[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
First of all i'm really happy that you might be interested in creating tools for Corel Draw. I'd love to see your Stipplism being introduced to Draw. I use it a lot in Illustrator however I prefer Draw over illustrator so i'm basically creating artwork in Corel, then copy it to Ai, use stipplism, and then import back to Corel. Having it natively in Corel would be perfect for me. I believe that Corel users would much appreciate other vector effects, sort of ones you can achieve via Vectoraster (unfortunatelly Mac only software). Of course there is Pointilizer within Draw but it's a child's toy when compared to possibilities of Vectoraster.
Thank you Animisiewasz - and as per Ariel's response, apologies for the delay.
Interesting to read about Stippilism being on your "want" list. It's actually something that could be performed remotely on our Astui service server, which would benefits users from the processor overhead normally associated with this process.
Regardless, it's something that I can see would be of use in the current CorelDraw userbase.
It's a relatively unusual tool for us in that it's purely "F/X" biased, whereas we tend to develop more generic vector creation and editing tools.
As a side-note, what is your - and others - method of transferring artwork to/from Illustrator? Most transfer methods can be destructive for vector workflows as dynamic elements are typically made static, for example rounded corners. We have vector processing tools that can assist here, so perhaps the first thing would be to ensure a good bridge between the two apps? No design app should persuade a user to work in isolation (especially Illustrator!).
To tell the truth i mostly use Illustrator as a bridge to get my vectors from Corel into Indesign or Photoshop via clipboard copy or do the same thing other way around. It's much quicker then exporting to Ai/PDF from Draw. There are some problems though: when you copy a filled path from Corel and paste it into Illustrator, color values are changed (colors look similiar but values are different and it works only in RGB). Then if you copy a path from Illustrator and paste it (using "paste special" command) back to Corel, color values are as they should be (but RGB only) however objects are larger (you need to scale them down to 84,7% to have original size). If there were a tool that would allow me to easily copy objects back and forth, remaining all attributes (color, size etc) it would be great. There were a macro for doing this for previous versions of Draw but i've never had a chance to give it a go. Besides that i use Illustrator for various vector effects that i can't easily achieve in Draw, like roughen distortion or vector bevel. Of course when you import/paste those into Draw they're no longer non destructive/dynamic, so i keep a saved Ai file just in case i need to make any changes and then import it once again.