8 ms·
Corel still exists?! Good for them!
by paul_milovanov 8y ago
Corel still exists?! Good for them!
- raverbashing 8y agoI suppose Corel Draw is still popular, even though it's not the favourite of most graphical artists/designers.
- cwbrandsma 8y agoOther than Photoshop, what are the favorites these days?
- bulletsvshumans 8y agoSketch for UI/UX design.
- themodelplumber 8y agoSerif products (Affinity) have been on a roll, last I checked.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kup0 8y agoI switched to Affinity and never looked back at Photoshop/Illustrator. That being said, I used them at a hobbyist level, nothing very complex, so while it was an easy transition for me, it may not be for everyone. But I've seen quite a few people state they have moved off of Adobe products over to Serif. I've been very happy with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer.
- tecklenburg 8y agoThey now just released Affinity Publisher in Beta as a replacement for Adobe InDesign. Already using it and very pleased!
- bambax 8y agoAffinity products are fine and fast and stable, but there are many things they don't do. Tracing for example: Corel Draw does tracing beautifully.
- raverbashing 8y agoCorel Draw is similar to Adobe Illustrator, not Photoshop
- watersb 8y agoPixelmator still great, as is OmniGraffle (a better Visio) for vector diagrams and my vector-image pirposes. https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ https://www.omnigroup.com/ https://www.omnigroup.com/
- mortenjorck 8y agoI used Corel Draw back when I worked at a T-shirt and jersey shop in college, and frequently used it to drive a vinyl cutter for jersey numbers and other decoration. From anecdotes I’ve read since then, it appears the software is still the preferred choice in custom apparel, signage, and vehicle livery shops because it interfaces well with the cutting machines those industries use.
- allannienhuis 8y agoyes, Corel Draw was the #1 choice among the sign shops I worked at. Almost every vinyl cutter or large-format digital printer supported Corel export formats really well. I spent years working with it daily - it was pretty solid, and had an amazing amount of features & flexibility. It was also expensive and so pirated a LOT.
- footpath 8y agoCorel Painter has its niche among digital artists - it's still one of the higher end digital painting programs that simulates real life mediums (acrylic, oil, watercolor) remarkably well. There's really no iPad equivalent to Corel Painter, but Corel registered the procreate.com domain to redirect to their Painter product page (Procreate (procreate.art) by the Australian company Savage is one of the strongest digital art applications on the iPad). Corel has also recently purchased Gravit Designer, which presumably will stand as their main digital design app that competes with Sketch and Adobe XD.
- mattkrause 8y agoThey really named it Procreate?! (Yes)
- kirykl 8y agoCorel still maintains WordPerfect too, last release was 7 months ago
- paulddraper 8y agoAnd they've been plenty active in court; SCOTUS just turned down an appeal for the Microsoft case a few years ago https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/28/victory_for_microsoft_as_supremes_decline_to_hear_novells_wordperfect_whine/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/28/victory_for_microso...
- Shorel 8y agoWPS Office seems to have cornered the market for MS Office alternatives, i.e. WPS runs in Linux, Wordperfect doesn't.
- mistrial9 8y agocitations?
- petepete 8y agoYes, WordPerfect has supported them for many years. https://support.corel.com/hc/en-us/articles/215963808-How-to-create-a-Table-of-Authorities-in-WordPerfect https://support.corel.com/hc/en-us/articles/215963808-How-to...
- mkl 8y agoI think they're asking about the assertion that "WPS Office seems to have cornered the market for MS Office alternatives", which would be pretty surprising. Libreoffice, Google Docs, and iWork all exist, and all seem more popular.
- justinclift 8y agoThat's not even slightly a credible citation for usage/popularity stats. :/
- slantyyz 8y agoThese days it seems like basically acquire software companies. They own Winzip, Paintshop and Painter, for example.
- ergothus 8y agoIt's been a long time since I've heard of an acquisition that was actually positive for the aquired/their users - can anyone working on any of these groups share such a story?
