When I first started taking photographs and turning them into digital images (either Minolta film scanner or had a photomat do it) I was on the cheap. The place I was taking bulk pictures for paid for the processing of film. I could not afford Adobe so I bought Corel Draw which includes Corel Photopaint.

I found it to be a great program in version 8 9, and 12. I was doing graphic art, web development (12 even included a way to turn your project into a Macromedia Flash project). The program contained a program to turn raster (digital photos) into vector (line art) and has video for animated Gifs. The package is so complete you would have had to purchase Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and some other software just to compete. The price was less expensive than Photoshop. After learning the interface a friend gave me an older version of Photoshop but because I could not use the interface as well as Corel I did not use it (to my shame I should learn it).

You can see the new version here http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satell...d=1047025934319

The latest version also includes another feature that was a separate product, (called Knockout) that allows you to easily cut out images from one image to post on a document or to another. They included board edgers for photographs and a host of features. In the newest version they include features not found in Adobe Photoshop but also has the ability to load all Adobe Photoshop plug ins.

All my images have been edited using this program. CorelDraw 12 is available for $40 OEM versions (it was thought the Canadian company was going out of business) and if you have and old version you can upgrade for $150 for academic you can get it for $99

I think it is a great program that is a less expensive alternate program with a lot more features. If you are a graphic artist, sign maker, photographer, web designer it is a great program.

Some pics I edited with it using my D70 camera.

http://www.mxphotos.net/2ndcreek04/250.jpg
http://www.mxphotos.net/2ndcreek04/250s.jpg

hi there,

I have tried it and I liked it right away - but I still prefer photoshop over it, maybe also because I'm more familiar with it because of have been working with it ever since.

cya, Mark

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