CorelDRAW Upgrade Protection Program Is Ending

[WildWestDesigns]

The images are kind of screwed up looking. I have also tried to import the images using SVG with similar results. I am understanding that trying to import images in PDF won't work either.

For CDR, I'm seeing a limit for 7-X4 for Opening and Importing. That seems to be official supported, so I'm imagining that you may also be using features in the more recent version that isn't supported by those previous formats.

I see support for PDFs (and have used them), without being able to see the exact same files being used, it's hard to say beyond in general though.

If I cannot figure a way to import my images into Inkscape without have to adjust 1,500 images, my Plan B is to stay with CorelDraw for now!

Most won't like this, but this is where something like being able to do certain features headless (using CLI) comes in handy (unlike Ai and Draw, Inkscape can run headless). Converting 1,500 files at once using CLI takes seconds (writing the script could take some time though, but that still pales in comparison to converting all of those files one by one), this is the biggest hurdle for a change like this, especially if only have a collection of the master files.

I don't think Draw has a batch exporter function (may have 3rd party software, but again, the limitations of converting are still there) natively built in.

I have a question, the messages I receive from CorelDraw about upgrading say it's $269.00@ year plus the monthly subscription amount, is that correct, and how much is the monthly rate?

Thanks, Jim

$22.42 a month I think is the rate.

 

[Jim Hill]

For CDR, I'm seeing a limit for 7-X4 for Opening and Importing. That seems to be official supported, so I'm imagining that you may also be using features in the more recent version that isn't supported by those previous formats.

I see support for PDFs (and have used them), without being able to see the exact same files being used, it's hard to say beyond in general though.


Most won't like this, but this is where something like being able to do certain features headless (using CLI) comes in handy (unlike Ai and Draw, Inkscape can run headless). Converting 1,500 files at once using CLI takes seconds (writing the script could take some time though, but that still pales in comparison to converting all of those files one by one), this is the biggest hurdle for a change like this, especially if only have a collection of the master files.

I don't think Draw has a batch exporter function (may have 3rd party software, but again, the limitations of converting are still there) natively built in.


$22.42 a month I think is the rate.

The message I see when open a new coreldraw document say's $269.00 to upgrade and then $22.42 @ month

So 22.42 X 12 is $269.04 a year plus $269.00, so it's 538.04 total

Is the upgrade change a one time deal? Or is that every year?

Thanks Jim

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Is the upgrade change a one time deal? Or is that every year?

I can only speculate (as I'm on outside looking in), but to me, this should only be a time time charge as the next year, won't actually be "upgrading" to that alternative pricing model.

I tried to see if Bobby had mentioned it, but other than:

I'm not against paying for a subscription. But the price needs to be on par with the value being offered. I had no problem paying $99 per year for the UPP. $269 per year for Draw and PhotoPaint is a rip-off. In just 2 years that cost is equal to buying a perpetual version. I'm inclined to just not re-new when my UPP term lapses in January 2023 and stick CDR 2022 or CDR 2021 for the next few years. Then I'll buy another version of CorelDRAW when I need to do so. That is if CorelDRAW is even still around by then.

I don't see anything mentioned about the upgrade price being around for the next year.

Although I would also add to Bobby, that even if Corel is around, they may not offer a perpetual license at all at that time when he is looking to buy again.

 

[Jim Hill]

Well, I have decided to upgraded to Coreldraw 2022 after trying other graphics programs for a few months, and I paid the subscription fee in advance for a year. $269.00 dollars.

The key reason I made the choice to upgrade to a yearly subscription was because I have between 1,500 and maybe around 2,300 images made in a CDR format and after trying to convert the images using SVG and a few other ways they just all would need work to make the images look correct.

I am 75 years old and the thought of fixing all those images made my choice a simple one of selecting the pass of lease resistance for me.

If I was just starting out all over again, I would use Inkscape or Infinity Designer, which are both excellent graphics programs.

I wanted to thank everyone who offered help and suggestions on solving my problem.

Jim Hill

 

[Ronny Axelsson]

CorelDRAW is a very good app Jim (as you already know), even though it has its bugs and beauty flaws, and there are few that can compete with it.
And if you have so many .CDR files that you need to work on, the choice is simple.

