DrawPlus X2

Serif has always been an alternative to the big-names, offering budget-featured products at budget prices, and its illustration package DrawPlus has been tagging along behind its more popular rivals for more than ten years. But with a number of new additions, it’s now a more convincing choice than before.

As an overview, it offers all the usual line, path and fill tools you’d expect from a vector-based paint program. But it also includes an impressive range of textured arty brushes with more than a passing resemblance to the paint tools available in Corel Painter. The paint examples in the tutorials are unimpressive, but in more capable hands it’s unexpectedly responsive. If you’re looking for a pen-based paint package and don’t feel like wrestling with the complexities of Painter, DrawPlus may well be up to the job.

Also included is a handy 3D extrusion tool, especially useful for blobbing out text into three dimensions, and a basic keyframe animation tool with tweening. Animations can be saved in Flash format, so you can put together simple banner ads and splashes without much effort. While DrawPlus has its limits, you can get a lot done with it, and it feels faster and simpler than waiting for the chunkier parts of CS3 to load and start.

Overall, you’ll like this if you’re starting out, on a very tight budget or want something simple but productive without the learning curve of Flash, Illustrator or Painter.