improved Windows 95 help system.
Features of CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW keeps its great user interface of roll-ups (dialog boxes that remain active and on the screen until you remove them) and tool bars and adds the Windows 95 features of long file names, right-button menus, wizards, property sheets, and direct links to e-mail and fax. This 32-bit program has increased precision (down to 0.1 micron accuracy) and virtual work spaces up to 150 by 150 feet. You get several more roll-ups and can now float and configure tool bars. You can also customize tool properties. For example, you can set the default property of an object to include its fill, rather than its outline, making it easier to select and manipulate objects.
CorelDRAW improves on existing features, making it easier to fit text to a path, zoom an image, and use powerclip (placing one or more objects inside another). Welding (joining their outline paths at points where they intersect), intersecting (creating an object the shape of the area common to two or more overlapping objects), and trimming (removing the area common to overlapping objects) have been moved to a new roll-up. They have been improved by allowing you to leave the original objects intact. The lens feature, which provides transparency, magnification, color filtering, color adding, etc., has been improved. You can now freeze the area within the lens (it remains even if you move it) and change the viewpoint of the lens.
CorelDRAW finally lets you open more than one document at a time and see multiple views of a single document. It adds a new spiral tool, a new node-edit roll-up, and a great polygon tool. To create a polygon, you simply enter the number of points; in the past you had to draw a rectangle, convert it to curves, and then add nodes. For more information go to http://www.corel.com.ca.
Larry Dybala is a long-time HAL-PC member who is active in the Windows Publishing, Corel, Electronic Forms, and Internet SIGs. He works at Transco (Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company) as a technical communicator specializing in on-line publications and forms. You can contact him at lwd@hal-pc.org and view his web page at http://hal-pc.org/~lwd/.
Micrografx ABC Graphics Suite 95
The tag line for this feature-rich package might be "Power for Pennies". Although there are six individual packages in the Suite, each one works in concert with the others. It is designed as an integrated graphics package for Microsoft's Office Suite, but this must not deter your consideration if you use another "suite". It is available only on CD and installs without a hitch - 35 megs for the typical install and 80 megs for a full install. The package says the minimum system requirement is a 486DX/33 with 8 megs of RAM. I'd bump that up to a 486DX/66 and 16 megs of RAM, which is more typical for Win95 software. The manual is slim, direct, and useful. It is organized by function. (Be careful how many fonts you request, or the program will install all 250+ of them!) Of the six packages, I'll emphasize the illustration program, Designer 6.0, because this article is on that category of software...and that's the only reason. The learning curve is reasonable, especially for a higher end graphics package. A useful feature, and one I've not seen elsewhere, is its support of the MS Office "binder" concept in which various graphic components are collected into one file to conveniently store, print, or distribute them. This is one method to integrate WinWord or other documents that support OLE 2 - drag and drop has now become a standard feature. When you install the Suite, it creates a "shortcut bar" in the various MS Office Suite programs, which virtually eliminates the old, tedious "copy, clipboard, paste" method.
The ABC Graphics Suite 95 includes Designer 6, the image edit/paint program Picture Publisher 6, interactive web graphics creator QuickSilver and a companion program for both the `net and print media, Instant 3D, ABC FlowCharter 6 for diagramming data, and ABC Media Manager 6 for managing not only the 30K pieces of supplied clip art, but graphics from other sources.
Designer 6 is a full-featured illustration program that, like other parts of the Suite, can be accessed from the MS Office Suite programs. With Designer you can create original artwork and manipulate the graphics/clip art supplied on your CD using Media Manager and add text (straight line or on some type of curve). The Blend tool, amongst may other tools, can change the visual characteristics and create a graphic - then just drag it to your letter or spreadsheet. You will be working in a vector image environment. You can export in 25 formats and import any of 38 different graphic formats, including AutoCad files. For this version, the ability to wrap text along a path is vastly improved and what might be ordinary to some is great for me - it can share the spell checker from WinWord! Several of the more advanced features are significantly enhanced for this version: autotracing of an image and native and Adobe color EPS support plus the capability to make EPS color separations. Designer has all the typical tools to create polygons, squares, and other such drawn shapes which can be colored or use various creative fill patterns from those supplied or modified by you. You can also distort, reshape, or resize graphics you have created, very quickly. For most features I found the tools handy and quick to learn. Obviously, if you are creating a four-color EPS graphic you must know something about EPS and how it will be reproduced. Other than that, as you learn more about the program, you’ll find additional uses for various features. Picture Publisher 6 is a rival to Photoshop and serves virtually the same purpose. Don’t think it is too advanced for your use. You may not use the Kodak color precision management and manipulation tools frequently, but the power is still there. It is used primarily for editing an image and creating paint graphics. That is, you can change parts of the image's colors, or contrasts, or make color separations, or make transparent GIFs for your web page, or remove a background from your photo. Of course, it is OLE 2 compliant.
