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Corel Draw

CorelDraw (styled CorelDRAW) is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation. It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editorCorel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related programs (see below). The latest version is marketed as CorelDraw Graphics Suite 2018 (equivalent to version 20), and was released in April 10, 2018.[1]CorelDraw is designed to edit two-dimensional images such as logos and posters.

History

In 1987, Corel engineers Michel Bouillon and Pat Beirne undertook to develop a vector-based illustration program to bundle with their desktop publishing systems. That program, CorelDraw, was initially released in 1989. CorelDraw 1.x and 2.x ran under Windows 2.x and 3.0. CorelDraw 3.0 came into its own with Microsoft’s release of Windows 3.1. The inclusion of TrueType in Windows 3.1 transformed CorelDraw into a serious illustration program capable of using system-installed outline fonts without requiring third-party software such as Adobe Type Manager; paired with a photo-editing program (Corel Photo-Paint), a font manager and several other pieces of software, it was also part of the first all-in-one graphics suite.

Features by version

CorelDrawVersion supportWindows
Compatibility
New Features
Release dateVersionReading filesWriting files
Jan 1989[2]1112.1First version
Mar 1989[3]1.01112.1Introduces backups on save, and draw rectangles from their centre
Apr 1989[3]1.02112.1IBM PIF file format support
Jul 1989[3]1.10112.1102 new fonts in Corel’s proprietary WFN format, with WFNBOSS file font manager
Feb 1990[3]1.11112.1AutoCAD DXF import/export support
Sep 1991[2]21, 21, 23.0Envelope tool (for distorting text or objects using a primary shape), Blend (for morphing shapes), Extrusion (for simulating perspective and volume in objects) and Perspective (to distort objects along X and Y axes). CorelDraw for Unix also became available.[4][5]
15 May 1992[6]31, 2, 32, 33.0, 3.1(preferred)Included Corel Photo-Paint asp ( for bitmap editing), CorelSHOW (for creating on-screen presentations), CorelCHART (for graphic charts), Mosaic and CorelTRACE (for vectorizing bitmaps). The inclusion of this software was the precedent for the actual graphic suites.[7] CorelDraw for Unix also became available.[8][9] The fonts bundled with CorelDraw are no longer in the proprietary Corel format WFN, but in Type 1 PostScript fontsand TTF TrueType formats.
20 May 1993[10]41, 2, 3, 43, 43.1Photo-Paint (for bitmap editing), CorelSHOW (for creating on-screen presentations), CorelCHART (for graphic charts), CorelMOVE for animation, Mosaic and CorelTRACE (for vectorizing bitmaps). Multi-page capabilities, Powerlines, support for graphic tablets, Clone tool, elastic node editing, Envelope tool.
27 May 1994[11]51, 2, 3, 4, 53, 4, 53.1This is the last version which was made for Windows 3.x. Corel Ventura was included in the suite (and then sold as a separate program); it was a desktop publishing application akin to PageMaker, Quark XPress, or InDesign.
24 Aug 1995[12]63, 4, 5, 65, 695This is the first version which was made exclusively for 32-bit Windows. New features were customizable interface, Polygon, Spiral, Knife and Eraser tools. Corel Memo, Corel Presents, Corel Motion 3D, Corel Depth, Corel Multimedia Manager, Corel Font Master and Corel DREAM (for 3D modelling) were included in the suite.
8 Oct 1996[13]73, 4, 5, 6, 75, 6, 795, NT 4Context-sensitive Property bar, Print Preview with Zoom and Pan options, Scrapbook (for viewing a drag-and-dropping graphic objects), Publish to HTML option, Draft and Enhanced display options, Interactive Fill and Blend tools, Transparency tools, Natural Pen tool, Find & Replace wizard, Convert Vector to Bitmap option (inside Draw), Spell checker, Thesaurus and Grammar checker. The suite included Corel Scan and Corel Barista (a Java-based document exchange format).
27 Oct 1997[14]83, 4, 5, 6, 7, 86, 7, 895, NT 4Digger selection, Docker windows, Interactive Distortion, 3D, Envelope and tools, Realistic Dropshadow tool, interactive color mixing, color palette editor, guidelines as objects, custom-sized pages, duotone support. Corel Versions was included in the suite.
