CorelDRAW differentiates itself from its competitors in a number of ways: The first is its positioning as a graphics suite, rather than just a vector graphics program. A full range of editing tools allow the user to adjust contrast, color balance, change the format from RGB to CMYK, add special effects such as vignettes and special borders to bitmaps.

PageMaker was one of the first desktop publishing programs, introduced in 1985 by Aldus Corporation, initially for the then new Apple Macintosh and in 1987 for PCs running the then new Windows 1.0. PageMaker was awarded an SPA Excellence in Software Award for Best New Use of a Computer in 1986.

Adobe InDesign is a software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines and books. InDesign is a direct competitor to QuarkXPress

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated. There are two versions of Photoshop: Basic and Extended, with Extended having extra features available. Adobe Photoshop Extended is included in all of Adobe's Creative Suite offerings except Design Standard, which has the Basic version.

Adobe Dreamweaver (formerly Macromedia Dreamweaver) is a web development application originally created by Macromedia, and is now developed by Adobe Systems, which acquired Macromedia in Dreamweaver is available for both Mac and Windows operating systems.

Microsoft FrontPage (full name Microsoft Office FrontPage) is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office suite from 1997 to Microsoft FrontPage has since been replaced by Microsoft Expression Web and Sharepoint Designer, which were first released in December 2006.