Coreldraw 12 Graphics Suite

This is one of those upgrades that will either grab you straight away or leave you wondering what all the fuss is about.

Like its predecessors, the Coreldraw Graphics Suite is a collection of graphics software that contains three main applications. There's the veteran Coreldraw for vector graphics work, Photo-Paint for photo-editing and the often overlooked Rave, which is a good program for creating web animations.

All three programs have been upgraded in the latest version of the Graphics Suite, yet the list of new features is surprisingly brief. That's because the main new feature - the Smart Drawing tool - is designed to introduce a new way of working, rather than padding out a list of features.

It is similar to the freehand brush or pen provided by many vector graphics programs, but instead of simply recording your brush strokes on screen, the Smart Drawing tool has a degree of intelligence built in. This enables it to recognise the shapes you're drawing and automatically convert them into smooth curves and straight lines in order to create a more polished appearance.

You could use the program's existing freehand tools, of course, but creating freehand drawings on a computer screen is always tricky. Drawing accurately with a mouse is very difficult and even with a good graphics tablet it only takes a slight shake of the hand to cause a glaring error.

Using the new Smart Drawing tool helps to eliminate these errors and enables even amateur artists to create smoothly finished vector artwork.

There's also an option to adjust the smoothing level, so you can turn the smoothing right down to give your artwork a rough, hand-drawn appearance.

The Smart Drawing tool works pretty well, although you'll probably get better results from it if you're using a graphics tablet. Your appreciation of this tool will also depend on whether or not you tend to create a lot of hand-drawn artwork.

Business users who just use Coreldraw for creating simple business graphics may never feel the need to explore this tool, but more adventurous designers who like to create their own artwork will probably use it a lot.

This isn't the only new feature, though. To assist in creating more technical drawings, Coreldraw 12 boasts improved snapping controls and new 'dynamic guides' that can be customised to work the way you want. You can tell the cursor to snap to specific points on nearby objects, or create guidelines that run at specific angles relative to any line or curve you select.

There's also an impressive new Eyedropper tool. As well as sampling the colours you click on, the Eyedropper can now copy object attributes, such as stroke and fill, or even the degree of rotation applied to a particular object. It's a really clever idea, and could be a major time saver when creating complex illustrations.

All these new features are also found in Rave, the animation program which is probably the least well-known of all Corel's products. These new tools make it easier to create your own graphics within Rave, but the program's strength remains its ease of use and the ability to export Flash animations. This makes it a great alternative to Flash, which is too complicated and expensive for anyone who isn't a professional web developer.

That leaves Photo-Paint, which unfortunately draws the short straw in this upgrade. Its only major new feature is the Touch-up brush. This works well enough, allowing you to quickly remove scratches and other blemishes from photographs, but by itself it makes for a pretty disappointing upgrade.

The other disappointing detail is the cost of upgrading from the previous version of the Graphics Suite. Corel has translated the US upgrade price from $179 to £179 ex VAT. But, to be fair, the full price of the complete Graphics Suite is still less than a single copy of Adobe Photoshop, so it's a good choice for any business user or technical illustrator looking for a good all-round collection of graphics tools.

Contact: Corel 01628 589 800
www.corel.co.uk

System requirements:

• Pentium II
• 256MB of Ram
• 256MB of hard disk space
• Windows 2000 or XP

Price details:
RRP: Full version: £421.82 (£359 ex VAT); Upgrade: £210.32 (£179 ex VAT)