CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 will be available in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese in February 2006. Suggested retail pricing is £329 for the full product, £149 for upgrade, and £85 for the student and teacher edition. (All prices exclude VAT).

Corel Press Release

New Suite Delivers a Higher Standard of Ease of Use and Graphics Power for Design Professionals and Business Users

Maidenhead, UK - 17 January 2006 - Corel Corporation today unveiled the latest version of its award-winning graphics suite, CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X3. With more than 40 new and enhanced features, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 will be available for purchase to customers around the world in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese in February 2006.
Whether they are design professionals on deadline or small business owners creating their own marketing materials, customers will enjoy a significant productivity boost from CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3. The suite simplifies the design process for projects of any scale, including logo creation, professional marketing brochures, and eye-catching signs. Customers choose CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 because it delivers a combination of superior design capabilities, speed, ease of use, and affordability that’s unmatched in the graphics software industry.

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 has been designed with an unprecedented level of customer interaction and input. Corel product team members work closely with customers from various industries, gathering their feedback and spending days at their deskside to watch how they work. As a result, the latest version of the suite addresses customer needs better than ever before. Graphics professionals and business users will find new enhancements and features that will have a dramatic impact on their day-to-day productivity.

“Corel products are created with a commitment to a single overarching mission - to provide powerful and easy-to-use tools that deliver outstanding results and value. The latest version of our award-winning suite is solid proof of the positive impact this philosophy has on our customers,” said Nick Davies, General Manager Graphics for Corel. “We’ve deepened our customer interaction, taking our understanding of users’ needs to a whole new level. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 has raised the standard for ease of use and productivity across the graphics industry.”

With more than 40 new enhancements, top highlights in CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 include:

- 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 colours appear in the traced result and quickly convert them to the appropriate colour mode (including spot colours).

- 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 colour balance and contrast by offering manual and automatic controls for common colour 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 per cent.

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

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

- New PDF Support for password-protected PDF files - Users can now set security options to protect their PDF output - controlling whether and to what extent a PDF file can be accessed, edited, and reproduced. In addition, PDF functionality now includes full transparency and spot colour support.

“I can make my living using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite for signmaking and printing.  The latest version, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 offers me everything in one programme. Transforming bitmaps into accurate vector images with the minimum of editing is important in my business and the new Corel PowerTrace has amazing accuracy and ease of use. I also love the powerful enhancements to PhotoPaint which means I can do all my work in one application and get professional results. All in all I definitely feel this version of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is the best yet and well worth the upgrade.” Alan Drury, Proprietor of Alan Drury SignWriting.

Like previous versions of this award-winning suite, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 builds on the product’s reputation for offering customers tremendous value. The latest version of the suite includes the following applications and content:

1. CorelDRAW® X3 - Now including Corel PowerTRACE, this intuitive graphic design, page layout, illustration, and tracing application meets the demands of today’s busy design professionals and business users.

2. Corel PHOTO-PAINT® X3 - This professional image-editing application lets users quickly and easily retouch and enhance photos. It is specifically designed for use in a graphic design workflow and supports professional color separations and output.

3. Pixmantec® RawShooter™ essentials - This raw workflow tool provides high-quality output and fast conversion times.

4. Corel CAPTURE™ X3 - This one-click utility enables users to capture images from their computer screen.

5. CorelDRAW® Handbook - Insight from the Experts - This new book provides insights from CorelDRAW experts and showcases practical, real-world examples of accomplished designs.

6. More than 10,000 individually selected quality clipart and digital images; 1,000 OpenType fonts, plus 35 Windows® Glyph List 4 (WGL4); 100 creative templates; printed User Guide; training videos by lynda.com; Digital Content Guide; and a Quick Reference Card.

Pricing and Availability
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 will be available in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese in February 2006. Suggested retail pricing is £329 for the full product, £149 for upgrade, and £85 for the student and teacher edition. (All prices exclude VAT).

For more information about CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 and a list of resellers or to download a full-featured, free trial version, please visit www.corel.co.uk/cdgsx3.

About Corel Corporation
Corel Corporation provides innovative software solutions that help millions of value-conscious businesses and consumers in over 75 countries improve their productivity. The Company is renowned for its powerful software portfolio that combines innovative photo editing and graphics creation, vector-illustration, and technical-graphics applications along with office and personal productivity solutions. Corel’s flagship products include CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite, WordPerfect® Office Suite, Corel® Paint Shop™ Pro, Corel DESIGNER® Technical Suite, and Corel® Painter™.

Founded in 1985, Corel is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. For more information, please visit www.corel.com.

© 2006 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. Corel, Painter, CorelDRAW, Corel PHOTO-PAINT, Corel CAPTURE, WordPerfect, Corel DESIGNER, Paint Shop, and the Corel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation and/or its subsidiaries. All other product, font and company names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.