CorelDRAW X6 Service Pack 1 Information Announced

Gérard Metraller has provided a few details on what will be coming in the first service pack for CorelDRAW X6 as well as a rough idea when you might expect it. To be crystal clear, it is not available now. Below are three bullet points straight from the announcement (with minor changes for typos and clarification).

• WIA support: With PHOTO-PAINT X6.1, Corel will support both the TWAIN and WIA standards for scanners (for both Windows 7 32- and 64-bit).
• PS plug-in support: With PHOTO-PAINT X6.1, again in both 32- and 64-bit, Corel will add a much longer list of Photoshop Plug-ins. Corel's tests currently indicate that Blow Up3, Radlab, Noise Ninja and Flaming Pear will work in PHOTO-PAINT X6.1. Corel is also trying to get Nik and EyeCandy to work, and they have reached out to the developers of those companies to work with Corel to make this happen.
• VBA enhancements: For those creating marcos in VBA and VSTA, Corel will add full support for the new OpenType as well as Styles functionality. 

The service pack will be a free download to all registered users of CorelDRAW X6 and it is suggested it will arrive in "late summer 2012". If I had to guess that means sometime between August 1 and the end of September. Please don't ask for a more specific date as I don't know anything more than what has been announced.

In addition to the specific features listed above, there will be additional performance and feature enhancements. Yes, there will be fixes of bugs though no specific issues on the list of fixes have been mentioned.

The first bullet point relates to scanning and I discussed this in detail in CorelDRAW X6, 64-bits, Scanning, Twain Drivers and WIA. This issue mainly affects users of the 64-bit version and there is a solution that works now in the post. I also discussed the issue of Photoshop Plug-In support in Photoshop Plug-ins and Corel PHOTO-PAINT Compatibility. While the fix listed above will add support for more plug-ins, you need to understand that the 64-bit version of PHOTO-PAINT requires 64-bit plug-ins and that list is somewhat limited. This is all detailed in the post I did back in April.

I will also remind you that the service pack will arrive after the grace period deadline for upgrading to CorelDRAW X6 for users of CorelDRAW X3 and earlier. If you are using an earlier version, please read Deadline Quickly Approaching for CorelDRAW X6 Upgrade Grace Period. If you wait until the service pack is ready before purchasing an upgrade, you will pay a lot more!