Gérard on Graphics

Corel webminars about CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER

Gerard Metrailler — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:21:00 GMT

Are you interesting in finding out more about what the latest versions of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite and Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite include and if you should upgrade. Corel is organizing webminars later this month that will give you more details about both products. Here are all the details:

CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X4

See how CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 offers you the ultimate combination of superior design capabilities, speed, and ease of use at an affordable price. This suite is everything you need to tackle your graphics and design projects with confidence.

Title: CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4
Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Time: 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. EST
Space is limited.Reserve your Webinar seat now at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/975575199

Corel DESIGNER® Technical Suite X4

From operation guides and parts catalogs, to schematics, wiring diagrams, assembly instructions, maintenance manuals and architectural presentations, this complete suite allows organizations of any size to create powerful technical graphics—fast! This session will provide a live demo and overview of the new features in Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite X4.

Title: Introduction to Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite X4
Date: Thursday, January 29, 2009 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST
Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. EST
Space is limited.Reserve your Webinar seat now at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/870281872

Crossing the 20,000 members mark on December 31, 2008

Gerard Metrailler — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:04:00 GMT

CorelDRAW.com continues to grow at a steady rate. Looking back, it took just under a year for the first 10,000 members to sign-up to this community. Well, the next 10,000 members signed-up in less than 8 months! Thank you all for making CorelDRAW.com such a great place to share and learn. And from a Corel perspective, this site has been a fantastic place, helping us better understand your needs and making sure we are able to focus on what matters. Quite a few of the Corel employees who work on the CorelDRAW family of products are in here on a regular basis. Not only do we learn a lot about you and how you use the products, but the information on this site is also used to prioritize things to do in service packs (SP2 for CorelDRAW X4 should be available in the next two weeks by the way) and helps us better understand where future versions need to focus on.

With the upgrade to the CorelDRAW.com site earlier this week, we added a lot of new features such as a brand new wiki engine, greatly enhanced galleries and forums, as well as brand new friends and conversations tools. We've also increased the number of gallery items and space you have to showcase / share your work. And it looks like you are already posting entries in the various wikis at a very impressive rate. I can't wait to see where it can go.

And now for a few statistics:

Since launch, members made more that 31,000 forum posts in almost 25,000 threads.
There are currently 190 media galleries with 2330 images / files in those.
Looking back at 2008, CorelDRAW.com had more that 1.2 million unique visitors, coming from over 220 countries around the world.
61% of the visitors to the site used Internet Explorer in 2008 (out of which 37% still used IE6... please, please, upgrade your browser), just under 30% used Firefox and the rest is broken down between every other browser.
For the curious, Chrome is at under 1%, and 0.04% came to CorelDRAW.com from their iPhone / iPod Touch in 2008.

Looking forward, one thing that is on the list for CorelDRAW.com is the localization of the site in a few languages, so that you will be able to navigate this site in a much easier way if you are not a native English speaker / reader. There are other things we are looking at and I will keep you up-to-date on the progress in the future.

Thank you very much to all of you for making CorelDRAW.com such a fantastic resource for everyone and for making it such a friendly and enjoyable place to spend time on.

A very happy new year to all of you!

Gérard

Small preview of the upcoming changes to CorelDRAW.com

Gerard Metrailler — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:01:00 GMT

Over the past few months, we have been hard at work to implement a major upgrade to the CorelDRAW.com community based on your feedback. All indications are that we should be able to go live with the new site between Christmas and New Year. A few changes that are coming include the long awaited Wiki, as well as the evolution of the existing functionality based on your feedback. A few examples include:

New home screen when you are logged in which displays the information relevant to you.
Complete overhaul of the private messages features which will become multi-people conversations.
Evolution of the friends system to allow filtering of activity on the site by those you follow.
Forum enhancements with the distinction between questions and discussions.
Merging of the gallery and the download sections to become "Media Galleries". This means those of you who have galleries will be able to share palettes, textures, CDR files, ... in addition to the JPG or PNG formats currently available.

There are a lot more things under the hood happening and we want to do some more testing before we can go live with this update, but in the mean-time, here is a quick video I recorded earlier so that you can have a short preview of what's ahead.

