CorelDraw new Subscriber disappointed

New paid personal subscriber to CorelDraw, but have been a daily user for the past 7 years or so at work in the sign industry. For creative work, I've used Adobe for 25+ years.

Not to knock Corel, but I'm pretty disappointed that there's a lack of updated fills, bitmap patterns (in HD), vector patterns, etc. to choose from by default. Some of the things in the 2022 version are in X5. Very year 2000 styled.

Seriously? In ALL this time, Corel couldn't develop more default content? Then they wonder why their product is kind of niche.

For what I use it for daily, it's great and does the job, but leaves a lot to desire.

  • It appears Corel does not have the manpower or resources to properly develop and update CorelDRAW on an annual product cycle. Back when CorelDRAW was released on a two year product cycle some of the new version upgrades were not all that impressive even then. Now with things on a faster one year track the new version releases are worse. The version 2022 upgrade was perhaps the most underwhelming upgrade I've seen in the 30 years I've been using CorelDRAW. No real new features. And none of the bugs from the previous versions have been fixed either. But they want $249 per year from customers to use this stuff.

    • I would disagree with the no new features, I would say some new features, fortunately for me ones I use alot. The non destructive features I use are now not limited to low resolution.  I believe the perspective drawing from maybe 2020 or 2021was great for my PITA clients and raster effects on vectors is ok for the same PITA clients.

      The new page viewer and facing pages features work well. You do need to think, how that ridiculous keep desktop objects on layers feature affects the page view but it's not a show stopper, it's a minor show complication.  Better than other softwares that I've used.

      It's more like no new features that you use and sometimes with upgrades you get new features that you use sometimes not. Photo-PAINT got some love and has really increased productivity for me because every client requires image work. The new Draw features have less affect because it's fewer clients affected.

      After visiting other software sites the last year I appreciate CorelDRAW more than before.  It's  just my opinion but alot of software are stuck into the layer pre made feature mindset that's prevalent today. 

      I was at the Affinity Photo site laughing at the discussion of color corrections (they call it grading now) on an image of a sea gull shot from above over a jade green sea. All the complicated work flows, masks, layer masks and methods I haven't heard of for a 20 second fix with the light features. The best result was the light tool, tone curve in Photo-PAINT.

      Affinity Photo, Photoshop,(all Adobe CC), PaintShop Pro and others are leaning more and more toward AI and features for dummies. Affinity Photo has a seriously overly complicated and limited feature set. This persona stuff WTF!

      After all the BS I read and watched about Affinity Designer and Photo, even with the low cost they're quite a disappointment. 

      Are there issues with CD? You bet, I just did 1,300 images, the RAW and digital files went flawlessly however I found out that my 10 year old scanner software causes issues with Photo-PAINT.  Again, not a show stopper but a minor complication. No biggie as this was the most scanning I've done in a decade but an issue nonetheless.