Illustrate & Design Software |
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A Complete Office Package
In this package Micrografx offers a nicely integrated application's interface for drawing, illustration, painting, photo and image editing, flowcharting, and clip art management. Its combination of features, speed, and ease of use makes it convenient for the occasional user as well as the experienced pro. All the Windows 95 applications are 32-bit and share a Microsoft Office compatible interface. The Suite consists of five applications and a utility.
Designer 7, the vector drawing application, includes object-creation and editing features, text handling capabilities, and more. Yet it is surprisingly easy to learn and use. Context-sensitive right-mouse button menus and tool bars with buttons that change with the tool selected make learning and operation quite easy. Small fly-outs give a brief description of the button function when the cursor lands on them. And if that weren't enough, a convenient, floating Hint window displays information about the tools and features as you use them. It can be locked onto the main window frame as a toolbar to keep it out of the way. Once you become familiar with the program, you can hide it. (More about Designer later in this review.)
Picture Publisher 7 lets you retouch photographs and edit bit map images illustrations using retouching tools and various photo editing effects. Version 7 added some terrific special effects wizards and a noticeably improved and useful "Command Center" which allows selective undos - by level if you wish.
Simply 3D 2 helps you create animated 3D objects and your own 3D text. You can build an animated scene by dragging objects, lights and animations from a visual catalog and dropping them into the scene. Save animated GIFs and use the VRML export to create 3D animations and a virtual reality capability for Web sites. This is a very sound, basic 3D program.
QuickSilver 3 works with Designer 7 to create interactive Active-X control vector graphics for the Web. Users must have the appropriate plug-in for their browser, but it is available for downloading at no cost from the Micrografx web site.
FlowCharter 7 creates sophisticated logic flow and other business diagrams, from simple organizational charts to large, wall-sized process maps, within a drag-and-drop environment with many ready-to-use tools. (See separate review of FlowCharter 7.)
Media Manager 7 is a graphic file management utility which provides format-independent drag-and-drop access to over 30,000 clip art, photo, and diagramming symbols that come with the suite in three different CDs.
The Project Wizard helps beginners get going with a drawing project, including banners, calendars, certificates, diagrams, forms, Web graphics, and signs. You can also create your own project templates, which can include master pages, clip art collections, and help files.
Designer 7: The Core
A significant Designer 7 feature is its speed - both in loading and execution. I evaluated it on a 486/100 with 20MB of RAM, and it performs quite well. It also incorporates powerful new features.
Two unique additions are Megagons and Curvygons which can easily draw and edit with the polygon draw tool. With these special drawing tools you can create impressive geometric patterns and illustrations for creative applications. Extrusion capabilities allow you to add a 3-D look quite easily. You can add lighting effects with a single light source. Dynamic Blending generates dynamic blend objects rather than storing multiple objects. If you modify any part of the blended object, the entire blend is automatically regenerated. You can, however, generate a non-dynamic blend series of objects. Improved Bit map Image Handling allows you to resize, rotate, skew, flip, and warp bit map images. With the Effects Browser you can apply over 50 different visual effects, including artistic effects, adjust color saturation and contrast, blur images in various ways, despeckle, and apply textures such as embossing, engraving, and splattering. You can also convert vector objects to bit map images. The very fast and easy to use Trace quickly and accurately converts bit-map images to vector-based graphics which then can be manipulated with the standard draw tools. This is an impressive addition to the existing range of tools. Conical Gradients have been added to the linear, radial, and square gradient fills together with 600 new vector fill patterns and faster preview. Improved Text Handling makes working with Freeform and Block text easier, and simplifies working with flowing text, text within a shape, and text on a path. Selecting text is a bit awkward and using the Text dialog box to determine font and size does not work well - simply highlighting text will not necessarily present any more information than the default size and font. Connect-a-Draw allows you to connect easily one object to another as you draw, without snap points. Predefined Warps make warping quick and easier, while still allowing you to do your own warping if you wish. Smart Colorization lets you change the fill color of an object group and retain the hue, or color gradations, of the original fill color. Especially useful when working with clip art, it lets you change an object's color without losing color shades. Duplicate and Clone Commands make it easier to create multiple and layered objects. Modify Commands allow you to separate objects into parts or join various objects to make your work easier, and some of these commands work on both vector and bit map images. The new Masking commands make it easier to use the shape of one object to determine what parts of another object or bit map image are displayed.
