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New User Interface
Redesigned icons, menus, and controls within the application create a fresh look and provide a more intuitive working environment. New, high-quality thumbnails let you preview CorelDRAW documents when you browse and organize your files. While I really like the new interface, I find that I need my glasses on some of the icons at higher resolutions. They seem to blend in more with the backgrounds at the higher resolutions.
I did notice one icon on the No Selection Property Bar that was missing from X3 that I use a lot – Treat as Filled. But like many icons that are not used in the new versions, the icon/function is still in the program. You can find the Treat as Filled logo/function by going to Tools -> Customization and select Commands. In the Commands dialog, click on the binoculars and in the Find Text dialog, search for “Treat”. Drag this icon to your desktop. Click OK. I t can be moved to other Toolbars. I prefer mine on the right end of Standard Properties Bar (with New, Open, etc).
Corel® PowerTRACE™ X4:
Save time and enjoy more control with this enhanced and powerful bitmap-to-vector conversion solution. Left out in X3, center line trace is back. Centerline tracing with Corel PowerTRACE produces more accurate curves or strokes for tracing technical illustrations, line drawings, or signatures. Improved smoothing, color, and corner control help you optimize traced results. In addition, you can control the colors of traced results more easily by editing, merging, or deleting colors.
New Clipart and Fonts
1,000 high-quality photos and more specialized fonts: includes 75 Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4) with support for Greek, Cyrillic and other international character sets, as well as True Type engraving fonts and OpenType® cross-platform fonts. My favorites are the new backgrounds. I am an old CorelDRAW 8 clipart lover, but I have to admit, Corel gets an A+ on their new artwork and fonts. I’m starting to use the X4 clipart more than 8.
Mirror Paragraph text
Mirror text horizontally, vertically, or both in paragraph text. This is really nice for plaque layouts.
New Interactive Tables
A new interactive table feature lets you create and import tables to provide a structured layout for text and graphics in drawings. You can easily align, resize, or edit tables and cells to adapt them to your designs. It looks like the Graph Tool, but each window/box is a paragraph text box.
Integration with WhatTheFont™
You can quickly identify a font for logos or other artwork easily, just transfer the image (bitmap or vector) to the What the Font site using a menu option from under the text menu within CorelDRAW X4. WhatTheFont will recognize uppercase and lowercase letters and provide a list of possible fonts that can be used to recreate the artwork. A great time saver!!!
It’s really easy – just make sure you have in internet connections. With the bitmap image of your font you are trying to indentify on your CorelDRAW drawing page, go to the Text menu and choose What’s the Font. With the selector icon (identical to the one in CorelCapture), draw a marquee with the selector icon. The selection area will be white, and the rest of the screen is darkened. Click inside the bitmap and the image is transferred to the What’s The Font website. You will be asked to type the individual characters of your transferred image to make sure the recognition process was accurate. A list of the possible fonts will be shown. If you don’t have the font, you can purchase it on-line
Live Text Formatting
Live text preview lets you directly interact with on-screen text; experiment with different settings, and evaluate the results before applying changes. This feature is without a doubt one of my top favorites. Select the text you want to change, and go to the Font List on the Text Property bar. As you scroll down the fonts on your system, the selected test instantly changes to the font you have selected in the Font List. Selecting the different letter heights is also interactive.
The only issue I have with this feature is the Font List drops down in the center of the page and covers up my image, which is usually centered on the page. While you can move the property bar or the font list, I prefer to use my Character Formatting Docker (under the Text menu) instead of the Text Property bar. The docker is on the side and doesn’t block my page.
Independent Page Layers
You can now control and edit layers independently for each page of your document. Local, independent guidelines can be added for individual pages, and master guidelines can be added for the entire document. If you use layers in Object Manager, you will appreciate this new feature.
Increased Import Filters
Special emphasis on importing Adobe Illustrator files is addressed in X4. Supported file formats now include Adobe Illustrator CS3 (AI); Photoshop CS3 (PSD); Acrobat 8 (PDF); AutoCAD (DXF and DWG); Microsoft Word 2007 (DOC or RTF, import only); Microsoft Publisher 2002, 2003, and 2007 (PUB, import only); Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF 1.7 and PDF/A, including PDF comments); and Corel Painter X).
Print Merge
Invitations, labels, and other projects that apply personalized text to the same design are now easier to create. Improved print merge functionality gives you more control and makes it easier to create and edit merged data. You can also take the merged data and save as a new file. Great for proofing or outputting at a later date
Welcome Screen
Every time I open X4 and get to the Welcome screen, I find something new. The new X4 Welcome screen defaults to the Quick Start view as in past versions. But in X4 you have four additional screen options; Quick Start, What’s New, Learning Tools, Gallery, & Updates. Plus, you can make any one of the five screens your default Welcome screen page.
Page Setup
Now you can set your page size from the size of your printer and save the page size as a custom page. Its under the Layout -> Page Setup
Templates and search capability for templates
New templates are available to help you get started with your design projects. When starting a new project, you can easily find the right template on your computer. You can browse, preview, or search for templates by name, category, keywords, or notes. You can also view useful information about the template, such as category and style.
Enhanced search functionality
You can use keywords, notes, file type, date, or text when you search for CorelDRAW X4 files from Windows Explorer. You can add or edit file properties within the application, or from Windows Explorer, Windows Search, Windows Desktop Search, or Windows Vista Search.
Review and collaboration tools
CorelDRAW ConceptShare is a valuable collaboration tool that lets you share designs and ideas and receive real-time feedback from clients in a Web-based environment. You can create multiple workspaces, upload your designs, and invite others to post comments.
Search capability when saving and opening files
You can organize your projects more easily by adding keywords or notes when saving your files. When opening and saving files, Windows Vista users can search by author, subject, file type, date, keywords, and other file properties.
Enhanced color management
Support has been added for the Adobe Color Management Module (CMM). On the Windows Vista operating system, you can also use the Windows Color System CMM.
Automatic product updates
Now you can receive messages and information about new content, service packs, and product updates, and conveniently access a product registration site, from within the application.
Bitmap – Straighten Image
This sure saves a lot of time. Rather than using guidelines to assist in straightening an imported image. This new feature is a big plus. [MORE].
Snap to Grid
Combined to a drop down vs. three icons on No Selection Property Bar
Welcome screen
Now on Standard Menu Bar [MORE].
Reverse Subpath
I missed this tip in my earlier testing of X4. But my friend Roger Wambolt from Corel shared this one with me. With a curve selected, click on the Shape Tool. A blue triangle appears to show you the direction that the curve will engrave. Especially useful when cutting out badges - you can control the start direction [MORE].
Select Workspace at Startup
I like to use multiple workspaces; one for my laser work, a standard page for printing and another for working with websites. When you opened CorelDRAW in earlier versions, it used the last used workspace as a default. Then to change, you had to close the workspace, and go to Tools -> Options -> Workspace and select the new one. But with X4, you can go into Tools -> Options -> Workspace and select “Select workspace at startup”. Each time you start X4, you get a dialog that gives you choice of choosing your workspace.
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