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Corel Painter Essentials 4
Corel Painter Essentials 4
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Corel Painter Essentials 4 for Windows and Macintosh

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The Bottom Line

Corel Painter Essentials is a simplified, home-user version of Corel Painter professional-level art software. It's designed to help beginners or non-artists create digital art and turn photos into art work. Although it's more limited than Painter, Essentials provides a satisfying set of tools and effects for exploring digital art without overwhelming the user with too many options. For those who wish to go to the next level, buying Painter Essentials and then upgrading to Painter can often cost less than buying Painter outright. Version 4 is a significant advancement and a worthwhile upgrade from earlier versions.
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Pros
  • Users can explore digital art and photo painting without a steep learning curve.
  • Auto-painting creates impressive photo art with minimal effort, and doesn't limit manual control.
  • Navigation and brush selection is easier with the brush drawer and larger buttons for tablet users.
  • Excellent documentation. A detailed guidebook and training videos help users get started.
  • Provides a cost-effective upgrade path to Painter if more advanced software is desired.
Cons
  • Users cannot create or import custom brushes, and brush customization is very limited.
  • No font previews.
  • Slow performance with some brushes.

Description

  • Painter Essentials is digital art software with tools for painting, drawing, and creating photo art.

  • Turn photos into paintings with automated "Smart Strokes," or work manually with cloning tools.

  • Paint and draw freehand with a variety of natural media brushes as well as non-traditional art tools.

  • Includes nearly 100 natural media brushes and cloning tools.

  • Work with acrylics, airbrushes, art pens, oils, blenders, chalk, crayons, watercolors, palette knives, pastels, pencils, etc.

  • Includes libraries of unique gradients, nozzles, patterns, stock photos, paper textures, and brushes.

  • Also features: cloners, tracing paper, layers, selection tools, effects, text tool, eraser, and tonal adjustments.

  • Compatible with other popular software such as Adobe Photoshop and Elements, Corel Paint Shop Pro, and Apple iPhoto.

  • Provides full Wacom tablet support including Intuos3 , Bamboo, Graphire4, and Wacom's 6D Art Pen.

  • For Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.

Guide Review - Corel Painter Essentials 4 for Windows and Macintosh

Corel Painter Essentials is designed to help beginners or non-artists create digital art and turn photos into art work. Version 4 features a completely redesigned workspace optimized for these two primary tasks.

In the Photo Painting workspace, users can turn photos into paintings simply by choosing from a set of presets and customizations, clicking start, and sitting back to watch the show as a photo is converted to painting before one's eyes. Corel has greatly improved the auto-painting results in this version with the new "Smart Stroke" technology which analyses the photo and paints it more intelligently. I found the photo painting results much more satisfying in this version of Painter Essentials compared to Essentials 3.

In the Painting and Drawing workspace, users have access to colors, layers, and a well-rounded collection of natural media art tools including acrylic paints, airbrushes, art pens, oils, blenders, chalk, crayons, watercolors, palette knives, pastels, pencils, etc. There are even some quite "unnatural" but very fun tools such as the image hose and pattern pen that let you paint with images.

Although these two workspaces are divided, user need only click on tabs to move between them so that going from photo-painting to freehand painting and vice-versa is seamless. One of the nicest aspects of Painter Essentials is that it is an art program, but you really don't need to have art skills to get enjoyment from it. There's quite a few more new features in Painter Essentials 4, and I'm very impressed with how this program has developed the last few versions. I'd like to see more options for brush customization, but even so, Painter Essentials is a fun-filled piece of software that should not disappoint.

Painter Essentials 4 New Features and Screen Shots

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