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.