What's New in CorelDRAW 8

CorelDRAW 8 provides new and exciting features combined with additional enhancements that increases usability and performance.

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Onscreen Look and Feel

Productivity and Performance

Interactive Tools

Internet Features

Text, Bitmap and Special Effects

Color and Printing

Object/Document/File Management

The new look and feel of CorelDRAW 8 provides increased usability and user customization. The first difference you'll see in the user interface is its new flat look, which provides a cleaner interface with hot tracking over the controls on the Application Window, dialog boxes and Dockers. Workspaces also help you work more efficiently. These allow you to save different versions of your preferred environment settings.

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Flat look interface

Microsoft IntelliMouse

CorelDRAW 8 lets you work more efficiently, increasing your productivity and performance. Using ALT you can select hidden objects in a stack or group in your drawing. The new display modes let you move and position objects accurately. Node editing using the basic tools lets you complete your drawing in a timely fashion. Improvements to the Duplicate command and the addition of keyboard accelerators, provide quick results. Using any of the fill types, you can now apply a fill to a curve.

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Smart Duplicate

Keyboard accelerator

Interactive Controls

CorelDRAW 8 includes several new interactive tools that let you create special effects quickly and easily. The Interactive Drop Shadow tool adds a transparent bitmap drop shadow to your object. Choose from either the Push and Pull, Zipper, or Twister tools to create new and exciting shapes. The Interactive Envelope tool and the Interactive Extrude tool make adding envelope and extrude effects to your drawing quick and easy. You can transform the objects in your drawing freely using any of the Free Transform tools. Adjusting and mixing the color of your object can now be performed interactively using the Color Palette in conjunction with CTRL and the mouse.

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Distortion tools

The ability to publish to the Internet has been enhanced with added features such as the Internet Bookmark Manager and the HTML Conflict Analyzer. Creating Internet objects is now simple and easy with a variety of Internet objects that you can add to your drawing. Set a back drop for your Internet objects using the new Tile Page Background option. Put together a Web page more efficiently using the Publish To Internet dialog box or wizard.

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Custom Page Sizes

Tiles Page Backgrounds

HTML Conflict Analyzer

Publish to Internet Wizard

Several improvements have been added to the text feature, including the ability to create 3D text directly on the Drawing Window. Flowing text has been enhanced with the ability to link between objects, lines, and object frames. Working with Paragraph text has been made easier with the new Fit Text To Frame command that automatically sizes your text to the drawn frame. Additional security for your objects has been added with the new Lock Object feature. This feature allows you to lock an object's settings to ensure that it is not modified accidentally. When working with bitmap effects, you can preview your changes directly on the screen. Furthermore, the new Bitmap Inflation command lets you automatically or manually expand the bitmap to ensure that the effect is properly aligned with the image.

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On-screen Preview

Fit Text to Frame

Choosing colors and printing your work is faster, easier, and more accurate using the new color and printing features. The Palette Editor, enhanced on-screen Color Palette, and Color Harmonies color selector make selecting colors simple. New color-management features ensure that the colors you choose are displayed and printed correctly, and Adobe PostScript 3 support enhances the final printed document.

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Adobe PostScript 3

Color Management

Color Harmonies

Converting bitmaps

Color correction

Adding and working with your files has been enhanced in many ways. The Import option lets you select multiple files and place them individually on the Drawing Page. You can also save time by sizing images during your import. Customizing your Workspace using the Options dialog box, as well as specifying fonts using the Bitstream Font Navigator, allows you to work more productively. Working in your drawing has been improved with the ability to rename page tabs as well as the ability to manipulate objects using the Object Manager. Archiving your drawing can be done more efficiently using Corel Versions.

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Bitstream Font Navigator