106 MacDirectory
REVIEW
COREL PAINTER 11
Corel Painter has long held the title as
leading natural media art application. It
provides a wide array of drawing and
painting media, papers and canvasses, and
it simulates the real thing with a quality
that you can almost smell the turps and
feel the cool stickiness of the pastels.
While best known for painting and
drawing, tools are also provided for
composition, photo enhancement and
animation, as well as an assortment of
filters and other features that make for a
very well rounded package. While it can
be used with a mouse, it is specifically
designed for graphics tablets, with
particularly strong support for Wacom
tablets , including the new
Intuos 4 series.
There is a huge amount of control for
everything from blending, drying time,
smudginess, and for the effects of
pressure, angle and speed. Oils blend just
like the real thing, impasto has an
authentic 3-D look, and the same applies
for just about the entire tool set.
Some of the features that set it apart from
the real thing are such digital fare as
layers, multiple undos, the ability to
continue work infinitely beyond normal
drying times, and the ability to record and
play back your strokes, to name a few.
Painter 11 also plays well with other
application, offering color management
tools and support for layers and color
consistency with Adobe Photoshop.
New and Improved
There are a number of interesting tweaks
with hard media, such as pencils and
chalk, in that you can create shading with
the edge of the pencil or side of the chalk
by using the stylus at a low angle.
Overlapping marker strokes can intensify
color saturation. Pens can be set to adjust
thickness according to stroke speed as
well as leaving splotches.
A unified transformation tool provides a
one-stop solution for moving, skewing,
resizing and the like. The colors palette
now included sliders for manual color
adjustment and can now expand up to
800 pixels. The hue ring now supports
fine-tuning via arrow keys. Resizing the
mixer palette dynamically changes the
number and increment of mixer swatches.
In addition, brushes perform up to 30
percent faster than Painter X, which is a
big deal with such tools as impasto.
Further enhancements include a polygon
lasso tool and improvements with the
magic wand and marquee tools.
Painter is one of that special range of
applications that covers its bases so well
and has reached such a point of maturity
that there is not a limitless range of
improvements on the horizon. If you are
in the market for a drawing or painting
application, Painter is the only solution you
need. In addition to the full $399 Painter
package, you could opt for the more
compact $99 Painter 4 Essentials or the
slightly more ambitious $119 Painter
Sketch Pad.
A nice bonus with Painter 11 is a high-
quality tutorial DVD featuring the highly
regarded fine artist and illustrator Jeremy
Sutton. Further support is provided in the
form of online videos, downloadable
papers, nozzles, brushes and other
goodies, as well as links to books and
other resources.
Recommendations
Painter 11 is the best natural media art
application there is. If you are using a
version that is growing a bit long in the
tooth, this would make an excellent
opportunity to broaden your capabilities.
Users of Painter X will also find a lot to like
in the latest release, but might not
consider this to be a gotta' have upgrade.
If, however, you are new to the world of
digital drawing and painting and would
like to experiment a bit you could snag a
bundled copy of Painter Essentials with an
entry level Wacom tablet and see what
you think.
WORDS BY TREY YANCY
Product Painter 11
Made by Corel
Price $399 (upgrade $199)
Pros Great new hard media
variants, velocity control
Cons Some interface quirks, tiny
layers panel
Rating
★★★★★