Corel Painter is digital freehand art software modeled on the look and feel of paint. It supports digital freehand drawing devices like Wacom’s Cintiq interactive pen displays and Intuos drawing tablets for digital freehand drawing.
Painter supports mixed media and features professional-level tools. It provides both beginners and experts alike with plenty to discover and enjoy.
Natural-Media Brushes
Corel Painter allows artists to craft realistic sketches and paintings using its extensive selection of natural-media brushes, paper textures, and media types that look and feel just like traditional art materials. Corel Painter’s innovative drawing tools, cloning capabilities, and customisable brush features help digital artists expand their creativity in unprecedented ways.
Painting realistic brushstrokes requires both wet and dry brushstrokes that mimic reality, expert natural-media brushes with dry, wet, and blending media that mimic reality look and feel exactly the same as they would when used directly on surfaces like paper, canvas or fabric. Discover all kinds of possibilities using a wide array of Particles which spring, glow and fly, Pattern Pens that leave unforgettable marks, Sargent brushes that produce bold multi-hued strokes of paint as well as Sargent brushes which produce multi-shaded brushstrokes on canvas etc.
User-requested workflow improvements have been implemented to speed and simplify the painting process even more quickly and intuitively. For instance, the previously disorganised set of brush libraries have now been combined into one central library, with new options for managing presets and preset management. Furthermore, selecting brush sizes has never been quicker or simpler with our visual Brush Size Library panel which lets you see them quickly and select them visually.
Paper Textures
Paper textures play an integral part in how brushes behave on canvas. Corel Painter includes several paper textures designed to maximize the creative potential of Real Watercolor and Particle brushes, as well as flow maps to assist your brushstrokes as they traverse across paper surfaces.
When painting on rough textures like rice paper, your brush strokes will respond like you were flipping an old toothbrush across it – creating more natural and authentic brush strokes.
There are also a range of paper-specific textures that you can select, such as laid and embossed papers. Embossed papers feature raised detailing that can both be seen and felt; you might use this type of texture for invitation cards or personal stationery. Laid papers provide similar textured finishes but feature smoother textures with more refined touches – perfect for brochures or restaurant menus. All these options become available when choosing either style of paper, or applying one of its effects with texture-specific effects.
Natural-Media Media
Painter offers an impressive library of drawing tools that resemble traditional media, from airbrushes and pencils to chalk, charcoal and oil brushes – as well as the revolutionary Particle brushes which enable artists to further explore their creative vision with wild and imaginative results.
Painter supports multiple pen-based tablet devices and allows users to control brush width by tilting their stylus – similar to using real brushes! Furthermore, Painter maintains color profiles from imported files for seamless transition between pieces of artwork.
Corel’s software not only includes an extensive suite of drawing tools, but it also comes with an impressive collection of painting effects to add extra depth and realism to any project. Furthermore, its brush engine supports various blending modes, making it simple to achieve blended or textured results with few or no visible transitions between layers.
Corel offers several purchase options, such as one-time purchase and annual subscription. A one-time option costs $429 and gives access for life; subscription plans start at just $299 for an entire year’s access. Both versions of the software are compatible with most graphics and photo-editing programs and Corel also provides a free trial period so users can decide if Corel software meets their needs.
Dab Effects
Corel Painter provides multiple dab effects to transform digital images into hand-drawn or painted pictures, using standard brushes, superior blending capabilities and various functional art tools that produce various drawing styles and brush shapes. Furthermore, Corel Painter includes options for transforming images into sketches or photographs.
The new dab options enable you to fine-tune the appearance of any stamp-type brush by altering its shape and expression in unexpected ways. Going beyond Size labels alone, they enable adjustments such as Angle Spacing or even adding jitter or changing stroke thickness.
Choose from an impressive variety of dab shapes, such as expressive styles like Jellyfish and Coarse Clump. Or capture, import and assign JPEG or PNG images using Captured Dabs submenu – you can even assign custom icons for captured dabs through Captured Dabs panel!
Your captured brush can also be set as a favorite using the Options menu or by clicking its gray heart in the brush selection bar. Unfavoriting an item will remove it from the list of favorites; to view all favorited brushes at once use My Favorites filter or click icon in Captured panel.