I still recommend to save all files in the format of your last perpetual version though, just to make sure you can open them if you ever cancel subscription.
Be prepared when saving back, that some effects and text may be converted.

Good luck.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I still recommend to save all files in the format of your last perpetual version though, just to make sure you can open them if you ever cancel subscription.
Be prepared when saving back, that some effects and text may be converted.

I would actually suggest (and this may cause further issue depending on what tools/effects that are used) save to the latest version that you have that does not depend on an activation server. Unless you plan on keeping an older box that already has the software activated on it (even using VMs to get around keeping a physical box around with the software, can have some issues with valid activation etc if have to switch the VM around different computers etc), you still may not have access to your last "perpetual" version if it depends on an activation server. There are a lot of ways that I can see an excuse being made to "kill" off those older activation servers (and it's within their right based on the EULA, like it or not), especially with hard times for everyone on a variety of fronts.

 

[Big Rice Field]

I upgraded and tried to get a refund. No such luck. So I just retired in January and I give up on future versions.

 

[Bobby H]

I intend to "sunset" my own personal perpetual license of CorelDRAW. At my workplace we have 3 current licenses of CorelDRAW, 2 on "upgrade protection," and 1 on subscription. We have a 4th license of CDR 2021 that I bought not upgrade-able for another workstation a few months ago. I'm considering shutting off auto renewal on the 2 upgrade protection licenses and cancelling the one that's on subscription. Overall it just seems smarter to just wait it out a few years and then buy a new perpetual license version when needed. $269 per year for an application that is changing very very little (including not getting bugs fixed) is a rip-off. There's two actual applications in that "suite," not 7 like Corel claims. If Corel wants to do away with the $549 one time purchase option I think that will result in even more losses to their user base.

No one really knows for sure how good or bad Corel is doing since they've been a privately held company for over 20 years. They don't have to publish financials to the public or do any other public disclosures. But it is very telling just how badly Corel appears to be struggling via the sheer lack of bug fixes and other updates in recent years. Version 2022 of CorelDRAW is different only to a very minor degree to version 2021. My theory is sales for the application must be in the toilet. Otherwise they would be putting more development muscle into it to keep up with competitors, be it Illustrator on the high end and the more affordable apps like Affinity Designer eating at them from below. The money in the Corel corporation seems to be coming more from Paint Shop Pro, Win ZIP and even Painter. I remember the old Xara application being spun off to another developer. It wouldn't surprise me all that much if CorelDRAW itself got spun-off out of Corel. I'm not sure what that application would end up being called. But I can see either that happening or CorelDRAW just hitting an end of life point.

 

[netsol]

I intend to "sunset" my own personal perpetual license of CorelDRAW. At my workplace we have 3 current licenses of CorelDRAW, 2 on "upgrade protection," and 1 on subscription. We have a 4th license of CDR 2021 that I bought not upgrade-able for another workstation a few months ago. I'm considering shutting off auto renewal on the 2 upgrade protection licenses and cancelling the one that's on subscription. Overall it just seems smarter to just wait it out a few years and then buy a new perpetual license version when needed. $269 per year for an application that is changing very very little (including not getting bugs fixed) is a rip-off. There's two actual applications in that "suite," not 7 like Corel claims. If Corel wants to do away with the $549 one time purchase option I think that will result in even more losses to their user base.

No one really knows for sure how good or bad Corel is doing since they've been a privately held company for over 20 years. They don't have to publish financials to the public or do any other public disclosures. But it is very telling just how badly Corel appears to be struggling via the sheer lack of bug fixes and other updates in recent years. Version 2022 of CorelDRAW is different only to a very minor degree to version 2021. My theory is sales for the application must be in the toilet. Otherwise they would be putting more development muscle into it to keep up with competitors, be it Illustrator on the high end and the more affordable apps like Affinity Designer eating at them from below. The money in the Corel corporation seems to be coming more from Paint Shop Pro, Win ZIP and even Painter. I remember the old Xara application being spun off to another developer. It wouldn't surprise me all that much if CorelDRAW itself got spun-off out of Corel. I'm not sure what that application would end up being called. But I can see either that happening or CorelDRAW just hitting an end of life point.

