If I have Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you may ask why do I need Corel Painter 11? To me that is like saying, “I am going to paint the house trim with a 9-inch roller.” It would work and you could do it, but it would be better and easier to paint the trim with a 3-inch brush. Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter are editing tools and they both have their own strengths.

Painter vs Photoshop

There are many similarities between the two programs. If you know Photoshop, you know many of the tools in Corel Painter 11, but you will also see that there are many more brushes, textures, and effects in Painter II. This version introduces no less than 40 new or enhanced features. Each tool has a number of customizable options you use to produce the desired effect.

A major difference between Painter and Photoshop is that with Photoshop the final image is a photo or illustration. Painter, on the other hand, helps you create an image to look like a piece of art. To do this, Painter uses features like layers, texture, selective transparency, and opacities. You take your artwork and add color, blur the background, darken high lights, increase contrast, and punch up detail. Much of this is done with brushes that you control using multiple sliders, plus they recommend you use a tablet to access the full brush controls.

Painter 11 Tools

In Painter, you use artist's techniques and lighting. When you are through, your image can look like an oil painting on canvas, or a watercolor on a rough or smooth textured paper, or even a pencil or charcoal drawing. You may use a photo or other art work as a template or use multiple templates, and of course, you can start with a blank document too.



Painter 11 Main Window
Painter’s tools can let you be creative by making subtle changes to your image. If you were to take a piece of chalk or a color pencil, you can draw a fine line. Give that tool a different angle and you get a broad stroke. Feather, blur, or soften your tool and it gives you still another result. Lightly touching your canvas brings some of the detail through the layer in which you are working. It provides brush stroke and air brushing to your image too. If you own a Wacom tablet, you can use its pressure sensitivity to enhance the effects and make your image appear even more realistic. Painter 11 now includes support for Wacom’s top of the line Intuos4.

Painter Brush Controls

Brushes have a variety of characteristics depending on the media in which you want to work. There are over 30 of these preset brushes available including, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, oils, calligraphy, sponge, pencil, chalk, and palette knife.



Painter 11 Brush Controls
If you select the pencil tool, you have over 20 different types of pencils to work with. You can select from a number 2 lead pencil to a carpenter’s broad lead pencil. After you select your pencil, you can change the stroke, color, and make numbers of other modifications. You can use Painter’s Brush Creator to develop your own special tools from scratch or change the presets provided.



Painter 11 Paper Selector

by Rick Curran, Editor