Sarah Sammis

January 8, 2002

Corel Suite 10 brings four more graphics programs to OS X running natively. CorelDraw is a vector drawing program. Photo-Paint is a bit-map editor. R.A.V.E. is a graphics animation program. Graphic Utility is designed to convert files between programs and for capturing screen shots.

This Suite for all its impressive sounding package does not behave as elegantly as two of Corel's recent purchases, namely, Painter (now branded under Procreate) and Bryce. Ideally the pieces that make up the Corel Suite should be revamped to perform as well as these other two programs.

Photo-Paint:
Photo-Paint tries to present itself as a simplified and streamlined Photoshop. Although it now runs natively in OS X, it behaves sluggishly at best. The keyboard commands are not logical and there are times when the marquee gets stuck on. Another problem with Photo-Paint is how it handles layers. Rather than keeping each layer separate, one can accidentally switch between layers by clicking to close to an element in another layer. If one needs a bit map editor, I recommend either Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.

CorelDraw:
CorelDraw, the vector part of the Suite offers better performance Photo-Paint but is still sluggish and awkward to use. Simple tasks like controlling the line color versus fill color are hidden in separate pallets, rather than under one joint pallet. A side program to CorelDraw that is also included is Trace. It can trace bitmapped images and turn them into Vectors. This tiny program is by far the most entertaining piece of the Suite, but not worth the price tag for the entire bundle.

R.A.V.E.:
xxxxxx.

Graphic Utility:
xxxxxx.

System Requirements

Copyright 2002, Sarah Sammis