Upgrades have ended but Corel support gave me a final chance to upgrade (from X8) to 2019. However, this costs AU$309.00 + AU$140 ("upgrade protection") = AU$449.00. I already have to spend AU$890 p.a. for an Adobe CC subscription and that's mandatory as all my client files are sent to me in Illustrator or Indesign. On top of that I've now got the Affinity Suite running, which is an absolute bargain at AU$80.00 per application for three apps (photo , designer and publisher, perpetual licences).
I've been using CorelDraw since the first version, so that's 31 years, but over the past decade I've only pulled it out a few times a year for special jobs - processing DXF files or doing logo designs. I still prefer Corel's curve editing approach - I love the way you can delete nodes but retain a curve shape, the right-click menus for adjusting node types etc. and a lot of the more technical aspects. Other things still give me the s**ts but I won't nit-pick all of those here. Basically I stuck with Corel as I wanted to support an alternative to Adobe, and because the package was good value with a big pile of fonts and stock imagery (available as a bulk package, not the "browse in the cloud" pain-in-the-ass that they now offer).
But then Corel (the company) started to change its attitude and is behaving like a baby-Adobe. It looks like they want to move to a subscription-style approach eventually. That's fine, but if I'm going to rent software I'll rent Adobe CC, as I can make use of Photoshop, Illustraotr, Premiere, After Effects, Dreamweaver and XD at the very least, and Photoshop absolutely kills PhotoPaint.
The final problem is this - I just can't afford to spend AU$449.00 now to get an upgrade to the 2019 version, and I've heard from these forums that CD2019 is a buggy mofo. That means if I ever want to upgrade in future I'd be looking at circa AU$900.00 to get back into CorelDraw, money that can be better spent elsewhere. It's a sad day for me, but I'm going to have to say goodbye to Corel. Maybe it's still good value if you have a shop that works only in Corel, but for me it's just an additional tool for very occasional usage and I can't justify the cost of that any more. I wonder if there are many more peeps like me who just liked having it around for odd-jobs rather than a daily mainstay?
So, goodby CorelDraw.
In one respect I wish I could say goodbye to CorelDRAW. But given I work in the sign industry and many in that field use CorelDRAW we need it on hand for the sake of opening such files accurately. Illustrator is very dodgy at opening CDR files. OTOH, I think it's utter BS that CorelDRAW refuses to open or even import CDR files made prior to version 6. For really ancient archive files in our own collection or that from another sign company it takes an older computer running something like X3 or earlier to open CDR files dating back to version 3. IMHO any current version of CorelDRAW should be able to open CDR files dating clear back to version 1.0. It is flat out UNACCEPTABLE for backward compatibility not to be maintained. As a comparison the current version of Illustrator can open 30+ year old version 1 Illustrator files.Regarding node (or anchor point) editing, the last couple or so builds of Illustrator have improved on their handling of adding or removing anchor points from a path without radically changing it. However, I strongly recommend Astute Graphics' plug-ins for Illustrator if you're not using them already. The Inkscribe, Vectorscribe and Pathscribe plug-ins (among others) are really great for drawing and editing paths. One downside: Astute Graphics has gone to a psuedo subscription approach. You pay $119 and get their entire collection of Illustrator plug-ins (18 in all) plus free updates during the next 12 months. Then you have the opportunity to renew. If you don't want to do that you can keep using the Astute Graphics plug-ins you downloaded. I really like the Astute Buddy palette since it lists a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for whatever Astute Graphics-related tool you might be using.
Yes AI does not handle complex CorelDRAW files well at all, unfortunately it handles sign work even worse. When you move to the real money makers donor walls and monuments AI just plain falls flat on its face.
Almost identical, but one subtle but sweet difference: In Photoshop, whilst still drawing a path, you can hold down "ALT" and it switches to the corner tool and you can adjust the corner type for any point in the current shape. In Illustrator this creates a new "orphan" point. Try doing this - start making a path of straight lines just by clicking points, then, whilst still in the "drawing mode" for that path, try going back and turning one of those hard corner points into a curve.
Something must be wrong with your Adobe Illustrator installation. While using the Pen tool in Adobe Illustrator I can indeed press the Alt key to change the anchor point type or adjust the direction handles of the anchor point, just like Photoshop. The Ctrl key also works the same way, allowing the user to move an anchor point to a new position while using the Pen tool.
The CTRL certainly works for me as you describe, but not ALT. It does switch to a "corner mode" (pointer being becoming the pen icon plus a little "<" below it) but it creates a new point rather than adjusting the node you click on. When you mentioned this I thought maybe it was something to do with the Wacom pen, (AI has a lot of bugs working with digitisers), so I dug out a mouse and gave it a try but got the same result.
That sounds really strange. I've hunted around in Illustrator trying to see if I could duplicate that pen tool behavior but have not managed to do so. I'm using the latest build of AI CC 2020. I can't find anything in Preferences that would turn off the Alt key function to change anchor points while the Pen tool is in use.It would drive me up the wall if I couldn't use the Alt, Ctrl and Shift modifier keys for the pen tool while using the Pen tool for Bezier drawing mode.
I'm running version 24.0.2 on Win 7 and never thought about it...I just assumed it was the designed behaviour. Your comments have prompted me to get off my lazy ass and check it out, and sure enough it works as you describe on another machine (running Win 10, same AI version, trackpad rathe than Wacom). It's thus a system/installation specific bug, maybe related to Win 7, maybe related to the Wacom driver; there are a lot of variables that differ between the two machines I'm comparing. Thanks for the pointer...at least I now know what I'm missing out on.
I'll double check how AI CC 2020 works on my laptop at home to make sure the keyboard shortcuts aren't wonky. I have a Wacom Intuous Pro hooked up to it. Wacom updates their drivers from time to time, but not always for the better. The right click function on my pen won't work properly in CorelDRAW using the latest tablet driver.
Check it's not defaulting to a specific profile for Corel. The Wacom drivers come with presets for different applications that set the pen button functions plus any tablet buttons/touchstrips and it loads these automatically when that application starts, overriding any settings you've made in the control panel. You can stop it doing this by deleting all of these app-specific settings files which are stored in C:\Program Files\Tablet\Wacom\App Specific Settings\. Note that everytime you update the driver/software it'll install a set of these again.