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Corel Painter 11
Autor Air
- Painter 11 offers a broad range of digital painting, photo-painting and drawing tools that enhance your creativity, expand your digital darkroom, support unlimited experimentation and help you work faster
- All-new RealBristle painting system models traditional brushes like never before–replicate the sensation and interaction between traditional paint and canvas with your pen and tablet
- Painter 11 is the world’s most powerful Natural-Media painting and illustration software, ideal for commercial designers, entertainment artists, pro photographers, fine artists and students
- Support for the entire Wacom product line, including industry-leading Cintiq interactive pen displays and Intuos drawing tablets, gives you the most responsive digital painting experience so your hand and brush work fluidly as one
- Box version includes bonus brushes, gradients, image hose nozzles, paper textures, patterns and weaves
Product DescriptionCorel Painter 11 is the ultimate art studio for anyone ready to expand their definition of creativity. When it comes to your art, the uniqueness of your work depends on your imagination and your ability to express it. With Painter, you can grow your digital darkroom and create the art you’ve always envisioned with the most advanced digital painting and natural media tools available. Pressure-sensitive brushes allow your hand and brush to fluidly work as one, produ. . . More >>
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July 17, 2010 -
Photo, Media & Design -
5 comments
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Del.ico.us
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I really like this program. It is so cool and fun to use. I just play around in it, not anything professional. I have come across some bugs though, so it isn’t perfect by any means and it does run slow at times. But overall very cool.
Rating: 3 / 5
The title really says it all. This is really way beyond what I am used to, and I have to tell you that I am no expert here. I am used to Adobe Elements. . . . I thought that was complex. . . . well, this is something that, in the right hands, would be amazing. . . it is for me as well, however, it’s like driving a Honda automatic all your life and then replacing it with a Ferrari and only using the first two gears. . . you love it, but you know there is so much more. I should say that I first installed this on my laptop, and that was a BAD idea, it slowed things down a lot (it is likely my laptop, I only have 1 gig of RAM, it is a Dell Inspiron). When I put it on my XPS I had no problems (much more RAM, faster processor, etc. . . . . Okay, so what can you do??? What can’t you do? This just blows away Elements. I love the fact that I can make images look like paintings. That is just amazing. A friend just paid more than the cost of this program to do that to a picture and then have it printed up. I have been doing a lot of “goofing” around, and trying to paint things and play with textures, etc. , but there really is sooo much, that to be truly proficeint, I would probably need a class. . . . not that the documentation is bad, it’s just that I am not that good/experienced. Nor am I an artist, but I always wanted to try, and this allows the freedom to expirement, try, mess up, try again, and you don’t have to buy a new canvas, paint, etc. If you are looking at this, you probably need it for something serious. . . . I say, go for it! The learning curve (for me) is steep, but it should be rewarding!
Rating: 5 / 5
As a serious photo-hobbyist, I selected Corel Painter 11 thinking it would be an interesting photo editing tool. However as an Adobe Photoshop fan, I doubted Corel Painter would be a replacement. Even though I was right, I completely misunderstood the purpose of this powerful software.
The Corel Painter 11 software is a tool used to create digital paintings and sketches. While intended for painters and sketch artists, Corel also recognizes possibilities for photographers. During a visit to the Corel website I quickly located a tutorial showing how to auto create a painting from a photograph. This option is surprisingly good (see the Olives at Market image), but has its limitations. I knew I could create better paintings by learning the program and painting to my liking.
At first glance this software looks complicated. The basic appearance of the toolbox, palettes, and layout with all the drop downs and color mixer can be intimidating to a non-painter like me. However after spending a little time clicking and testing, I realized Corel Painter 11 uses familiar Photoshop type icons and has similar functionalities like layers. This familiarity helped decrease the learning curve, allowing me time to focus on the things I didn’t understand.
After reviewing all the brushes, color mixer, and a few other things that I couldn’t easily relate to, I decided to take a course at betterphoto. com. The first lesson gave me a basic understanding of how to create a pastel painting from an image. I also realized quickly how much fun it was to paint my images, especially using my Intuos4 pen tablet. By the time I finished the fourth lesson, I had created five paintings (all displayed in the images section) and developed a strong foundation for future projects.
For those familiar with previous versions, several brushes are missing in Corel Painter 11. The Flemish Rub brush is one I used but had to manually install. If a favorite brush is missing or you want to experiment with some alternatives, place the install disc in the drive and browse to Extras > Brushes. Then drag the brushes you want into the appropriate Corel Painter folder on your hard drive. Some of the newer functions may not work with an older brush, which is probably why they didn’t come pre-installed. However these brushes are still useful even if they are limited in their abilities.
While it’s clear this is a feature rich painter software tool with the versatility to work for various artists, it won’t be for everyone. If this is the type of software you would enjoy, Corel Painter 11 is an excellent choice worthy of the expense. If you are uncertain, look for the free trial download at Corel’s website. The expense of taking a class at betterphoto. com isn’t necessary either; there are plenty of reasonably priced books and free web tutorials. However, I would strongly recommend investing in a pen tablet set if you don’t own one already. You could get by without one, but you’ll miss out on the sensitivity and angle functions as well as make painting unnecessarily challenging.
PROS:
Toolbar icons and functions similar to Photoshop
Fun and creative way to make paintings from photos
CONS:
Steep price
Rating: 5 / 5
I am not much of a computer reviewer – I leave that kind of thing to my brother-in-law who studies programs and computers with a passion I cannot muster. I run a Dell Inspirion 1525 with Windows Vista, and an Intel Celeron processor. Laptops are not what you generally want to try to use artwork software on, but it’s what I had.
First of all I was surprised that such a robust software program loaded as quickly and easily as it did. Loading Civ 4 took longer (by far). Also there was no logging online to have to “register” or blah blah blah “call and activate” (like the battle I had with our accounting software). The tiny little box came with one CD, one little Manual, and a sticker with a keycode (keep the packaging!).
I have played around with this for a while now and it’s a lot of fun. I am not an artist, and I have NO graphic design skills – but I was able to mess around with some photos, and draw a few pictures. I highly recommend that anyone who wants to use this for high quality art work purchase a tablet, as a mouse just doesn’t have the control that a real artist would want.
I did not have any issues with crashing or massive CPU use – it ran fine for me. But then again I really wasn’t pushing the software to it’s limits. I don’t have a tablet to plug in and work with. I will warn those of you who don’t have much experience with artwork programs – the included booklet manual is pitiful as far as telling you how to do what you want to do. There is online help available though the progam and it WILL help you. But don’t expect to find what you are looking for in the booklet.
Also an index for non-artsy laymen types would have been nice – I know what I want to do, but I have no idea what it’s called, or what the system may be asking me to do. I draw, but I haven’t learned any art vocab since 3rd grade.
If you are just looking for something to tweak a photo here and there, or to slap some text on a pic – this is probably way to big and expensive for you. If you actually intend to create art, or truly manipulate images, then from what I can tell – this is an excellent program to purchase.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is an excellent app, that most likely far exceeds the needs of the average user who wants a simple paint program – or something a step up from MS Paint. More for a pro or semi-pro. It is feature rich, and very capable.
Rating: 5 / 5