Interest in third party tools for CorelDRAW?

[This is being posted to Mac, Windows and app forums as it relates to both - apologies for the duplication]

Hi,

When Corel announced that CorelDRAW was returning to macOS, I was personally super-excited to see this for several key reasons (which I wrote about in this article: CorelDRAW is gracing macOS again - and why this is important).

This is not an advert, but I feel it's an important brief background. Astute Graphics is known in the Adobe Illustrator world, since 2006, as developers of plugins for professional users. Many of the world's largest brands rely on us as well as many, many freelance designers and everyone inbetween. We serve varied sectors including branding, architecture, fashion, sign making, gaming and more.

The tools we currently produce for Adobe Illustrator allow users to gain very high-level control of Bezier profile (drawing and editing), positioning, effects, stroke variable widths and more.

Some of this functionality will already be in CorelDRAW. But what core drawing and editing functionality are Corel customers seeking that they feel would be suitable via a 3rd party option. And yes, I acknowledge everything should be there natively in the single purchased core product, but reality doesn't always allow this.

Finally, in Astui, we now also have the building blocks that allow us to produce much more advanced tools and functions. These include Boolean (add, subtract, divide vector shapes), Offset Paths, Variable Stroke Widths and many more. Even though well-developed technologies such as Boolean and Offset are within Corel - hence it being the key competitor to Illustrator - it's essential to have full access to these underlying technologies in order to build exciting tools such as Long Shadow, Path Reshape and more.

Excitingly, Astui can be deployed as a web API allowing online tools such as CorelDRAW.app to benefit. Equally, having this toolbox allows Astute Graphics to build new tools quicker and based on 7+ years of technical development.

So - are extensions applicable to a wide range of users welcome to Corel users as they are in Adobe's world?

I'd love to understand what you think,

Nick

Parents Reply
  • That's really useful info, - appreciated!

    Live Effects in Adobe Illustrator are a long-standing feature and really powerful. I personally feel that tools should be as dynamic (non-destructive) as possible allowing a designer to make adjustments at a later stage.

    As this is relatively new in CD, it's understandable that it won't yet be at its full potential. That's the sort of area we'd be very interested in working on.

    Our first plugin for Illustrator back in 2006 (and many updates since) is Phantasm which allows for live or absolute (ie. destructive) color adjustments such as Hue/Sat, Curves, Levels, etc., plus vector Halftones. This is a perfect example of where live or non-destructive comes into its own; tweaking colors to suit at any stage gives huge workflow advantages.

    Visual effects generally benefit for live atributes. "Playing" with artwork leads to much greater creativity.

    Bitmap based effects are fun, but I would suggest that true vector live adjustments play to CD's core strengths.

    But I'm still speaking theoretically. You will all have vastly more experience of CD in action, hence why I really appreciate all comments and thoughts. Please keep them flowing!

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