design in Corel and Corel Photo Paint all the time them transfer to flexi or fastartist. Great design tools with tons of tools. You can add plug ins but don't need to. Go look up some corel tutorials on You Tube and see what you can do with it.
yes, you can trace, design and yes, it's easy to install. YOu will need to use co-cut or some other rip though. In Corel, you can click edit bitmap, it automatically opens Photo Paint, you edit, click save then close paint and the changes made appear right back on the regular Corel page you were working on. Photo Paint uses layers just like Photo Shop.