CorelDRAW Tutorial for Beginners 2026 | Full Course: Vector Illustration & Design

Key Takeaways

Hey everybody, welcome to this tutorial. I'm Zach and today we'll learn how to use Corell Draw graphic suite from scratch in just a few minutes. Corell Draw is a professional vector drawing tool used to create branding assets, marketing materials, and more. It's available for both Windows and Mac OS. Do not confuse Corell Draw with Corell Draw Go, which is a more simplified version that can be used completely online. Make sure to check the video description to get download links and further offers for Corell Draw Graphic Suite or Corell Draw Go. Let's open Corell Draw. The welcome screen appears with several options such as getting started, news, tutorials you can follow, or the store to buy projects or additional effects. To create a new project, go to new in the top left corner and select between a blank project or any of the templates available online to start from. If you start from scratch, choose any of the standard formats on the left and refine the settings on the right. To find the project name, choose the number of pages and the color mode to use. For example, RGB for digital work or CMYK for any artwork to be printed. You can also set the dimensions, the page orientation, and the resolution in DPI. The higher the resolution, the higher the project size will be. Head to okay to create the document. This opens on the canvas under a new tab above with its project name next to the welcome screen. At the bottom, you get the pages list where you can use the plus button to create new ones if you need. On the right, you get several panels that we will explore throughout this tutorial. In particular, the learn panel provides several tips about the tools you are going to use, especially if you are a beginner. In case any of these panels are missing, you can retrieve it by going to window and then to dockers. The interface of Corell Draw is dark by default. Go to tools then options customization and head to theme under appearance to change the color for the entire interface. Let's start drawing vectors. On the left side, you get the toolbar which collects several tools. We are going to see some buttons show a white corner. If you click and hold over the button, you can select a specific tool collected inside it. Enable the freehand tool to click and drag to draw over the canvas. You can also adjust the trace size and style above which applies to the current drawing selected. Within the same button, you can select the polyline tool to click and draw consecutive segments or click and hold to draw freehand. Double click on the canvas to start drawing or close the shape. You can also select the pen or the bezier tool to draw more precisely. Click on the canvas to drop consecutive segments or click and hold to define curves by moving the blue tangent handles. Apply the shape by doubleclicking on the canvas or closing it. On the left, you also have several shape tools, very useful to quickly draw circles, rectangles, or other shapes by clicking and dragging on the canvas. Enable common shapes to drop more complex shapes that you can choose from the top. You can also import any vector file you have in SVG format by simply dragging it onto your project using the black handles to resize it as needed. You can zoom in and out over your project and around your cursor by using your mouse wheel at the top. You also enable or disable several drawing aids such as the rulers or the grid. To manage snapping, head to snap to. By default, you can snap to objects across their path and end points, but you can also enable snapping towards the grid if you like. Disable snapping by using the snap off button. You can manage any vector drawing with the pick tool on the left. Click over any vector to select it. Drag it to move it and use its black nodes to scale it using the corner nodes to maintain the aspect ratio and avoid distortion. Click it once again to rotate it around the central point which you can move to rotate around a different point. Use the other handles to skew. Now let's see how to edit the object appearance with a pick tool. Click over an object to select it and adjust its properties from the top bar. As we have already seen, you can open the properties panel on the right to edit more options for the selected object. Under outline, change the outline color, its size, style, add arrows, and so on. If you have enclosed shapes, you can switch to fill to apply a uniform color or any gradient. In the case of a gradient, you can select any marker to change its color or drag the black one to adjust the gradient itself. You can also apply any vector or bit map pattern fill. The second button on the left collects several tools you can use to edit your vector shape. With the shape tool, you can move any node or select any curved node to drag the tangent handles and adjust the curve itself. You can also doubleclick on the object path to drop nodes along the shape for additional signs and use convert to curve to drop new curves around the selected node. From the same button, you can also enable other tools to brush over the shape and edit it. Use control or command and Z to undo. Enable the text tool on the left and click and drag to place any piece of text. Extend the text box through its black nodes and rearrange the text or show the entire content in case the box turns red. Use the pick tool to select the