CorelDraw is a vector-based drawing application developed and marketed by Corel Corporation of Ottawa, Canada.

Supported Platforms

CorelDraw was originally developed for Microsoft Windows but an Macintosh version was released some years later.

CorelDraw came into its own with Microsoft's release of Windows 3.1. Although a 16-bit application, the inclusion of TrueType in Windows 3.1 transformed CorelDraw into a serious illustration program capable of quality typography.

Development History

In the late 1980s, Dr. Michael Cowpland and Terry Matthews founded Corel, and hired software engineer Pat Beirne to develop an illustration program to bundle with the Intel-based desktop publishing (DTP) systems Corel was selling. The program was well received and Corel soon focused on software alone.

Around the same time, as additional components were developed (Corel Trace, Corel Texture, Corel Photo-Paint, etc.) CorelDraw was marketed as a graphics software suite.