Web page design: you will appreciate Designer's ability to estimate how long it will take to download a web page - based on typical connect conditions - and using different graphic file formats.
Integration with Microsoft's Office: The Suite is compatible which means you have the capability to "share" data, information, etc. between the Suite and Office - including the spell checker! However, the interface is not always standard and will require some re-learning.
Bugs: Operation was always very straightforward, except for the Hint window. When one tries to move the Hint window to the right edge of the screen to move it out of the way, the screen layout suddenly changes. This is not true for the floating palette window. Although Designer 7 operated quite well overall, I did have a few problems with it. One occurred when I was trying to adjust text on a curved path. The program executed an "illegal operation" and was terminated by Windows. Another occurred when double clicking once on a bit map image to enter the image edit mode. Also, the repel command does not work cleanly, and I had to repeat it to get the desired results. Periodically, during program loading, it would close to a warm boot status. Text handling is still not as smooth as it should be.
A 409-page tutorial book and on-line documentation do a very good job of introducing you to the basics, but they lack the depth of previous Micrografx tutorials. The on-line documentation is excellent, but a paper manual would be very helpful. Ironically, the Suite comes with a 723-page Media Guide (catalog) on three CDs, although Media Manager 7 is designed for that purpose.
Summary: the Suite is feature-rich for your money ($359.95 for the full version; $149.95 for the upgrade version). There are other more sophisticated programs, but Graphics Suite 2 will fit the job well, except for the most demanding tasks. In my opinion, the Suite offers a good balance of power and simplicity of operation with ease of learning, and would be an excellent buy once Micrografx fixes the bugs which cause occasional program instability. The novice might find Micrografx's Windows Draw, for about $50, a suitable alternative that will fit their needs nicely. For more info go to http://www.micrografx.com.
Martín Rubio, a HAL-PC member, is president of Martín Rubio & Associates, an Internet web site development firm. He maybe contacted at mrubio@wt.net.
A Drawing Program with Power
Corel has released another version of their popular drawing program, CorelDraw 7. Corel has kept only the key components and utilities in this package: CorelDraw—the famous vector drawing program - Photo-Paint—the bitmap component - CorelDream 3D—the three-dimensional modeling and rendering program.
Gone are: CorelPresents and Corel Motion 3D. Most of the utilities, including Capture (used to capture screen images) and OCR Trace (used to convert text and trace graphics) remain. Others, such as Scan (used to scan images directly in CorelDraw) have been added. All work very well. I miss the utility for handling font groups.
Speed
The good news about the program is that its speed has been much improved. I have found this to be true when working with drawings that have been loaded. Adding a transparency, fill, etc., is much faster than in CorelDraw 6. However, on my Pentium 90 with 24 MB of RAM, the program and graphic files loaded much more slowly than in CorelDraw 6. It took nearly twice as long to load CorelDraw 7 and ten times as long to load the graphic that I was using in the test.
Accuracy
You can make 0.1 micron incremental measurements and zoom up to 400,000%. Color matching has been improved by including Kodak Digital Science Color Management System. To help transfer native CDR files to other machines or service bureaus that do not have the same fonts that you used, CorelDraw uses TrueDoc font embedding technology from Bitstream.
New and improved Tools
The best new feature is the new property bar. Including all of this information on the property bar has allowed CorelDraw to streamline its user interface and to eliminate many of the roll-ups. The property bar is a context-sensitive command bar that displays different buttons and options depending on the tool or object you select. For example, when you click on the zoom tool, you get controls for zooming in and out and direct access to the view manager from the property bar. The property bar can be customized by users.
CorelDraw now has a full-screen print preview and new zoom, pan, and navigation controls. You can turn a view of the printable area on or off to help in positioning objects within the page. A new natural pen tool can be used with a pressure-sensitive tablet to sketch drawings.
The text tool is now a single tool for both artistic and paragraph text. It works closely with the property bar to make working with text easier than ever. The writing tools, including the spell checker and thesaurus, have been improved, and a new grammar checker has been added. You can add drop caps, fit text to a path and edit the text directly, align paragraph text vertically as well as horizontally, and wrap paragraph text inside objects.
