Corel Corporation, headquartered in Ottawa, offers the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, a graphic design studio and library of tools.
$249
per year
PicMonkey
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
PicMonkey, from the company of the same name in Seattle, is an application designed to help users create standout visuals for Insta posts, Facebook covers, YouTube thumbnails, web pages, holiday cards, posters or anything with a visual, offering graphics and templates, unlimited stock photos and features to support illustrative presentations.
It is a perfect suite of applications to finish presentations and create beautiful layouts for design. It is very useful both for graphic design and for architecture design when you want to draw a realistic idea of a project without being a rendering or when you need to present both images and vectorial drawings.
It's great for a small- or medium-scale social media manager or graphic designer. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it for larger-scale projects or editing images with detail as I think it is missing some capabilities that something like Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator may possess, but it is a great tool to create professional-looking graphics with ease.
Ease of use is a major factor in our choice for the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. With intuitive interface terminologies, users are able to jump right into the applications with ease and confidence.
The ability to customize the Suite to fit your particular needs is a major strength of the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. CorelDRAW customization abilities are endless and can turn the default Graphics Suite into a fully customized powerhouse application catered to a designer's specific wants and needs.
I think that PicMonkey could have more opportunities for raving fans (like me!) to act as affiliates for their products and services.
I think that PicMonkey could make it more apparent on how to save themes. The Hub is great, but I think it is easy to allow that area to become messy and disorganized.
Just like any design program or suite, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't do graphic design professionally. If you're not adept at learning a program or experience, it isn't a program you can just pick up and start using easily. Outside of the learning curve, it's a nice program with a decent user interface.
PicMonkey's usability is outstanding! I was able to learn how to edit my photos and create graphics in a short period of time. Between the tutorials and the amazing user interface, I felt like a pro! PicMonkey is very detailed but not so overwhelming that you miss out on great features.
Overall, CorelDRAW meets all my needs as a researcher and allows me to create beautiful and clear graphics to illustrate the main ideas for publications. It does not lack any functionality for my needs; however, it has some bugs that impact productivity, such as the color drag and drop that sometimes stops working and needs restarting, and crashes, especially when working with large bitmaps.
To be fair, I have not had to use customer support, but I have found the website materials/instructions at PicMonkey.com to be easy to understand and the website (mostly) simple to navigate. As someone who is not the MOST tech-savvy in any room, I find it accessible and not intimidating; it gives me confidence to create the images that I know will be most effective for our purposes.
I feel Corel is just as powerful as the Adobe suite. I started using Corel back when I worked for a government organization that was PC based (and at the time, you couldn't get the Adobe suite on PC). I found that Corel was just as powerful. Over time, you can now get the Adobe Suite for PC but Corel is a better price - which for a non-profit is very important. Of course, I am more comfortable with Corel because I have used it for so many years as well.
PicMonkey better suited my needs than Canva because it was easier to complete multiple items within one editing template. As a busy professional, I have to find time in between clients to push content out on Social Media or to email graphics to potential clients and PicMonkey has allowed me to create what I need very quickly without losing quality.
Ease of use reflects on less time to train new users, a positive impact in investment and productivity.
The practicality to make new designs results in less time needed to do them, again a positive impact.
The integration with other graphic programs could be better if needed to finish a rendering using the design made in Corel Draw it's needed to export in formats that don't carry all information and the process is not that simple.