text box. Move it on the canvas as you like and doubleclick on it to continue typing. To edit the text appearance, select it, and open the properties panel on the right. Set the font family, change its size, adjust the text color, and add any background color or outline. These modifications are applied only to the selected text. Switch to paragraph to adjust the paragraph distribution. These vector objects have their shape defined by algorithms, so they never lose quality even if you edit them heavily. When exported as images, these are rendered into pixels that can degrade when modified. These are called bit mapap objects in Corell Draw. Go to file and then to import to browse for any image in JPEG, PNG, WEBP, or PDF format. Let's select this one and head to import. On the canvas, click and drag to place the image with a desired size indicated in the bottom right corner. If you do not have the image you want, you can generate others with the new AI generate panel on the right here. Select the model to use, for example, the nano banana from Google. Below, define the prompt to use describing the subject, the environment, the camera, the main content, and the general style. For example, cinematic. You can also use the inspire me button at the top to get a random prompt to start from. At the bottom, select the aspect ratio, the style, or the color palette to follow. Hit generate to launch the AI. The generated image is automatically imported into the center of the canvas. This AI result also appears at the bottom of the panel and will be overwritten if you generate another image. So, make sure to store the result on the canvas by saving the project or exporting it as we will see later in this video. Each generation consumes the AI credits you have at the bottom that may be purchased if you run out of balance. Enable the pick tool on the left to move, resize, and rotate the image. As we have already seen, you can also use the vector brush tool to crop the image. These do not modify the image content itself unless you convert the image into a vector first. To do this, select the image and go to trace bit map at the top. For example, we can select quick trace, which is very fast, but also less precise compared to other options. Once the image is converted into a vector, you can brush over it freely. A new feature in Corell Draw allows you to remove any background with one click with the power of AI. Select any image and head to remove background at the top to automatically remove the background around the subject. Use control or command and Z to undo. To edit the image properties, open the properties panel on the right. Under transparency, apply a uniform transparency or select the gradient. Switch to bit mapap effects to apply additional effects such as blur, contours, noise, distortion, and many others. You can adjust the effect settings directly from the properties panel. While checking the preview, choose any effect under the adjust section to apply several color corrections such as saturation, brightness, contrast, and much more. These effects are applied in sequence. You can select any effect and drag it up or down to change the order in which the effects are applied. Each effect has an eye icon that you can use to hide or show it. Another way to edit the image is by using AI. Open the AI generate panel and select remix image at the top. Choose an image from the canvas and use the first icon to import it. This will force the AI to use the selected image as reference. Under prompt, describe how you want to modify it. For example, to replace the weather shown, the generation will place another image on the canvas in the same position as the previous one. To manage all the elements within your project, open the objects panel on the right. This shows all the elements inside each page of the document. In this case, page one and page two. If we take page one, all the elements are collected inside a default group called layer 1. From this list, you can select any object to move or edit it. Hide or show any object by using the eye icon and head to the lock icon on the right to prevent any modification to the current layer until it is unlocked. You can also click the effects button to disable or enable the applied bit map effects. Drag any object up or down in the list to change the visibility order, which is especially useful when objects overlap. You can also use the first button at the bottom to create a new layer and then select any component and drag it into this new layer. This way, the object becomes part of the new layer, allowing better organization of your project when you start having a lot of items. To save your entire project, go to file and then to save as. In the top left corner, select the CDR file format to save as a Corell Draw project with all its layers and objects inside. You can also choose other formats such as PDF if you want to print your document. Select SVG to export your project as a vector file. Very useful if you need to upload it on a website thanks to its limited size. To export your project as an image, go to file and then to export. Here the list of available formats is wider, including JPG and also PNG if you need to preserve transparent areas. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. Check out the link in the description to download Corell Draw. Also visit our YouTube channel and website to learn more about other graphic tools in AI. Heat. Heat.