Corel Painter 8 Now Available!

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

OTTAWA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2003

Corel Corporation (NASDAQ:CORL) (TSX:COR) today announced that Corel(R) Painter(TM) 8 is available for purchase across North America. Corel Painter 8, the premiere software for digital painting and sketching, provides professional artists with creative power, features for enhanced productivity and improved compatibility with Adobe(R) Photoshop(R). With over 400 new brushes, a variety of new creative features for professionals and a re-designed user interface, digital artists will find countless ways to be creative using Corel Painter 8.

New features include:

-- Mixer - mix your own paint colors interactively as you would

with paint and a palette, allowing you to create, save and

reuse custom colors

-- Brush Creator - design your own brushes with the Brush Creator

by customizing an existing brush, combining two brushes or

fine-tuning brushes using advanced controls

-- Sketch Effect - create simple sketches and line drawings from

photographs with control over the amount of paper grain, the

heaviness of the pencil line and the desired level of detail

-- New Brushes - experiment with over 400 new brushes in over 30

different mediums

-- User interface - work more efficiently with a redesigned, more

familiar user interface including a new Toolbox, a

context-sensitive Property Bar that puts commonly used

controls at your fingertips, and a Brush Selector that

simplifies brush selection

-- Layer Masks and Channels - hide and reveal areas of a layer

and using layer masks, load and save selections easily with

the redesigned channels, providing a consistent workflow with

Adobe Photoshop 

-- Adobe Photoshop file compatibility - focus on the art, not the

software, thanks to enhanced Adobe Photoshop file

compatibility

Corel Painter 8 has already become an essential tool for many digital artists who make their living selling their design work. Sam Kennedy is a digital art instructor and professional video game animator who has been using Corel Painter for years. "I love the new Mixer. The paint mixing process is so real now - it replicates the traditional experience of paint being mixed together and without the paint clean up or expensive supplies."

Mike Reed, known for his illustrations in children's books, loves the sheer volume of tools available. "I am continuously impressed by the endless supply of tools in Corel Painter 8. I can work on an image forever without running out of tools and materials. There isn't any other software on the market the lets you sketch and paint with real media and in real time."

"Corel Painter 8 features sophisticated tools, making it the ideal software for creating original digital artwork," said Brett Denly, Vice_President of Global Marketing at Corel Corporation. "We've made incredible advancements in this latest version and our pre-order sales are already telling us that we've focused on exactly what our customers need. The wide range of art that you can create with Corel Painter 8 makes it a powerful and artistic complement to any digital art studio."

Digital artists, illustrators, pre-visualization artists and photographers - all frequent users of Corel Painter 8 - will benefit from the new pricing available for customers. Corel Painter 8 is available at a suggested retail price of $299 US for the full package, $149 US for the upgrade and $99 US for the academic version. In addition, customers can now purchase at the upgrade price if they are users of any previous version of Painter, Painter Classic(TM) or Adobe Photoshop 5.5, 6 or 7. (i)

"The new price of Corel Painter 8 is ideal for our customers," said Dan Devries, Executive Vice President of Marketing, PC Mall Inc. "Our customers will save significantly when upgrading to version 8 and the brand new upgrade qualifications for our customers will ensure significant sales for this incredible painting and sketching application."

Corel Painter 8 for Macintosh(R) and Windows(R) is available at retail stores such as PC Mall Inc. across North America. Please visit the interactive tour on www.corel.com/painter8 to learn more about new features and download the free trial version of Corel Painter 8.

(i) Registered users of Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Adobe Photoshop 6, Adobe Photoshop 7 (excluding Photoshop Elements, Photoshop LE and trial versions), Fractal Design Painter 4, FractalDesign Painter 5, MetaCreations Painter 5, MetaCreations Painter 5.5, MetaCreations Painter 6, Corel Painter 6, Painter 7, MetaCreations Painter Classic, Corel Painter Classic and procreate Painter Classic (all versions of Corel Painter and Corel Painter Classic) are eligible to upgrade to Corel Painter 8.(TM)

About Corel Corporation

Founded in 1985, Corel Corporation (www.corel.com) is a leading technology company specializing in content creation tools, business process management and XML-enabled enterprise solutions. The company's goal is to give consumers and enterprise customers the ability to create, exchange and instantly interact with visual content that is always relevant, accurate and available. With its headquarters in Ottawa, Canada, Corel's common stock trades on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol CORL and on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol

This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined by the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, involving the company's expectations about future financial results and other matters. These statements reflect management's current forecast of certain aspects of the company's future business. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results of operations to differ materially from historical results or current expectations. The words "plan", "expect", "believe", "intend", "anticipate", "forecast", "target", "estimate" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Risk factors include shifts in customer demand, product shipment schedules, product mix, competitive products and pricing, technological shifts and other variables. Readers are referred to Corel's most recent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more complete discussion of the other risks and uncertainties. The factors underlying forecasts are dynamic and subject to change. As a result, forecasts speak only as of the date they are given and do not necessarily reflect the company's outlook at any other point in time. The company does not undertake to update or review these forward-looking statements.

(C) 2003 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. Corel and the Corel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation and/or its subsidiaries. All other product, font and company names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.