![]() Limited MileageĬorel isn’t completely giving away the farm with CorelDraw 8 LE there are limits to this free version’s functionality. Let Us Spray In addition to a dynamic set of painting tools, Photo-Paint has an Image Sprayer with fun settings like Foliage, Nuts, Clouds, Rain Drops, and Sunflowers. As an image creation tool, however, Photo-Paint takes the prize, with Painter-like “image-spraying” abilities and a wide variety of brush shapes that are a blast to experiment with (see “Let Us Spray”). Photo-Paint’s approach to image editing is quite similar to that of Photoshop, but it can’t compete with Photoshop’s superior interface and flexible workflow. The LE version is based on the recently released 8.0.3 version of the software, and other than some minor screen redraw problems, the bugginess and slow performance that Macworld reported earlier seem to have been eliminated. The full version of Photo-Paint 8 (see Reviews, March 1999) is a sophisticated program, offering most of Photoshop’s features while adding some exciting ones of its own. The other half of the package, Photo-Paint, is a direct competitor to Adobe Photoshop. Habla Usted CorelDraw? While CorelDraw’s bezier drawing tools and Property Bar give you great control, its unique vocabulary may take some getting used to. Current FreeHand and Illustrator users would no doubt be put off by CorelDraw’s one-of-a-kind tools and strange terminology (see “Habla Usted CorelDraw?”), but there is an underlying logic to the program that should make it just as easy for a vector novice to learn as either competing program. CorelDraw’s approach to vector drawing is quite different from either of its competitors, with most activity centering around the Property Bar, a browser-like strip of buttons that changes according to the tool selected. CorelDraw for the Mac is being promoted with the familiar-sounding phrase “Draw Different,” and it’s an appropriate slogan. CorelDraw is a vector-drawing application similar in purpose to Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand. When you download CorelDraw 8 LE, what you end up with, confusingly, are two applications: CorelDraw 8 LE and Corel Photo-Paint 8 LE. By offering this much power for free, Corel redefines the concept of “value” in graphics software. What’s the catch? Well, the “LE” stands for “Limited Edition,” and this free version of CorelDraw 8 is indeed somewhat limited in comparison to the full version nonetheless, it’s still an extremely capable package. That’s right, for the time it takes you to make a 54MB download, you can own CorelDraw 8 LE. After years of being considered an also-ran in the Macintosh graphics arena, Corel has rewritten the rules of the game with a bold move: CorelDraw is now available for free. ![]()
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