CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12

If you need temporary guide lines to help align objects, CorelDraw 12 provides dynamic guides, which you can snap to and later delete when you've finished with them. Talking of snapping, you can snap an object to snap points in other objects, with the target point highlighting as you drag near to it. Symbols, introduced in CorelDraw 11, save space in Web design by taking as much file space as an object, no matter how many copies of them you create. Now you can build libraries of symbols to re-use in different drawings and distinguish them from objects by their blue handles. CorelDraw 12 can delete arbitrary segments from drawings with the Virtual Segment Delete tool and use the Eyedropper and Paintbucket together to transfer not just colour, but properties like transparency from one object to another.

The only real improvement to PhotoPaint is the addition of a Touch-Up brush, which helps remove blemishes like dust and scratches from scanned photographs. Like the other modules of the program though, PhotoPaint can optimise finished images for export to Microsoft Office or WordPerfect Office applications and now provides a separate Export command to save images in a wide range of different graphics formats. The improvements to RAVE, the animation module of the Suite, are pretty much the same as in CorelDraw. They include the SmartDrawing tool, dynamic guides, which can be used from frame to frame in an animation, symbols (and their animated equivalent, sprites) and virtual segment delete. --Simon Williams