CorelDraw 9.0 geared even more toward professional jobs

CorelDraw 9.0 geared even more toward professional jobs

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Few software vendors can match the discipline by
which Corel Corporation releases its flagship graphics
applications, CorelDraw. Almost every year it has had a new
version. Recently, delivered to my home address by Fedex, I got
CorelDraw Version 9.0, the latest upgrade of this very popular
package on the Windows side of the graphics computing world.

I have generally been following the evolution of this program
since quite early on in its history -- perhaps even before it
released Version 3.0 for Windows 3.0 in 1992, although in the
last two or three years I have not really produced any graphics
work with it. However, the first impression I got after
installing it on a ThinkPad i Series -- with an ample 64 MB of
RAM -- was that it clearly was tailored more for professional
use. It has a cleaner, more customizable screen.

For example, as you can see in the accompanying picture, you
can set the workspace to resemble Adobe Illustrator's. Now my
good friend Pak Harry, a faithful Macintosh user who runs a
desktop publishing and printing company, will no longer have the
excuse to avoid using CorelDraw on his PC whenever one of his
customers sends him a file created from Windows-based CorelDraw.

In terms of drawing tools, you may not find any real
compelling reason to upgrade from Version 8. That's to be
expected in the case of such a mature product as CorelDraw -- or
even any one of the leading word processor and spreadsheet
programs that we use today. However, if you're still using
earlier versions of CorelDraw, the US$179 upgrade is certainly
worth it.

What new features does Version 9 offer? First, in addition to
CorelSCRIPT which we can use to create macros to automate
processes in CorelDraw, we now also have Visual Basics for
Application VBA. This powerful tool allows us to develop custom
applications that meet our company's desktop publishing needs,
for example.

Another new addition is the Canto Cumulus Desktop 4.0, which
is actually a media management system that lets us manage our
digital asset-photos, pictures, drawings and other multimedia
files. The index enables us to find images, designs and movies in
a snap.

At one point, CorelDraw came with a bevy of separate programs.
Now everything is kept to the basic necessities. CorelDraw 9.0
comes with CorelTrace to convert bitmap images to vector
drawings, CorelTexture to help us create new textures by
combining up to seven different material layers, CorelCapture to
capture the screen and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Of course, CorelDraw 9.0 is accompanied by CorelPhoto-Paint 9,
which is more capable in doing what Photoshop allows us to do. In
fact, CorelPhoto-Paint's support for Photoshop Plugins has also
improved.

And, what is CorelDraw without tons of goodies? It would be
like Kampung Rambutan or Pulo Gadung bus terminal without
pickpockets. The CDs of CorelDraw 9.0 contain 25,000 clipart
images and symbols, of which 10,000 are new ones. It also
contains 1,000 TrueType and Adobe Type 1 fonts, with Euro symbols
for each of them. No rupiah symbol is available, unfortunately.
If you like stock photos, there are 1,000 of them in high
resolution.

Other features that graphics professionals will appreciate
include the job ticketing capability. This emerging technology
allows them to share, view or print a PDF file on any platform.
The job tickets give the specifications on how this should be
done, and CorelDraw 9.0 already has the support for Job Ticket
Files (JTF).

In line with this new feature, CorelDraw now also allows us to
create a PDF identical to the original file. It's like using
Adobe Acrobat Distiller. In addition to the aforementioned job
ticketing, the options include advanced text and fonts handling,
downsampling and compression options, bookmark and hyperlink
options and color management options.

Corel has also stepped in the internet direction by offering
web design tools to create animated GIF and QuickTime VR. Its
preflight feature gives out warnings of potential trouble when we
want to print our file.

As before, CorelDraw is still not a replacement for a page
layout program such as Corel Ventura or Adobe Pagemaker. However,
it will be a better choice for creating design intensive
publications, such as brochures and catalogs. Still, because of
the level of sophistication that you can achieve with your
designs, this program is definitely not for casual users. Small
business owners may have better alternatives, such as with Corel
Print Magic.

Now that Pentium III is becoming the processor of choice for
graphics workstations, does this new program require that much
power? The minimum requirement is still Pentium 133 MHz, although
Corel recommends that we have at least 64 MB of RAM to run
CorelDraw 9.0 (32 MB is the minimum). It runs on Windows 95,
Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0. No machine with Windows 3.x can
run it, unfortunately.

What should be expected in CorelDraw 10 -- or perhaps
CorelDraw 2000 -- is the capability to publish directly on the
web. And I'm sure Corel Corporation, which has just announced its
return to the black after a series of disappointing quarters in
terms of revenue, will do just that. That is where we're all
heading for.