A little heads-up: CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 Service Pack 2

Gerard Metrailler — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:53:00 GMT

The team at Corel is hard at work getting ready to release the second service pack for CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 in the coming few months. While I cannot give you all the details right now, I wanted to share some of the things that are expected to make it into SP2:

First, we will be expanding the RAW support capabilities with SP2. We expect to add support for following camera models: Panasonics LX3 and FZ28, Nikon D90, P6000 and D700, Canon EOS 50D and EOS 1000D, Canon PowerShot SD300, Sony A900, Kodak C603, and Olympus E-520.
Using the Scroll wheel or Alt+arrows with text and/or curve objects on the page should no longer causes screen refresh issues.
We will be including the previously released hot-fix, which means that CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 should launch properly when Autodesk Inventor, Mechanical 2009, or MS SQL Server 2008 are installed on the system.
Visual feedback is expected to be available when adjusting line, character, or word spacing with the Shape tool in Wireframe mode.
Highlighted text should no longer deselect when attempting to change the font.
Drop shadows are also being worked on. Those applied to text objects should no longer cause display issues when placed over a PowerClip object and those applied to a text object with the outline set to "Behind Fill" should now applies the drop shadow to the fill.
Importing a single-layer CDR file into another single-layer CDR file will no longer imports the file onto a new layer.
Print Merge is expected to properly merge text attributes of a data placeholder.
Barcodes should only appear on the black separation layer, instead of separating to all four colors.

This is just a partial list of all the things we are working on for Service Pack 2, and I have to use the words "should" or "is expected to" as I will only have confirmation that these are really done once we release SP2. I will keep you posted with more information when available. When released, you will get notified automatically by CorelDRAW / Corel PHOTO-PAINT through the auto-update mechanism in the welcome screen.

Looking for productivity gains? You should look at the spring 2009 Unleashed Boot Camps

Gerard Metrailler — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:53:00 GMT

Foster just announced the CorelDRAW Unleashed Boot Camps for Spring 2009. These three training days will cover CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT in depth, and I am certain they will be an invaluable resource for anyone using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite as well as Wilcom DecoStudio / EmbroideryStudio. The boot camps will be held in Cave Creek, Arizona (USA)... so for the canadians out there, you can even get a break from Winter as a bonus in addition to the learning, covering tips and techniques to users designing for engraving, screen printing, garment printing, Internet, multimedia, signs, embroidery and print.

The new Spring dates in 2009 are February 19-21, March 5-7, April 16-18 and May 7-9 and every student will receive a copy of CorelDRAW X4 Unleashed Premium Bonus Content Edition multimedia ebook in addition to all the material for the training. You will find a lot more information under http://www.unleash.com/training/coreldrawbootcamp.asp.

CorelDRAW is truly all around...

Gerard Metrailler — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:48:00 GMT

As you all know, CorelDRAW is the leading graphics application in many industries such as sign-making, engraving as well as direct to garment printing. Well, according to a recent blog post from Kirill Mazin, looks like someone at the Adobe MAX conference is in agreement. As you can see from the photo on Kirill's blog, he said the t-shirts that the winners of a contest recieved where created and printed using CorelDRAW X3... thanks to the compatibility of EPS and AI file formats by CorelDRAW I guess .

Signs of the Times magazine Contest - your chance to win

Gerard Metrailler — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:23:00 GMT

The "Signs of the Times" magazine is currently running the 2009 International Sign Contest and is accepting submissions. As we know that many of you use CorelDRAW in the sign-industry, this is your chance to show-case how you use the product and the opportunity to be recognized by your peers for the fantastic work you do and to be featured in the April 2009 issue of the magazine.

There are 13 different categories to participate in

Soft Signs/Banners/Inflatables
Exhibit/Tradeshow Graphics
Commercial Sign Systems
Electric Sign Systems
Commercial Monument Signs
Electric Monument Signs
Murals/Supergraphics
Commercial Pole/Pylon Signs
Electric Pole/Pylon Signs
Commercial Building Signs
Electric Building Signs
Electronic Message Centers
Unique Signs

Here the link to all the details regarding the contest and how to participate: http://www.signweb.com/contest09.pdf

And finally, please make sure to mention that you use CorelDRAW Graphics Suite in your submission, and to include an overview of how you used CorelDRAW. I look forward to seeing the 2009 winner to be a member of CorelDRAW.com!

Historical technical illustrations - great pictures

Gerard Metrailler — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:46:00 GMT

Technical manuals are nothing new, but the tools have come a long way from the illustrations created for Project Gemini, the B-17 Flying Fortress or the the SR-71 Blackbird. The October 2008 issue of Wired magazine has a great gallery of historical technical manuals titled "A Photo Essay of Classic Instruction Manuals", and Wired.com adds two more galleries: "Classic Flight Manuals: B-58A, F-14A, Apollo and Gemini" and "Classic Computer Manuals and Plans from Apple and IBM".

Considering that these had to be done by hand as Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite X4 wasn't available back then, I can only say that these are really impressive... here are some of the images:

1966 NASA PROJECT GEMINI FAMILIARIZATION MANUAL

CA. 1942 B-17F FLYING FORTRESS PILOT FAMILIARIZATION MANUAL

1988 SR-71 BLACKBIRD ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL SYSTEMS

Discussions about communities and CorelDRAW.com

Gerard Metrailler — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:48:00 GMT

Tomorrow, I will be taking part in a panel discussion in Ottawa about Online communities based on what we've done with CorelDRAW.com so far. In preparation for this, I had a discussion with Simon Chen from Ramius Communications and who is one of the organizers of the Social Media Breakfasts in Ottawa. At that point, we also recorded a 12 minute video to cover online communities, CorelDRAW.com and a little more. Here is the video:

Hot-fix 1 for CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 SP1

Gerard Metrailler — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:55:00 GMT

A few weeks back, we started getting reports of an issue in which CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 applications would not start after Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD Mechanical 2009, or Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was installed. Hot-fix 1, which will also be available shortly from Corel.com, resolves this issue. In the mean-time, here is the link to download it.