You assume there will still be a perpetual license version
The whole world is moving away from that model

For example, we just bought the last "no subscription" version of quickbooks desktop for my united ways who use it

As of this year you buy the program AND pay the monthly subscription

MY OBJECTION to all this is i lose the ability to operate as multiple companies. I still support some long time clients from previous businesses (computer consultant, wire runs for security systems & cctv) if i switch to quickbooks online, it isn't just $60/mo. It is $60 times 4 companies, even though sometimes i only generate 1 or 2 invoices a month for one of the companies.

 

[Bobby H]

You assume there will still be a perpetual license version
The whole world is moving away from that model

As long as Corel is willing to sell that not-upgradeable $549 version I'll consider buying that versus paying $269 per year for a program with very little, if any, improvements offered at all. This 2022 "upgrade" of CorelDRAW is the most under-whelming I've seen in the 30-plus years I've been using the application. This is going clear back to 1990 and version 1.0. If Corel takes away that not-upgradeable perpetual license version I'll happily camp out with the version of CorelDRAW that I have and slowly migrate my assets over to other formats.

If I have to be forced to pay anyone a subscription fee I'm going to be more comfortable paying that fee to Adobe. At least they're continuing to make solid efforts at maintaining and improving their applications. Corel is owned by private equity bean counters looking to cut corners any way they can do so. Over the past few years CorelDRAW has seen minimal updates between version cycles. Certain bugs (such as several involving type) have existed across multiple versions. It's very clear Corel's owners are investing as little as they can into CorelDRAW.

 

[Big Rice Field]

Even though I elected not to upgrade, I will still use Corel instead of Illy because it is still faster than the Adobe product..

 

[Bobby H]

"Faster" is a relative term. It really depends on what tasks you're doing within CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator. Neither application is "perfect" and both have their own unique strengths.

I prefer doing a lot of technical drawing tasks within CorelDRAW. One reason is its object alignment/distribution functions are implemented in a superior way. "Key object" behavior is automatic (last object shift-clicked into a selection stays put, other objects align to it; Illustrator requires extra clicks to assign a key object). Keyboard shortcuts (R, L, T, B, C, E for alignment, add shift for distribution) work so much faster. I haven't been able to develop a comparable set of custom shortcuts in Illustrator; too many things get overridden or some shortcut "recipes" just don't work.

I prefer hand-tracing clean vectors over pixel-based images and sketched artwork in Illustrator. The keyboard shortcuts for zooming in/out and hand-panning the view of the workspace while using the Pen tool just blow away the functions in CorelDRAW.

There is a lot of other back and forth comparisons. People can toss in Affinity Designer. I'd recommend Affinity Designer to any amateurs wanting to create vector graphics on a budget. But it lacks too many professional features compared to either CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator. For example I really dislike how Serif doesn't appear to have any plans to build support of OpenType Variable or OpenType-SVG fonts into Affinity Designer. They appear happy to keep its type engine based in the 2000's. Just about all the new commercial fonts I buy have Variable versions included. Some are variable-only. Even with "free fonts" companies like Google are releasing more variable fonts less of the static versions. Heck, even Inkscape supports variable fonts now.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

"Faster" is a relative term. It really depends on what tasks you're doing within CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator. Neither application is "perfect" and both have their own unique strengths.

Yes and no. Adobe for their 2D programs, use OpenGL, nothing wrong with that, my own apps use that. However, considering Apple has deprecated OpenGL in favor of Metal a long time ago, they aren't even using the latest version (which has been deprecated by Khronos group since 2017-2018, something like that in favor of Vulkan), so they are stuck with even legacy code on both platforms due to the limitation on one (reason why the min requirement is at 4.0 versus 4.6 which has been the latest since about the time the spec was deprecated all those years ago). Contrast, Corel uses OpenCL which exposes more lower level access compared to OpenGL (like what Vulkan does compared to OpenGL) and actually run on more potato level hardware, because there is that nuance ability. So in theory, it is possible to do things quicker from a computational standpoint, but it all depends on how the programmer handles things on their end. One hides things (OpenGL), while the other exposes them (OpenCL).

