For any artist that has ever dreamed of having a fully stocked artist studio that never needs cleaned or restocked, Corel Painter Essentials 4 can help fulfill that dream. It allows artists to create realistic digital paintings with any type of medium they desire.
Features
Corel Painter Essentials 4 contains everything an artist could want in a fully stocked art studio. There are different types of paints, a variety of brushes, and a plethora of dry media. Realistic paper textures and colors give the artist a wide range of styles they can implement, as well.
The “brush drawer” contains almost any type of medium an artist could want. Users can select acrylics, oils, felt tip markers, chalk, pastels, crayons, watercolors, and more. Artists can also select what type of technique to use with the medium. Some of the choices are smearing, blending, wet on wet, adding salt, and spraying.
The software also lets artists imitate the brush strokes of famous painters such as Van Gogh and Sargent. These impressionistic brush strokes are very similar to the ones found in the masters' paintings.
Paint colors are laid out in a realistic pallet on the right side of the screen (see photo). Paints can be mixed with your brush just like an artist would in real life.
Photo Painting Capabilities
In addition to Essentials’ digital painting capabilities, it can also make original artworks from digital photos. The user only has to switch to photo painting mode, upload a photo, and play with the different paper choices and tools. The software takes the user’s selections and automatically paints the image using “Smart Strokes” that follow the original lines of the photo.
Smart Stroke technology changes brush size and strokes depending on the details of the photo to mimic the movement of a real artist. Unfortunately, Smart Strokes technology is far from perfect, and can leave holes or unpainted areas in the finished work, so it shouldn’t be depended on for a perfect final product.
Usability
Corel Painter Essentials 4 is a very easy to use drawing and painting program for those who are not experienced with using digital art software. There is very little learning curve. All of the functions are very easy to find thanks to obvious and well-placed icons.
For those artists that need extra help, Essentials comes with video tutorial guides to walk each user through the learning process.
Compatibility
Corel Painter Essentials 4 has been designed to be compatible with Windows Vista or XP, Mac OS X 10.4.x, all Wacom pens and tablets, and the files can be shared with other major photo-editing applications, such as Corel Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Corel PhotoImpact.
Though Corel Painter Essentials 4 is very simple to use, it is far from basic. Artists of all disciplines and skill levels can enjoy using it for a wide range of projects.
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