Corel launches CorelDrawX3, Painter IX.5

To announce the launch and to interact with its users, the company is in the midst of an extensive roadshow tour across Asia Pacific. The Mumbai roadshow was held on March 2 at Intercontinental:The Grand with a crowd of close to 200 commercial artists, graphic artists, designers and enthusiasts.

Speaking to Animation 'xpress, Corel Corporation Regional Marketing Manager for ANZSEAC Richard Dodd shared,"The new releases have some mind blowing features which would excite seasoned professionals as well as enthusisats. We also have products like Painter which is extensively used by the animation studios in Hollywood for backgrounds as well as character painting and in environments.Some examples being Hulk, Spiderman, LOTR etc. In fact even Corel Draw is used by leading animation studio South Park for creating character art and character expressions"

Corel Draw X3 boasts of 40 new features and 400 enhancements. Some of them are listed below

New Corel® PowerTRACE – Integrated into CorelDRAW X3, Corel® PowerTRACE enables users to quickly and easily convert bitmaps into editable vector graphics. For control and flexibility, Corel PowerTRACE generates a color palette, enabling users to easily pick which colors appear in the traced result and quickly convert them to the appropriate color mode (including spot colors).

New Image Adjustment Lab – Accessible from both Corel PHOTO-PAINT® and CorelDRAW, the Image Adjustment Lab makes it simple to work with images that have poor color balance and contrast by offering manual and automatic controls for common color and tone corrections. Users can create snapshots of their adjustments to easily compare each snapshot against the original and choose the best result.

New Hints docker – The new Hints docker provides context-sensitive information on the currently selected tool. The hints docker makes it easier than ever to learn to use the tools in the toolbox and also gives longtime users helpful tips that they might not have previously discovered.

Enhanced Interactive Fit Text to Path – It's never been easier to attach text to a path with precision. With a dramatically improved user interface, the interactive Fit Text to Path tool lets users simply select text, move their pointer along a path, choose an offset distance if desired, and then click to set the text's position.

New Text Enhancements and Features – Significant improvements make it easier for users to select, edit, and format text. New enhancements include: controls for alignment, drop caps, tabs, bullets, and columns; text size can be displayed in inches; and hyperlinks can be created for specific characters. Users can visually control the flow of text in their designs by choosing from em dash, em space, en dash, en space, 1/4 em space, optional hyphen, non-breaking hyphen, nonbreaking space, and column/frame break.

Enhanced Cutout Lab – Built on the power of Corel KnockOut™, the enhanced Cutout Lab includes new controls to simplify the process of cutting out image areas and improving accuracy. Enhancements include the new Add Detail and Remove Detail brushes that make it easy to refine the cutout area, Undo and Redo buttons to quickly correct mistakes, and background modes that make it easier to see results.

New Bevel effect – The new Bevel effect docker dramatically reduces the time required to apply bevel effects to graphic or text objects and gives users quick access to Bevel styles and controls.

Enhanced Interactive Contour tool – With the enhanced Interactive Contour tool, users can quickly and easily contour objects with optimal curve results. The latest version dramatically reduces the nodes created – sometimes as much as 80 percent.

New Smart Fill tool – The Smart Fill tool enables users to apply a fill to any enclosed area.

New Crop tool – A significant time-saver, the new Crop tool quickly lets users remove unwanted areas in objects and imported graphics — whether they are working with bitmap or vector graphics.

Enhanced spot color support – Drop shadow, transparency, and mesh and fountain fills now support spot colors. Import and export filters also provide improved spot color support for Adobe® Illustrator® (AI), PDF, encapsulated PostScript® (EPS), and Photoshop® (PSD) files. Spot color effects are preserved when files are sent to a printer that supports spot colors, or exported to PDF, EPS, PSD, and AI.

New Preview overprints – The new Enhanced With Overprints viewing mode simulates the color of areas where overlapping objects were set to overprint, enabling users to output projects with confidence.

Amongst the impressive features of the new version of painter IX.5 include Turn photos into paintings with NEW Photo Painting palettes, 6d art pen support, snap to path painting, Digital water colour, Mixing of colours, 450 different types of brushes divided into 30 categories, different levels of randomization of brushes.

The Onion Skinning feature allows users to view previous and future frames while working on the current frame. The Rotoscoping feature makes it possible to paint and modify a single frame of an existing movie. Animated movies can be saved as animated GIFs, QuickTime® movies or AVI movies.

New enhancements in Corel Painter IX.5 include:
Photo Painting Palettes – The new Photo Painting Palettes, including the Underpainting, Auto-Painting, and Restoration palettes, work together to help users kick-start the process of creating a beautiful hand-painted work of art from a photograph.

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Support for Rosetta running on Intel-based Macs – Customers running the latest hardware from Apple can enjoy working with Corel Painter and their Wacom® pen tablet, including support for the Wacom Intuos® 3 and the 6D Art Pen.

Eraser Tool – Conveniently located in the toolbox, the new Eraser tool erases any medium on the canvas.

Rubber Stamp Tool – The Rubber Stamp tool makes it easy for users to set up point-to-point cloning. Located in the toolbox, this tool lets users set a source and destination reference point, enabling them to clone within an image file or between different areas of separate image files.

Cloner Tool – Conveniently located in the toolbox, the Cloner tool provides immediate access to the last-used Cloner brush and brush variant.

Corel® Paint Shop™ Pro Support for Windows Users – Users can now open Corel Paint Shop™ Pro files (versions 9 and X).

Send to Corel® Photo Album™ for Windows Users – New integration makes it easy to send files to Corel Photo Album™, helping customers manage their images and paintings.