Gérard

Great article about customizing Enhanced Line Styles in DESIGNER

Gerard Metrailler — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:10:00 GMT

As you know, Corel DESIGNER is a product specifically built for technical illustration, based on a common engine with CorelDRAW. One of the many features that sets Corel DESIGNER apart from CorelDRAW and other "creative illustration" packages is the Enhanced Line Styles that enable users to better document their graphics. While the user interface does not offer an option to customize the enhanced line styles, Claude who is part of the development team just posted a detailled article about this in the CorelDRAW Insider blog. If you use DESIGNER and/or need to customize your line styles, this is well worth a read:

http://coreldraw.com/blogs/insider/pages/how-to-create-custom-outline-enhanced-pattern-style.aspx

CorelDRAW X4 Unleashed book now available from the Corel eStore

Gerard Metrailler — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:36:00 GMT

As a follow-up to my previous post regarding the CorelDRAW X4 Unleashed book, the great book that Foster has recently released, I wanted to let you all know that the Premium edition is now available to purchase directly from Corel in North America. Here are the direct links to the USA eStore and the Canadian eStore. And you can always find out more about this book directly on the CorelDRAW Unleashed web site.

Gérard

15,000 members and counting: Thank you all!

Gerard Metrailler — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:17:00 GMT

A week ago, we passed another milestone for CorelDRAW.com: the 15,000 members mark flew by so quickly. It took almost a year to reach the first 10,000 members and we are on track to double that number in almost half the time.

But more importantly than that, it's the wealth of information and sharing that you all bring to the table that make it such a great place to go. The forums have been terrific for each of us to ask and answer questions, and I am truly amazed by the stunning work posted in the galleries. And the Corel employees who have been taking part in the forum discussions and the monthly real-time chat sessions have really enjoyed talking to you.

Looking back, we knew that the CorelDRAW family of products had passionate and active users around the world and we wanted you to have a tool to open-up the communication amongst yourselves and with Corel employees. User feedback is a critical part of our product development, but in the past, we only got feedback from some of you through on-site visits, phone interviews and surveys. We wanted to do more. So, to make this community a reality with a reasonable investment, we decided to get CorelDRAW.com running with an off-the-shelf solution, using Telligent's Community Server engine in the background. And it's been running since then. For the nostalgic ones, here is how the site looked like at launch:

Yes, I know, we've come a long way. Since then, we used the feedback you provided in the forums to drive the development of X4 and to prioritize the things to fix in Service Pack 1, we made a beta version of Corel DESIGNER X4 available to the members of the community, and we've been showcasing some of the amazing artwork you've posted in the gallery directly within the welcome screen of CorelDRAW, Corel DESIGNER and Corel PHOTO-PAINT.

Looking forward, we have been experimenting with a Wiki for the members of the community to capture information that is coming up on a regular basis. The current implementation isn't working as well as we want and have therefore decided to postpone it slightly. Good news is that Telligent announced that a Wiki is on the roadmap for their next version of the engine, which means we will be able to roll that out with the next major update of the community (just don't ask when right now).

In light of all this, I have to say thanks. We couldn't have built this great site without you.

We're pretty proud of what we've all done here and have decided to submit CorelDRAW.com to the Groundswell Awards which honor projects that make exceptional use of social technologies. Feel free to check it out and to rate / add your comments to the submissions. The nominees include a whole list of cool sites and communities.

Wilcom and Corel introduce EmbroideryStudio and DecoStudio e1.5

Gerard Metrailler — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:34:00 GMT

Earlier this morning, Wilcom and Corel announced the new versions of both EmbroideryStudio e1.5 and DecoStudio e1.5. Both of these products are combining the power of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 with the great embroidery functionality of the Wilcom Embroidery products. We at Corel are really excited about the announcement that represents the second phase of the strategic partnership between both companies.

And for those who want to find out more about these two new products, Wilcom and Corel are hosting an online launch event all day today (it started a few hours ago). To join, simply go to http://www.wilcomdiscovery.com. In addition to demos and tips&tricks sessions, I will be taking part in a panel discussion at 2PM Eastern to answer your questions about Corel, CorelDRAW and the strategic partnership with Wilcom.

Gérard

Cool YouTube Video from Mo...

Gerard Metrailler — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:55:00 GMT

You might have seen the great gallery Mo has on CorelDRAW.com. He also posted a cool video on YouTube showing how this illustration was created.