CorelDraw Graphics Suite 12 review:5 stars (If Adobe Illustrator makes you crazy... or even if it doesn't) - Hi,
I've used CorelDraw on the PC since version 1 blew me away at a PC Expo. Since then I have upgraded at least every other version with the only regret being #6. To be fair though, that was the days of the 486 PC and I was asking a lot of the software.

Bottom line, many of Draw's standard features were long after appearing as "major" upgrades to Illustrator. CorelDraw always seems to be ahead of the curve not only feature wise but in ease of use. Even today editing nodes in Illustrator is much more awkward. There are many free resources, tutorials and help available as well as CDUG, one of the friendliest and genuinly helpful user groups around (no flames, newbys welcome).

Yes, keep Illustrator. I use it as my most expensive import / export filter.

FWIW5 stars (The best version yet!) - I have been a CorelDraw user since version 3, and have owned every version except 6, and even beta tested a couple.
Draw12 is terrific. I use it on a daily basis for everything from technical illustration, to 4-color advertising, to landscape design, and beyond. This version is very stable. The snapping options alone are worth the price of admission. I output prepress PDF files with no problem.
PhotoPaint is also a major player. Somebody complained that an object rotation of less than 90 degrees caused major blurring of the object. I found some blurring to occur, but running the unsharp mask clears it up nicely.
All in all, terrific bang for the buck.4 stars (A great release of Corel Draw. The various naysayers don't know what they are talking about.) - CorelDraw 12 is the best bargain in graphics today. It is reliable and very easy to use. You don't have to pay the hefty ransom Adobe demands for Photoshop and Illustrator because CorelDraw can do most of the things that Adobe does with far more flexible and easier-to-master interfaces. This is powerful, first-class software.

For about 1/2 the price of either Photoshop OR Illustrator, you get get top notch bitmap AND vector editing. You also get a slew of good fonts, in both Type 1 and True Type formats, from a variety font vendors including Adobe, Agfa, and Bitstream. These fonts alone are worth the cost of the program.

About the only area where you would need Illustrator instead of CorelDraw is in prepress production, where the Illustrator's ability to open and modify almost any Postscript file is unsurpassed. However, this is also Illustrator's main weakness in that it is so tightly coupled to the Postscript language that the drawing metaphors are very complex and hard to use for creating new art.

With Coreldraw, you can create complex graphics with powerful, wonderfully interactive drawing tools, and a clean, easy-to-master interface.

Photopaint is no poor stepchild to CorelDraw, especially since version 8. It fully supports Adobe Photoshop layers, but Photopaint also supports a much more friendly object-oriented metaphor, where bitmaps can be stacked, aligned and rotated on each other just like vector objects in CorelDraw. Various filters and transparencies can be applied interactively to each object. This makes it much easier to experiment and often results in fewer trips to menus compared to photoshop.

The import/export filters are just fine thank you. CorelDraw writes and reads a vast number of formats including Illustrator, Photoshop (.psd), postcript, pdf, and CAD files with good accuracy. I don't know what is wrong with .pdf support because CorelDraw makes excellent PDFs with plenty of control, over font embedding, converting font outlines to curves, bitmap downsampling options, and color conversion.

As a programmer, I love the VBA macro languages used by both Photopaint and CorelDraw. I have used them to automate the creation of web interface elements.

The commercial sign industry uses CorelDraw almost exclusively. If it was as terrible as the Mac/Adobe bigots would have you believe, you would think these vendors would have found some other program by now. It isn't, try the demo and see for yourself.
CorelDraw Graphics Suite 12 Features:
desktop publishing
desk top publishing
Computer software (programs)
Graphics
CAD (Computer Assisted Drafting)
Architect
Architectural
Architecture
Multimedia
Illustration (Illustrated)
Edit (Editing)
Graphics (Graphic)
Professional Design
CD
Produce creative, accurate shapes and objects with new smart design tools
Advanced features that increase productivity, such as real-time visual feedback
Keep your workflow smooth with industry-standard file compatibility
Integrated applications for vector drawing, page layout, digital imaging, and more
10,000 clipart images, 1,000 TrueType and Type 1 fonts, 1,000 photos and objects

CorelDraw Graphics Suite 12 is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around  319.99USD.