I ventured to Adobe Illustrator due it being "industry-standard" and the massive support I could find for it on youtube and through search.
I miss corel but there are a few things I really love in Illustrator and somethings I hate.
What I like and wish draw was able to get inspired from
1. shaper tool. it's so intuitive I use it all the time. Just select multiple objects and either add them subtract them or create new shapes from them. sort of like a dynamic shape weld tool
2. be able to round any corner. this is plain awesome. draw allows rounding only it's own shapes and once they are curves they are no longer able to be rounded. in illustrator this can be done on every shape that has a corner.
3. appearance tool. allows multiple effects on the shape which can be adjusted copied etc. so suppose I have a contour/stroke I can keep on adding to it without converting it to curves (and hence not allow any adjustments)
4. asset export. why doesn't draw have this already. not only can I export each individual asset but also entire group or artboard/page. This alone is a huge time saver.
5. smooth tool. draw a wobbly shape. go over it with smooth tool. bam. your wobbly shape is no longer wobbly. this is such a great tool.
now what I miss from draw that Illusttstor needs to do
1. shortcuts are a mess in illustrator. draw has the best shortcuts and I can add as many as I want. illustrator limits customizing shortcuts significantly.
2. layers are not tied to artboards so again a huge mess. I hardly ever use layers in draw because I dont need to but illustrator without layers is impossible to manage
3. power clip. I miss you so much. illustrator clipping mask is so complicated that it just frustrates me. they dont even allow cropping images without a mask.
4. tables and formatting tools like bullets and numbering. I understand indesign has this covered but such a simple and important thing needs to be in illustrator. numbering is missed also in draw but that's a discussion for another time.
5. integration with photoshop like draw has with photo-paint. I could do simple edits in paint without opening it as a separate program. with photoshop I need to edit save and import/place.
well. these are 5 things I want in draw and 5 that I miss in draw. let me know what you think.
Myron said:2. false. Corel has a fillet docker. You can select any or all nodes and round the corners together or individually as some corners may not work out when rounded the same as others.
That is not the same thing as having "live" corners, where the radius of a fillet can be changed simply at any time in the future, or a fillet can remain constant in size even when other scaling is carried out on the shape.
When you apply a fillet in CorelDRAW, it just creates Bézier curve content to approximate the fillet. That's OK as a one-shot operation, but for some types of work, it is a vastly inferior "dead end" compared to having "live" corners.
I really, really like CorelDRAW, but I'm not fooling myself about some of the ways in which Illustrator is more capable. This is one of them.
I understand the concept of the illy way but what about doing a 1/2" corner on one corner and a 1/4" corner on another. Does illy work the same? You have to convert to outline first?
I don't have Illustrator installed right now, and I've never invested the time to try to learn it thoroughly, so I'm not going to pretend that I know all of its capabilities, and exactly what the limitations of those are (e.g., exactly what types of shapes can and cannot have "live" corners).
I have enough CAD experience, though, to appreciate software that can remember that a corner is a "live", editable corner rather than just creating a Bézier curve approximation.
As time goes by it's obvious that the only users making CorelDRAW vs Illustrator comparisons work in a narrow band of graphics.
Illustrator is a drawing program, Draw is a general graphics program. You work in graphics and buy Illustrator you'll need to buy other programs or you're screwed. You buy CorelDRAW and you can create and output almost anything in graphics.
I have use CorelDraw since version 3 back with windows 98. Corel is powerful for posters and large media, nothing else out there can come close to it.
I have some Adobe software and while it has its uses, Corel is still my choice for work.