31 Aug 1999[15]93, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 95, 6, 7, 8, 995, 98, NT 4Mesh fill tool (for complex color filling), Artistic Media tool, Publish to PDF features, embedded ICC color profiles, Multiple On-screen Color Palettes and Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications 6 support. The suite included Canto Cumulus LE, a piece of software for media management.
13 Nov 2000[16]101010 98, Me, NT 4, 2000CorelR.A.V.E. (for vector animation), Perfect Shapes, Web graphics tools (for creating interactive elements such as buttons), Page sorter, multilingual document support, navigator window. Open, save, import and export in SVG format.[17]
  1 Aug 2002[18]1111 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1198, Me, NT 4, 2000, XPSymbols library, image slicing (for web design), pressure-sensitive vector brushes, 3-point drawing tools.
10 Feb 2004[19]1212 12 2000, XPDynamic guides, Smart Drawing tools, Export to MS Office or Word option, Virtual Segment Delete tool, Unicode text support.
17 Jan 2006[20]X3 (13)X3 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, X32000, 2003, XP (32-bit64-bit), Vista(32-bit only), 7, 8Double click Crop tool (the first vector software able to crop groups of vectors and bitmap images at the same time), Smart fill tool, Chamfer/Fillet/Scallop/Emboss tool, Image Adjustment Lab. Trace became integrated inside Draw under the name PowerTrace.
22 Jan 2008[21]X4 (14)7 to X4 7 to X4XP, Vista, 7, 8Whatthefont font identification service linked inside CorelDraw, ConceptShare, Table tool, independent page layers, live text formatting, support for RAW camera files.[22]
23 Feb 2010[23]X5 (15)7 to X57 to X5XP, Vista, 7, 8Built-in content organizer (CorelConnect), CD, web graphics and animation tools, multi-core performance improvement, digital content (professional fonts, clip arts, and photos), object hinting, pixel view, enhanced Mesh tool with transparency options, added touch support, and new supported file formats.[24] It has developed Transformation, which makes multiple copies of a single object.For the first time, OpenType versions of Helvetica, Frutiger, Futura and Garamond #3 font families (32 fonts total) from Linotype foundry are included instead of the Bitstream counterparts. All but Garamond are in OpenType Pro format.[25]
20 Mar 2012[26]X6 (16)7 to X67 to X6XP (32-bit only), Vista, 7, 8Includes 64-bit and multi-core processor native support, support for 64-bit Adobe Photoshop plugins, and additional tools to import and export from Adobe Creative Suite and Publisher. Object properties, styles, and color styling have each been consolidated into their own docking toolbars. A new Unicode OpenType-based text engine modernizes text handling, including full international language support (the legacy text mode is retained). Dynamic alignment guides allow for easy repositioning without setting static guidelines. CorelConnect content organizer allows for in-application access to online sources such as Flickr for assets such as images and clip art. New tools permit manipulating vector images by pushing, pulling, smearing, etc. Various improvements in frame-based layout, masking, clipping and effects have been made.[27]
27 March 2014[28]X7 (17)7 to X77 to X77, 8, 10*
15 March 2016[29]X8 (18)7 to X87 to X87, 8, 10
11 April 2017[30]2017 (19)7 to 197 to 197, 8, 10LiveSketch™, 4K and real-time stylus support, Enhanced Font list Box and nodes, Supports Microsoft Windows tablet mode & surface dial.
10 April 20182018 (20)7 to 207 to 207, 8, 10Symmetrical Drawing Mode, Block Shadow Tool, publish to WordPress, Impact tool, Pointillizer™, and PhotoCocktail™, straighten photos interactively, adjust photo perspective interactively, apply envelopes to bitmaps.[1]

From Windows 7, 32-bit and 64-bit supported

† CorelDraw 10 to X4 can open files of version 3 and later, but certain features may not be supported.
‡ The list of file formats that CorelDraw 10 to X4 can write may not be complete in this table.
* CorelDraw X7 on Windows 10 requires Update 5

Features

Supported platforms

CorelDraw was originally developed for Microsoft Windows 3 and currently runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 .[31] The latest version, 2019, was released on March 12, 2019[32].

