i want these things
1) refined Brushes
2) distort tools work even on mesh fills
3) gradient palette
4) Random apply to all uniform, graident, .............etc as well as transparency all types
5) hide all bitmaps at once so that work can be done at ease without heavy use of ram
As a couple of others have already said, Corel really needs to eradicate bugs and improve overall performance. Given the sheer lack of updates the past two versions of CorelDRAW have received I can't help but wonder if the owners of Corel have stripped the development team of personnel and resources just to keep the application properly maintained, much less add new improvements.I got billed yesterday for my "upgrade protection" subscription. Thankfully the price stayed at $99, rather than jump to the $150 those who buy full perpetual license versions have to pay now to add the upgrade protection option. So there's that.Regarding new "wish list" features, what I want most is improvements to the vector object and editing tool set. For example, the Bezier tool in CorelDRAW kind of stinks compared to what is available in rival applications, due to an incomplete set of keyboard shortcuts for modifying paths while they're being drawn. Combine that with the very antiquated methods available for zooming in/out and hand-panning the view. It makes tasks such as manually digitizing clean paths over the top of scanned sketch artwork a more cumbersome process. I can do such tasks faster in Adobe Illustrator because I am not having to jump back and forth to tool bars so much. The very best Pen/Bezier tool on the market: Astute Graphics' InkScribe tool, which is part of the InkScribe plug-in for Adobe Illustrator. Nothing comes close to how great that tool works.I wonder how much "opposition research" Corel's developers are able to do. They really do need to keep an eye on what their rivals are offering. Not just Adobe and the companies making plugins for their applications either. Heck, there are vector object drawing ideas they can mimic from niche applications like FontLab Studio.Regarding brushes, I would like to see CorelDRAW have vector-based line stroke brushes that work like they do in Adobe Illustrator and even be compatible with Illustrator artwork on the import/export side. It would be an even bigger bonus if both art brush and pattern brushes were fully covered.
I don't know why Corel practice this policy. Corel Draw users reports bugs at the beginning when the last version of CorelDraw is released and Corel all year not fix the reported bugs. Really, really, "interesting".
Corel were naive when they went to yearly releases. They didn't understand that it took them 2 years to iron out the bugs that they added with a new version. Very few people back in the day would upgrade until SP1 came out because we knew that there was a lot needed fixing. Now you don't get a proper service pack, just a minor bug fix, if you're lucky. Old bugs remain and new ones get added.
And of course marketing had to have something new to sell the product, so the new functionality became much more lightweight and easy to implement and the constant pressure meant that new functionality never really got bedded in and 'fixed' because they had to start work on the next version. Best in class was a stranger to Corel thinking, 'It'll do' was closer to the mark.
Beta testing starts around October time for a March release, so if you dismiss April because the devs' will be flat out sorting login, upgrade, serial number, etc etc issues, so in effect there is about 3-4 months for bug fixing because by end of August they will start work on Alpha versions of the next release.
Corel thought they could extract more money from the yearly release model, but I'd bet they are getting less, a lot less because of the decision to cut off the upgrade option. I personally won't upgrade from 2018 (even though I have 2019) until I can see £599 worth of new value. I doubt I ever will. I am reconciled to having to run Hyper-V anyway to keep X5 running as security for opening old files so I will stick with 2018.
Corel are on the downward slope and I think a number of the more experienced devs left a few years back. Tony Severnuk, Hendrik Wagenaar, Alex Vakulenko et al, I think think they saw the writing on the wall.
CDGS might be Corels flagship but its holed below the waterline, and it can't keep up. They need to spend x10 the annual dev budget just to bring PP up to snuff and about the same to get Draw reliable and restore its reputation. Then it needs some seriously good new functionality. And all the ideas are there, in Corels database, over the years they milked the beta testers. We gave them a heck of a lot of good ideas and were mostly ignored.
I tried to have a conversation, before I left the beta programme (was kicked out actually) with the head honcho about an idea that would have been pretty easy to implement, they already had the tools doing similar things within Draw, and it would have been a killer feature (actually a vector trace tool, to convert line drawings to fillable areas, anyone CCCFER from 20 years or so ago, coined by K N Pepper, RIP). They didn't really want to know, they are very fixed in their ideas about what customers want, even though I doubt anyone at Corel actually uses or has used Draw to earn a living.
The very moment Corel went to an annual release schedule for CorelDRAW I thought it was a terrible idea. Obviously the company owners and marketing people were consumed by the optics of having to somehow "keep up" with Adobe in terms of release numerals. It's either that or, very possibly, a more sinister motivation: selling $200 upgrades every year instead of every two years, thus magically doubling the revenue.In either scenario Corel has struggled to deliver the goods with an annual release of CorelDRAW. If it was up to me I would have the development cycle go back to a 2 year schedule between whole version releases. I would also bring back the traditional perpetual license model as well as offer a more competitively priced subscription setup. Currently the prices are nuts. $249 per year is too much. $149 for upgrade protection after paying a $499 full price for a license is also too much. This approach is only going to repel potential new customers. Adobe has gone all-in on the subscription-only model. It is possible for Corel to do well offering an alternative to that. But they don't offer an alternative currently. Meanwhile other rival applications, such as Affinity Designer, Vectornator and even Inkscape are continuing to improve. Under the current pricing setup I think Corel is painting itself into a corner.
I totally agree with you.
Even more.
My company have 10 CorelDRAW licenses and we didn't bought the upgrade protection when we last upgraded to CDR2019, now to upgrade all licenses we CAN'T, we have to buy 10 licenses at €719.00, making a total of €7190.That's insane.
And the worst is that they even ask for €349.00/year for a subscription for a version that is full of bugs.
I really hope that they stop thinking of just money and think about the people that make them money, the users, because in our case, the 2019, with all the weird crashes and bugs keeps working and it's mine and have all the necessary tools for my day to day work.
Give us proper coded version with normal updates and not force us to buy full versions.
I have a strong feeling Corel will be forced off the current pricing model for CorelDRAW. The pricing combined with the lack of compelling new features (not to mention very few product maintenance updates) is giving existing users good reason to stay put using older versions rather than pay an arm and leg to upgrade. I can't see them attracting new users with this kind of pricing, especially when one considers the far less costly alternatives available. If new users want a costly professional-level program they may opt to go with Adobe. If they want to save a buck they can choose Affinity Designer, Inkscape, Vectornator or any number of other cheap or free upstarts.
Bobby Henderson said:I have a strong feeling Corel will be forced off the current pricing model for CorelDRAW. The pricing combined with the lack of compelling new features (not to mention very few product maintenance updates) is giving existing users good reason to stay put using older versions rather than pay an arm and leg to upgrade.
Corel have created their own perfect storm. Go yearly and don't do enough to make a new years version appealing. Demand users pay a 'protection' racket fee to stay current, then disappoint them every year. Leave lots of bugs because there are no service packs , you have to pay for the next version, which just introduces new bugs. People know when they're being conned.
That way is the way to oblivion. Corel management will have to carry the can for this debacle, the people I feel sorry for are the Dev engineers, never given the resources to do a proper job.