The Bottom Line
- Affordable page layout and graphics combo
- Extensive vector drawing tools
- Multi-page document support
- Exports to a variety of common graphics formats including EPS and PDF
- Includes a vector symbol gallery and template gallery
- Imports plain text only -- no import of .doc files or other formatted text
- Paragraph spacing and leading controls are somewhat limited
- Commands for some actions are found in less than intuitive menu locations
- No automatic drop caps
Description
- Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP
- 30-day Trial version available for download
- Graphic drawing features including freeform, bezier, and polygon drawing tools, fills, textures, node editing
- Master Pages, templates, and text/paragraph styles for faster formatting and document creation
- Import and Export JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIFF. Export AI, EPS, PDF formats
- 800 Fonts by Manfred Klein included
Guide Review - CeledyDraw 2
CeledyDraw is designed for people without a lot of experience or training in desktop publishing and graphics. It is aimed at non-professionals who want and need a program more powerful than the typical consumer desktop publishing program but more affordable than the professional packages from Adobe and Quark. It's an excellent low-cost option for small businesses and home users.
It is feature-rich, especially on the graphics side, but with admirable page layout features including linking and flowing text between text frames, text and paragraph styles for quick document-wide changes, and text wrapping.
Most tools and actions are easy to figure out. There are a few commands that took a lot of clicking around to locate -- inserting new pages is found in the View menu, for example. No keyboard shortcut for zooming in and out was a bit annoying but for the most part learning to get around in the program is a snap.
Those who like to draw will be happy with the extensive drawing and special effects features. For quickstarts, there is a template gallery as well as a large collection of vector symbols ready to insert.
In addition to home and small business users, CeledyDraw 2 would be a good choice for high school level students and teachers. Celedy also offers discounts on software licensing for schools.
