Adobe has dominated the graphics world for years. The whole world of graphics? No, a number of products continue to bravely resist by stunting with functionality and often also the price. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is one such product and one of the longest running in this highly competitive market.
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2020
price
€ 719 (or € 349 annual subscription)
Language
Dutch
OS
Minimum Windows 7, macOS 10.13
Website
www.coreldraw.com 8 Score 80 
- Pros
- Choice of license or subscription
- Lots of innovation in mac version
- Functionality
- Negatives
- Collaboration function
- PaintShop Pro better photo editing
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite (CDGS) consists of namesake CorelDRAW for illustrations and page layout and Photo-PAINT for photo editing. Although certainly also suitable for online and digital distribution, the functionality focuses largely on working with images and text for, for example, an advertisement, brochure or infographic. The options for this have been expanded and are supplemented with Power-Trace for converting bitmap images to vector format without loss of quality, and a light version of Corel AfterShot 3 for HDR and RAW photo editing.
New and improved
The main new or improved features are non-destructive effects in Photo-PAINT, use of freely variable OpenType fonts in CorelDRAW, shadow effects on the inside of objects, and multi-level lists and bullets in texts.
Corel also praises art filters with which a drawing, photo or part thereof can be converted into the style of popular art movements and the possibility to apply an edit elsewhere as well. The Mac version of CDGS, which requires a separate license, also offers this update, but adds support for dark mode, use of macOS functions such as the Touch Bar for text and formatting functions, and use of an iPad as second screen.
Collaborate
Since collaborating on a design is especially important in creative professions, it is unfortunate that Corel only reserves the new collaboration options, such as sharing a product for review or editing and adding comments, to everyone who subscribes CDGS. If you prefer to pay once for the suite, an additional license is required (89 euros).
Inevitably, a product with the functionality and history of CDGS has a learning curve, but the wide range of help in text and especially online video means that even beginners will quickly be productive with this version.
Conclusion
Upgrading to this 2020 version is especially rewarding for Mac users and Windows users who have skipped one or a few releases. Those who have never used CorelDRAW Graphics Suite before should use the trial version first and compare it with competing products. If it mainly concerns photo editing, Corel also has a more extensive photo editor in-house with PaintShop Pro than Photo-PAINT.
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