Now, if one is talking about faster workflow, that depends on the individual user and even though they may be faster in one versus the other, that faster workflow may not be as efficient (or as fast) as it could be as well. The irony there.

Both do come into play though. So they aren't totally isolated from one another.

There is a lot of other back and forth comparisons. People can toss in Affinity Designer. I'd recommend Affinity Designer to any amateurs wanting to create vector graphics on a budget. But it lacks too many professional features compared to either CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator. For example I really dislike how Serif doesn't appear to have any plans to build support of OpenType Variable or OpenType-SVG fonts into Affinity Designer. They appear happy to keep its type engine based in the 2000's. Just about all the new commercial fonts I buy have Variable versions included. Some are variable-only. Even with "free fonts" companies like Google are releasing more variable fonts less of the static versions. Heck, even Inkscape supports variable fonts now.

While the spec of variable fonts is getting more and more mature, I think what were are at is the same stage that OpenGL and Vulkan are at (Vulkan and the variable font spec are about the same age if I'm not mistaken, both being released initially in 2016?). A lot more people are using/designing variable fonts, but it's still not quite stable (much like Vulkan is compared to OpenGL). Now, depending on the individual user, it may appear to be that isn't the case, so it's hard to reconcile that, especially when so many are producing more and more. Now, I also think with the latest version (what is is 2.0?) for Designer, there is balancing of what to implement, when to implement it and can't satisfy everyone. Ironically, variable fonts actually is quite robust on the web which also, in my opinion, goes into why Inkscape has support for it given they use the SVG standard for their file format of choice.

So, ironically, while Designer may be using a font engine from the aughts, Adobe is still using a rendering API from the early 90s (I think 92 was the originally release). To be honest though, once software gets long in the tooth, age wise, it's very very hard to pull things in and out, especially if at the time, everything is intertwined with one another (UI mixed in with logic). It becomes a hack fast at best getting everything to work and modernize as well. I think people were complaining about some hinky things after the larger artboard came out for Ai, so that makes think of this very thing happened, some hacky way was used to finally get that feature request in, but I'm speculating.

Personally, and this is just me, I tend to like programs that even if they don't give me everything, they give me the tools to create what I need. Some may consider that "hacky", but to be honest, all plugins are like this, even the most beloved ones that are recommended here (and I have suggested some of them myself as well), but it works for me anyway.

 

[Bobby H]

Yes and no. Adobe for their 2D programs, use OpenGL, nothing wrong with -[snip]

OpenGL is totally irrelevant to what I was talking about. I was talking about how various tools behave in either application and the keyboard shortcuts associated with them. OpenGL doesn't have anything to do with that.

The things I said about CorelDRAW having better object aligning & distribution functions than Illustrator is an objective fact. My comments about Illustrator having better pen tool shortcuts and screen zooming/panning shortcuts than CorelDRAW is also an objective fact. Neither one of those applications runs the table over its rival.

While the spec of variable fonts is getting more and more mature, I think what were are at is the same stage that OpenGL and Vulkan- [snip]

Other people can stick with using only "static" fonts if they like. I've made my own choice to take advantage of OTF Variable Fonts. Their flexibility provides a lot of creative advantages over static fonts. Illustrator and CorelDRAW both support Variable Fonts. Illustrator also supports OpenType-SVG as well (some of the "color" fonts are pretty interesting). The OTF Variable standard is already far more successful than the T1 Multiple Master standard was in the late 1990's. Adobe was pretty much going it alone with the T1 MM standard, both in terms of developing the fonts and applications that could support them. The situation is different with the OTF Variable standard.

Serif is getting some heat about this issue in their own forum for Affinity Designer users. Variable fonts aren't natively supported in PDF yet. So what? Do like other applications and generate static embedded instances or convert the type to outlines. The longer Serif piddles around on this the farther they fall behind their rivals. Even Inkscape provides full support of variable fonts. Affinity Designer has a somewhat slick looking user interface, but the application is pretty primitive by current standards.