The ABC FlowCharter 6 is a direct and sophisticated way to communicate data and information visually. But don't think of it simply as another charting program since it contains many more features than the name suggests. Two things to know about FlowCharter: it is OLE 2 compliant and it supports VBX controls - oh yes, to customize your communication, more than 400 ready-made objects are supplied. You will find such features as the DataAnalyzer very helpful along with its associated "Wizard".
To manage the many thousands of graphics supplied plus others you have on hand, use ABC Media Manager. You can search for a particular graphic by name or keyword and simply drag it into an application; or create categories of graphics.
Now for the visually intensive software. For very good measure, Micrografx has included both Instant 3D and QuickSilver. Instant 3D creates 3D objects and text virtually instantly as well as if you change the background texture or the lighting. Use it for either print media or on the Web. QuickSilver creates interactive Web graphics and is actually an "applet" and plug-in for your Web browser (Netscape 2 or Explorer 3).
This is an ideal package for the small office/home office and it is "network" aware for the corporate environment. What's not to like? The graphics/clip art manual is on the ordinary side. The illustrations were somewhat small, monochrome, and the reproduction quality was not up to the same standard as the software. Second, you have only 30 days of free tech support (via a toll call). It is my experience that for most tech support calls you'll receive good advice from knowledgeable people (call during non-prime hours). The retail price for the full package is $299 and the version/competitive upgrade price is $149. For more information call 1-800/676-3110 or http://www.micro-grafx.com.
Charles W. Evans is a HAL-PC member who may be contacted at cevans@hal-pc.org.
Illustrator 4.0 could not be made available for review. Adobe is in the process of completing an upgrade. Obviously, it would be a disservice to members to review a product that will be soon upgraded. I wanted members to know that Illustrator is also available for their consideration and is one of the pioneer illustration/drawing packages and one of the major packages on the market. For more information on this product, go to http://www.adobe.com and look for Illustrator page.
Editor
Powerful 32-bit internet graphics. A fast, intuitive and creative graphics program for Novice and Power User alike! CorelXara represents a noticrably powerful software package that produces sophisticated graphics, quickly. These graphics are suitable for either print media, multimedia, video and/or Web graphics. Although one first notices the speed of redraws, fill patterns, etc., you will immediately notice the very high graphic resolution on the screen. Xara works internally at more than 15K dots/inch. This allows both editing/creating the finest details of a drawing. The anti-aliasing takes care of pixelation ("jaggies") often seen in bit mapped graphics. The result is very clear and crisp looking pictures. Speed and rendering qualities are impressive! As with all Corel products, we have an abundant amount of clip art (10K+ images), 500 or more photographs, 250 textures, and, of course, more fonts than one could reasonably use. CorelXara needs to add Photoshop Plug In filter capability.
Xara handles bit mapped and vector graphics with equal ease. This is a real strong point! The user interface is friendly and intuitive. For the novice, the learning curve would be quite acceptable. Xara will not replace, nor is it meant to replace, image editing programs like Adobe Photoshop or Micrografx Picture Publisher. It does, however, create fades and textures more easily than image editing programs. Xara can do this because the transparent feature is "live" and unlimited. Scanned images can be manipulated with the filter effects and color correction features. Couple this with a zoom of up to 25,000%, support for JPEGs, transparent GIFs and you will create exceptional graphics for Web pages.
The Blend tool provides the capability to graduate or step one object onto another a type of morphing technique. Using the Mold tool you can quickly reshape an object to one of the five standard "envelops" or perspectives. Each is drag `n drop capable. You can also create your own custom "moulds". Another positive feature is Xara's quick response to your commands. CorelXara saves files in its proprietary, compressed format. These files are about 10-15% of the size of a typical illustration file.
You should run Xara on a typical Win95 or NT system. It can be loaded into a Win 3.x system with a fast CPU and at least eight megs of RAM. Sixteen megs of RAM and a faster CPU is better! A CD reader is required for installation and access to artwork. For more information go to http://www.corel.com.ca. The independent Xara site is at http://www.xara.com.
Gill Boyd, a HAL-PC member, is a Computer Consultant & Speaker, Leader of the "How To Build or Buy a PC" SIG and VP-Programs.
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