Corel Painter is an Illustration Software for Windows and Mac created by publisher Corel Corporation.
Product summary of Corel Painter
Corel’s Painter program offers digital artists a variety of editing and drawing tools. The variety is so diverse they will be spoiled with choice on what to use for their works. The Painter’s highlights include its 30 brush mediums, Artists’ Oils, Liquid Ink Technology, Impasto Brushes, and the Watercolor technology.
What to expect from Corel Painter
The brush medium features range from colored pencils, crayons, digital watercolor, erasers, liquid ink, pattern pens, pastels, palette knives, sponges, watercolor, to tinting. Traditional artists won’t have a problem adjusting since the paper texture on the software acts like real brush strokes. In completely digitalizing the “old school” form of art, the Artists’ Oils feature lets the brush “absorb” blended colors and apply them onto the canvas. There’s also the Watercolor technology that is close to an actual water coloring experience as it seems to stay wet as you pause between strokes. The Liquid Ink Technology provides a thick medium to apply surface texture and viscosity to your work. Enhancing the texture are the Impasto brushes using dimensional paint.
Painter Mixer palette and Brush Creator Tool
Artists who need more color flexibility will enjoy the mixer palette. More experienced users of the program will enjoy the Brush Creator Tool, which lets you customize brushes according to your taste. You can see how effective your creations are with the scratchpad area. Your work momentum won’t be broken either, thanks to the Brush Tracker palette. The tracker lets you see the past 24 brushes you’ve been using as you worked on your art. As you apply the brushes, you won’t have to worry about the mouse being too free as you paint on the digital canvas. The snap-to-path painting lets you limit the brush stroke to a specific shape or path.
Perspective grids, vector based drawing shapes & tools and Photoshop PSD support
More advanced artists will enjoy the perspective grids that let you work on three dimensional images. Of course, not to be missed is the vector-based drawing shapes and tools. Past users of Photoshop won’t have a problem using PSD images and files. The layers from Photoshop are not compromised, maintaining the image’s layer masks, sets, and blend modes.
Other cool features of Corel Painter
Those who have used Painter from its beginning will be pleased to see the new 40 hard media variants that are organized into several drawing and sketching categories. This organized feature makes keeping track of changes much easier. The mixer palette now allows for resizing and has more space for color swatches. The mixer has a more advanced design for color combinations. Users can also open up PNG files and fix them on the program.
At a disadvantage with Painter are first time graphic program users. It takes a certain amount of experience to really get the hang of the program’s tools. Some may get frustrated with the small space of the dialog boxes and sliders. Artists used to updated interface will not be too pleased with its overall look. Pen users will definitely not go for Painter.
Overall, Painter offers a wide range of possibilities and pushes artistic creativity to the limit. A pressure sensitive tablet is required to utilize Painter’s advanced features.