- SyneRyder 8y agoOn the user side, Corel has been okay-ish with PaintShop Pro. I write Photoshop plugins and I still have lots of customers who are happy Paintshop Pro users, some 14 years after Corel acquired JASC. That said, Corel added a kind of adware to PSP, where it will display promotions for upgrades to the new version of Paint Shop Pro even when you're not using the program. I really wish there was an easy way to disable it, but I'm sure their metrics show it is effective. Parallels are already doing a version of that (but only when you launch the program), and now even Apple itself is using notifications to advertise products & distribute discounts [1]. There's probably no avoiding it now. [1] https://9to5mac.com/2018/12/18/apple-push-notifications-complaints/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/12/18/apple-push-notifications-comp...
- tracker1 8y agoI loved PSP under Jasc, after I think XII after the Corel buyout, I gave up on the product... Paint.Net or Gimp (painfully) give me the little utility I usually need. I really do miss PSP, but I think 9 was the last really good version, and I don't have a key or media for it anymore. It sounds like it's gotten a little worse.
- SyneRyder 8y agov9 was good, but I still prefer 7, the version just before JASC switched to .NET. v7 is lightning fast, and nearly 20 years later it's still the version I use first for Photoshop plugin development, because of its speed. From memory, v9 isn't compatible with Windows 10 (the installer won't work properly), so don't feel you're missing anything. Serif's Affinity Photo is giving PSP real competition, but Affinity is still quite buggy in some ways on Windows. I'd probably recommend Corel PSP 2018 / 2019 over Affinity for the moment. Paint.NET is great too.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y agoThe bigger surprise to me is that they not only exist, but have the money to buy Parallels.
- code_beers 8y agoYeah, I would have expected this to go the other way around. “Parallels bought Corel? Corel still exists? Why would Parallels even want them?”
- tlrobinson 8y agoI don't much about private equity, but Corel is owned by Vector Capital, so maybe they're providing the money? https://www.vectorcapital.com/investments/case-study/corel https://www.vectorcapital.com/investments/case-study/corel
- ungzd 8y agoDo Vector Capital specialize on Vector Graphics software companies?
- sodosopa 8y agoI'm kinda shocked they both exist. Both were good products back in the day, but in 2018? Come on.
- mosselman 8y agoWhat do you base this on? Is it that neither has released a front-end javascript framework or an in-house container orchestration tool as open-source (that I know of)? Or is there some other hipness criterium that they failed to meet?
- sodosopa 8y agoNah, I'm old or at least in tech years I'm old. I've worked with projects before containerization I have been a former user of both products. I didn't imagine Corel had the capital to move out of bargain-bins.
- qubex 8y agoOne of the first Linux distributions I tried (after the venerable Slackware) was the short-lived Corel Linux way back in 1999 or thereabouts.
- martin-adams 8y agoI remember using that. It’s was good then I got scared off when my machine didn’t boot one day and I didn’t understand the error.
- njarboe 8y agoThe good old dot com days. I remember buying Corel stock at $6 and it popping to $32 in a few weeks (or was it a few months, I can't seem to find Corel listed as a public company now to check the price history) on the Linux hype, only to crash down soon after (got out at $8 :) ).
- FigBug 8y agoVector Capital took them private in 2008 at $4.00 a share. Odd that nobody has historical charts, I can't find it either.
- gesman 8y agoUsed to be COSFF ticker. I worked for Corel in Ottawa long while ago. Not sure how to dig charts now.
- aasasd 8y ago> stock at $6 and popping to $32 on the Linux hype These words don't sound right.
- njarboe 8y agoHard to believe, but true. Wish I had a chart of the Corel stock price but from Wikipedia[1]: "Corel Linux, also called Corel LinuxOS, was a Debian-based operating system made by Corel that began beta testing on September 21, 1999[1] and was released to the public on November 15, 1999." ... "Corel later discontinued the distribution, but did not remove the former Corel Open Source Development website until March 2002." So at least I did not just dream it. Did you live through that era? It was very similar to the blockchain hype but lasted a bit longer. Edit: Confirming the Linux hype: "Red Hat's initial public offering was on August 11, 1999. A total of 6,000,000 shares were priced at $14 ($7 post-split) per share."[2] On January 10th, 2000, four months later the price peaked at $140, which would have netted you one of the fastest 10 baggers in history. By July of 2001 it was under $4 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_Linux [2]https://investors.redhat.com/ir-resources/investor-faqs/when-was-red-hats-initial-public-offering-ipo https://investors.redhat.com/ir-resources/investor-faqs/when...