CorelDraw Graphics Suite 2019 for Mac OS X was released on March 12, 2019,[33] after an 18-year absence (the last version for OS X was version 11, released in 2001).

With version 6, CorelDraw introduced the automation of tasks using a Corel proprietary scripting language, COREL Script. With version 10, support for VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) was introduced for scripting by what Corel calls now macros. Corel recommends to no longer use the COREL Script language but only VBA.

Previously supported platforms

Until the release of version 5, CorelDraw versions existed for Windows 3.1xCTOS and OS/2.

CDR file format

Hex dump of the header of a CDR file as RIFFcontainer, written with version 3
Filename extension.cdr[34]
Latest releaseX8 (i.e. 18)
Open format?no

Structure

In its first versions, the CDR file format was a completely proprietary file format primarily used for vector graphic drawings, recognizable by the first two bytes of the file being “WL”. Starting with CorelDraw 3, the file format changed to a Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) envelope, recognizable by the first four bytes of the file being “RIFF”, and a “CDR*vrsn” in bytes 9 to 15, with the asterisk “*” being just a blank in early versions.[35] Beginning with CorelDraw 4 it included the version number of the writing program in hexadecimal (“4” meaning version 4, “D” meaning version 14). The actual data chunk of the RIFF remains a Corel proprietary format.

From version X4 (14) on, the CDR file is a ZIP-compressed directory of several files, among them XML files and the RIFF-structured riffdata.cdr with the familiar version signature in versions X4 (CDREvrsn) and X5 (CDRFvrsn), and a root.dat with CorelDraw X6, where the bytes 9 to 15 look slightly different — “CDRGfver” in a file created with X6. “F” was the last valid hex digit, and the “fver” now indicates that the letter before no longer represents a hex digit.

There is no publicly available CDR file format specification.[36][37]

Other CorelDraw file formats include CorelDraw Compressed (CDX), CorelDraw Template (CDT)[38] and Corel Presentation Exchange (CMX).[39]

Use of CDR files in other programs[edit]

In December 2006 the sK1 open-source project team started to reverse-engineer the CDR format.[40] The results and the first working snapshot of the CDR importer were presented at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2007 conference taking place in May 2007 in Montreal (Canada).[41] Later on the team parsed the structure of other Corel formats with the help of the open source CDR Explorer.[42] As of 2008, the sK1 project claims to have the best import support for CorelDraw file formats among open source software programs. The sK1 project developed also the UniConvertor, a command line open source tool which supports conversion from CorelDraw ver.7-X4 formats (CDR/CDT/CCX/CDRX/CMX) to other formats. UniConvertor is also used in the Inkscape and Scribus open source projects as an external tool for importing CorelDraw files.[43][44][45]

In 2007, Microsoft blocked CDR file format in Microsoft Office 2003 with the release of Service Pack 3 for Office 2003.[46][47] Microsoft later apologized for inaccurately blaming the CDR file format and other formats for security problems in Microsoft Office and released some tools for solving this problem.[48]

In 2012 the joint LibreOffice/re-lab team implemented libcdr, a library for reading CDR files from version 7 to X3 and CMX files.[49] The library has extensive support for shapes and their properties, including support for color management and spot colors, and has a basic support for text.[50] The library provides a built-in converter to SVG, and a converter to OpenDocument is provided by writerperfect package. The libcdr library is used in LibreOffice starting from version 3.6,[51] and thanks to public API it can be freely used by other applications.

Other applications supporting CDR files[edit]

Main article: Comparison of vector graphics editors

CDR file format import is partially or fully supported in following applications: