New and Enhanced Features
The June 2024 Update for CorelDRAW® Technical Suite 2024 delivers enhancements to several areas within the applications:
Enhanced! Painterly Brush tool
CorelDRAW 2024 introduced exciting new Painterly brushes that combine the unique expressive qualities of pixel painting with the precision of vector editing. This update offers a range of enhancements, including:
- The improved Brush picker lets you quickly search for Painterly brushes by typing the name of a brush style or brush category. The new My media count at the top of the Brush picker displays the number of brushes. The default size of the Brush picker has been increased, and you can also easily resize it to suit your creative workflow. Expanded and collapsed brush categories are now retained between sessions.
- The settings for several Painterly brushes have been optimized to make them more memory-efficient, especially when used at their largest size.
- You can now purchase additional Painterly brush packs from within the Welcome Screen or the Brush picker.
Updated! Corel DESIGNER (DES) and CorelDRAW (CDR) file format
The default Corel DESIGNER (DES) and CorelDRAW (CDR) file version is now 25.1 (2024.1). You can save a drawing that is compatible with an earlier version (including the March 2024 release) of CorelDRAW Technical Suite (File > Save As > Version list box) and specify save options (Advanced). Such options are useful when the file contains new Painterly brushstrokes, text, fill, outline, or transparency features that are not supported in earlier versions.
Enhanced! File Locations options
- When CorelDRAW/Corel DESIGNER/Corel PHOTO-PAINT cannot locate content folders that have been renamed, moved, deleted or disconnected, a new message displays information on how to correct the issue.
- Content Type folders that have been renamed, moved, deleted or disconnected and require updating are now indicated by an icon in the Options dialog box (Tools > Options > Global > File Locations).
Enhanced! PDF import
When importing a PDF file containing text, the new Maintain paragraphs, text flow, and formatting option is selected by default. This option delivers the best text-editing experience by organizing blocks of text into full paragraphs.
Deselecting this option reverts to the legacy text-importing behavior used in earlier versions of the application, where imported text objects remain grouped in smaller artistic text runs. This maintains the explicit kerning, spacing, sizing, and effects specified in the PDF file.
Performance and stability
The June 2024 Update for CorelDRAW® Technical Suite 2024 (v25.1) also includes performance and stability fixes for several customer-reported issues.
Printing and Print Merge
- CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER now properly handle page sizes smaller than 1 inch by 1 inch when printing to various device drivers.
- Changing printer settings such as media size in the Print dialog box and printing to PS and PDF printers in CorelDRAW/Corel DESIGNER now works as expected ensuring that the printed document matches the selected page size.
- Print Merge: Now after you add one data field, CorelDRAW automatically deselects the print merge object, streamlining the process of adding the next field.
Working with text and fonts
- Fonts installed using Corel Font Manager are immediately available for use in CorelDRAW, Corel DESIGNER and Corel PHOTO-PAINT.
- Application performance has been improved when working with OpenType or distressed fonts. In addition, previewing fonts on selected text objects is noticeably smoother.
- Issues related to finding and replacing text and displaying non-printing characters have been addressed.
- When you select the Text tool in CorelDRAW or Corel DESIGNER, create a text object, position the cursor within the text, and move it by holding down the arrow keys, the cursor now remains visible as expected.
Importing, exporting and saving files
- In CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER, stability issues related to importing PDF files and working with CDR/DES files from earlier versions of the application or recovered backup files have been resolved.
- In Corel DESIGNER, opening a CGM file that contains missing fonts (previously resulting in an “Unknown file format” error message) now works as expected.
- Exporting a bitmap for the web from CorelDRAW, Corel DESIGNER and Corel PHOTO-PAINT now works as expected.
- To enhance performance when saving large CDR files to the AI format, the PNG compression level is now set to medium by default.
- You can now successfully import PDF files from Canva that contain hidden markup for accessibility features, where some elements are missing a required dictionary property.
- Exporting a document containing an object with a Feather or Gaussian Blur effect to the PNG format works as expected.
- The issue with handling attributes containing empty values in SVG files has been resolved. CorelDRAW/Corel DESIGNER now accurately parses and stores these attributes, ensuring a smoother import and export process, particularly for SVG files with empty string attributes.
- The Save only selected elements option and the Export this page only settings in the Publish to PDF (File > Export To > PDF) dialog box in CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER are now stored independently. Therefore, configuring these settings in one dialog box will no longer impact the other.
Painterly Brush tool improvements
- When you apply a Painterly brushstroke to an object with an outline in CorelDRAW, the brushstroke now matches the color of the outline. When you clear a brushstroke, the object always has an outline with a default width, matching the outline color of the last brushstroke applied.
- Painterly Brush tool enhancements offer improved performance:
- Moving a Painterly brushstroke no longer re-renders the brushstroke.
- The Brush picker now maintains a consistent width when you scroll through the list of brushes.
- Applying Painterly brushstrokes to a symmetry group now works as expected.
Other improvements
- Corel DESIGNER and CorelDRAW no longer stop responding after you launch the application, sign in, choose a template, edit credentials on the Global tab of the Options dialog box (Tools > Options > Global > User ID > Edit Credentials), and sign out.
- Stability issues when creating new documents have been resolved.
- In CorelDRAW or Corel DESIGNER, adjusting the color and tone of a bitmap (Edit > Adjust) which has been modified with one of the Effect tools or the Transparency tool works as expected.
- In Corel PHOTO-PAINT, specifying a network location for fills in the Options dialog box (Options > Global > File Locations) functions as expected.
- In the Assets docker (Window > Dockers > Assets), sorting assets by name (Options button > Sort by name) works as expected.
- After you restart CorelDRAW or Corel DESIGNER following a system error and choose not to recover auto-backup files, the backup copies of files are erased upon quitting the application, as intended.
- When you add multiple circles and rotate them in CorelDRAW or Corel DESIGNER, the circles now appear correctly.
- CorelDRAW Technical Suite now includes all necessary WebView2Loader tools within its executable, eliminating the need to ship a separate WebView2Loader.dll file along with the application. If the WebView2 control, which is used in the Welcome Screen and the Learn docker, fails to create, a dialog will appear, guiding you to install it from Microsoft.
- When deploying CorelDRAW Technical Suite to a network, the public property REMOVE_GPL=1 removes Ghostscript 10.01.2 as expected.