It is much easier to apply transparencies, blends, and fountain fills—you now do it interactively. Transparencies are made more realistic by gradating them. The blend roll-up has a new acceleration tab that displays controls that let you accelerate the immediate colors and objects in a blend. Colors move more quickly through the color spectrum and objects appear to accelerate toward the start or end objects. The interactive fill tool includes an onscreen representation of the fill, making on-the-fly adjustments easy.
The extrude roll-up now includes a bevel tab and a rotation tab; three light sources can be added for more realistic 3D effects. CorelDraw now has color styles. You can link colors and change the color of complex objects by changing a base color.
Bitmap Features
Both vector and bitmap drawings can be handled with ease within CorelDraw. You no longer need to go to Photo-Paint or another bitmap program for minor image editing. You can convert a vector image to a bitmap in a single step and apply bitmap effects borrowed from Photo-Paint like sharpen, emboss, and add noise. CorelDraw can use all plug-in filters from Photo-Paint and Photoshop on any bitmap in CorelDraw.
Web Features
Drawing programs are now including more Internet features—CorelDraw has plenty, though applying them is not as intuitive as in some other programs. You can export to the common GIF, JPEG, and PNG graphic formats and also to the HTML text format. The new convert to bitmap option lets you convert your vector artwork to a bitmap and modify it with plug-in filters before you export it to a GIF or other graphic format. The drawing program includes features for creating transparent, anti-aliased, and interlaced GIFs. An Internet toolbar is also included to allow you to assign URLs to any object. You can publish documents using its Barista technology directly in Java.
Photo-Paint
Photo-Paint, the bitmap editing program in CorelDraw 7, also benefits from the new property bar, making it much easier to use than in the past. There is a new object transparency brush that allows you to make a flexible adjustment to transparencies. Magic scissors create masks based on color tolerance and user-defined areas. The Image sprayer allows you to create collages using images, colors, and textures. There is a scrapbook that you can drag and drop images and objects into. Also, it has Photoshop-compatible formats, export, and filter plug-in support.
Dream 3D
Corel Dream 3D sports a multi-window workspace in which concurrent views of the top, bottom, left, right, front, and back of the 3D object can be shown at once. It has a new wizard with templates for logos, indoor/outdoor, and photo-studio environments. It can export drawings to Internet VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language).
Documentation
The documentation provided with CorelDraw 7 is very good. The written documentation consists of three comprehensive manuals—two cover the programs, and the other one references the extensive collection of clipart, fonts and templates that is included.
Extensive online help is also available. Of course, you have the regular easy-to-use Windows 95 help. In addition, there is a new Corel Tutor that provides step-by-step instructions on how to perform different tasks. For more info go to http://www.corel.com.
Larry Dybala, a HAL-PC member, is active in the Windows Publishing/CorelDraw SIG. He is a technical communicator at Transco in Houston and can be contacted at .
Seamless Integration with Siblings
This is the first version of Adobe Illustrator written for Windows 95 and NT and should be released by the time you read this review. Its features are essentially the same as in the Macintosh version. The user interface of both versions is the same, and users can exchange files and work in cross-platform environments. A late beta version of the program was used for this review. Illustrator 7.0 meets all the logo requirements for Windows 95 and NT, which means it supports such actions as context sensitive menus, long file names, OLE 2 support and it is a 32-bit program.
Illustrator is a complete and easy-to-use vector drawing program. It is nearly an institution among Mac users, just as is CorelDraw among PC users. Illustrator has been behind CorelDraw in sales and features until now.
Illustrator offers improved file handling. It can now import CorelDraw 5.0, 6.0 files, but not Corel 7.0 files. It can also import and export nearly every other file format including Photoshop, EPS, GIF, PNG and JPEG.
There are dramatic speed improvements in this version when displaying and working with large raster images on-screen. An imaging-linking feature helps keep file sizes small. Illustrator uses an image caching technique that lets it display the minimum image information necessary to preview the image at a chosen screen resolution without loss of image quality. This improves the image display time.
New and improved features abound. There is a new gradients palette that can be used to quickly create and smooth graduated blends between two or more colors or even tints. The new layers palette allows you to create, delete, modify, show, hide, lock, and move layers, as well as choose options that affect how layers print. This is handy for complex drawings. It helps you organize those hard-to-work-on images.
There are character and paragraph palettes in which you can precisely control typography. There is a new vertical text tool that allows you to create vertical text on a path and scale it in the same way provided for horizontal text formatting. This tool allows individual character or word manipulation within a vertical text block. You can automatically check spelling and search and replace text by matching words or fonts. And you have 200 levels of undo.
A strong point of Illustrator has been its ability to work on paths (also known as curves). The new pathfinder filters (which were in the previous Mac version) make it even easier to work on pathways. There are ten pathfinder filters including combining, subdividing, isolating parts, unite, exclude, divide, and front-minus filters. The new Reshape tool lets a user modify the shape or any path without regard to the number of anchor points.
Another handy new feature is the ability for Illustrator to take a natively created vector image and then transform it into a bitmap image. This allows you to use your favorite photo-editing program and apply interesting creative filters to it. Illustrator can take the newly transformed bitmap image and apply Photoshop filters (plug-ins) to it. You can distort images; create impressionistic, mosaic, blurred and other effects; and produce a range of dazzling effects. You can now edit any editable EPS file created by any program that complies with Postscript Level 1 standards. It also takes advantage of new Adobe PostScript® 3 capabilities, delivering smooth shading of gradients for richer transitions between colors and faster printing.
Previously, if you wanted to print color separations, you needed Adobe Separator. Now you can make color separations and print them with Illustrator. You can also apply traps and change standard colors to four-color separations, CMYK.
Illustrator now combines standard tools, such as the selection, pen, and oval tools, and special plug-in tools, such as the star, spiral, and polygon tools, into one accessible palette. The palettes are tabbed. Users can quickly display options on-screen without interrupting their work. They can drag and drop palettes between containers to create customized palettes.
It should be noted that Adobe's goal is to combine its core graphics applications in an effort to unify the interfaces of Illustrator, PageMaker, and Photoshop. Version 7.0's palettes, tool boxes, menus, and keyboard shortcuts match those in Photoshop. Illustrator supports drag-and-drop. For example, users can drag and drop artwork from Illustrator to other Adobe programs, including Photoshop and PageMaker.
For those who deal with web graphics or in the exchange of documents over the Internet, Illustrator 7.0 has something for you. It is fully compatible with Adobe Acrobat and supports its Portable Document Format (.PDF) files. The Windows version of Adobe Illustrator can now open and edit .PDF files and can export illustrations in .PDF format. You can drag-and-drop artwork to HTML editors and can embed URLs to create image maps. This version includes support for RGB color to achieve predictable display colors.
Also included is PostScript 3 support for smooth shading. In the beta version it did not operate as well as I expect it to be in the final version. PS 3 implementation in other environments is not expected soon. Smooth shading renders gradient blends at the output device's resolution to produce superior output.
Etc. Although not specific to Illustrator, the new AdobePS printer driver and menu is comprehensive and makes an unusual range of output/print features available. Like other graphic programs, your program CD includes more than 1,000 pieces of clip art, stock photos, templates, textures, etc. The Digital Art Gallery is interesting and you may choose from among 300 Type 1 (postscript) fonts…but don't choose them all!
Along with Illustrator's direct support of ideograph characters (e.g., Japanese, Chinese and Korean); however, the real feature is a strong support of Vertical Text creation. Using the new type tool, you can create vertical text blocks and even along a path, place vertical text. This feature includes both scaling and individual character rotations.
This upgrade is the most substantial upgrade in years for Adobe Illustrator for Windows. The new features place in line with its counterpart on the Mac side. Now Adobe has a product to compete with CorelDraw and Macromedia Freehand. Adobe has done a fine job in integrating the new tools and features. The only thing lacking is multi-page capability. I would suggest that those who create graphics and illustrations strongly consider this program as part of your toolbox. There is special upgrade pricing for Adobe customers and those with selected competitive products. For more info go to http://www.adobe.com.
Andy Chan is a HAL-PC member and owner of Alpha & Omega Graphics, Inc., an Adobe Authorized Service Bureau in Houston. Contributing to this review is Wing Tse, his Production Manager. .
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