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI just used my CompuServe internet account to look up this story.
- reaperducer 8y agoCompuServe had internet? (72167,3530 here!)
- Krasnol 8y agoI loved CS. I had a tool that generated personal data for their trial accounts for most of my pre-flatrate dial-up internet time.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoAmazing isn't it? I still prefer Corel Draw to the Inkscape or any of the Adobe products. I have their PowerDVD software on a laptop which is used as a portable DVD player for visiting nieces and nephews.
- footpath 8y agoPowerDVD is CyberLink, you're probably thinking WinDVD (which apparently is still getting new updates).
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoThe first question that crossed my mind.
- zantana 8y agoI was always surprised their model of selling their older versions at a reduced rate (e.g. latest version $199, next older $100, one before that $49) never took off. They always seemed so scrappy back in the 90s with their giant boxes and included libraries of clip art. One of the more novelty twitter accounts I found recently posts images from one of their 10,000 item collections: https://twitter.com/clipart1994bot https://twitter.com/clipart1994bot
- dmix 8y agoHa they even included a clip art of L Ron Hubbard [1]? I'm really curious who drew all of these pieces. 10k images is a ton of work... [1] https://twitter.com/Clipart1994bot/status/1075483685745557505 https://twitter.com/Clipart1994bot/status/107548368574555750...
- ungzd 8y agoI think these images were made by few artists, because the style is very distinct and recognizable. I still encounter these clipart pics on signs of crappy cafes and shops. Made of plotter-cut adhesive film, these pics look gorgeous.
- FigBug 8y agoThe company I currently work for does something similar. Latest version costs money, previous version gets given away with hardware, and version before that is free. However, we are going to transition to latest version costs money and two feature set reduced versions gets given with hardware and free. Having 3 versions to support is too much overhead for a small company. And giving away old versions of our products with issues that we know we've solved gives a bad image of our software to new users we are trying to up-sell to the latest version.
- user5994461 8y agoWhat's the rationale behind the current model? From a business perspective, the older versions are used by older or larger companies that couldn't or didn't want to upgrade, they have money to shell out and should be charged more.
- rpeden 8y agoThey sure do, and if you drove into Ottawa on the 417 in the past decade, you went right past their office: https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.3788963,-75.7454491,3a,77.5y,358.65h,92.85t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQ2vSImv3LQXXCnwbQrwD9w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.3788963,-75.7454491,3a,77.5y,... They seem to have pulled the Corel logo down some time this year. That makes me a little sad, as it was always one of those little landmarks that reminded me I was almost home when I lived in downtown Ottawa.
- jason_slack 8y agoWhen Corel was looking for a new CEO I applied :-)
- nickthegreek 8y agocoreldraw is still the best vector program to interface with laser engravers.
- mike_ivanov 8y agoNot only with them, but pretty much with everything related to CNC. And the reason is that it exports clean, optimized paths -- and in the DXF format. What comes out of Affinity Designer is unusable garbage.
- Crontab 8y agoThey are the Yahoo of software companies.
- subdane 8y agoParallels still exists? Good for them!
- logjammin 8y agoCame here to say this
- ziont 8y agome too. i still have corel draw from late 90s
- porpoisely 8y agoIt's been so long since I heard the name Corel that I recognized the name but not what they did? The other day there was a post about Lotus Notes. Now this. I'm not sure I can handle all the nostalgia.
- gigatexal 8y agoYeah I was just going to ask this too! Crazy. And yeah good for them. All everyone talks about is photoshop these days. So for them to still be around means they have to be doing something right.