Corel Painter Essentials 4 (Win/Mac) | List Price: $99.00
Discount Price: $57.99
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Platform: Macintosh, Windows
Brand: Corel
Binding: CD-ROM
Release Date: 2007-10-16
Features: - The simple-to-use home art studio that makes it easy for you to draw, paint or turn your photos into paintings--the ideal way to get started with digital art
- Enhanced Photo Painting System reduces the complexity of turning a photo into a painting
- Incredible selection of brushes, paints, pens and paper textures for adding unique touches to photos or creating cards, scrapbooks and other fun projects
- Compatible with Intel and PowerPC Macs, Windows Vista, the entire Wacom product line, and major photo-editing applications
- Tutorial-based guidebook and accompanying video tutorials/sample files teach you the application while you complete fun, instructional projects
Corel Painter Essentials 4 [Posted on 2008-08-17]
I haven't had much luck using this. Nothing comes out the way I want it to. I'm not crazy about it and you don't have a lot of personal control with it.
Great Intro to Photo painting [Posted on 2008-09-07]
I found this Painter Essentials to be a great introduction to painting. A must for those interested in learning the basics of painting using the computer.
It's no Photoshop - but does the job [Posted on 2008-09-20]
As a long time Photoshop user I was, admittedly, skeptical about the capabilities of Painter4. I was pleasantly surprised. It certainly is a mid-end product, but has all of the basics you world expect. For the price it really does the job. My kids (13, 15) took to it very well enjoying a very (matter our hours) swift learning curve. For quick picture touch-up's I actually now prefer this over Photoshop (I never thought I'd every say that about another product!).
It does the job, but not a replacement for Photoshop Elements 2.0 [Posted on 2008-12-06]
I was looking for a cheap replacement for Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 [OLD VERSION] and I thought Corel Painter 4 would do it based upon the reviews.
Corel Painter does not handle layers nearly as neatly as Photoshop Elements. It doesn't handle arcs either (hence the 2 stars). It's only saving grace is the fact that it does photo manipulation better. It is a cheap image editor and it is overpriced. I recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 [OLD VERSION] for half the price and the same functionality.
Econo-Paint for Budget Artists [Posted on 2008-12-18]
I'm a cheapskate when it comes to PC applications, so I've spent much of my artistic career on bundled programs. I still draw and edit in Microsoft's generic "Paint" program. And when I bought a camera that included a "Limited Edition" of Adobe Photoshop 5.0, I loaded it up eagerly--only to find the interface clunky and disorienting. I don't manipulate my digital pictures very much, because they tend to have satisfactory hue, saturation, and values from the outset, and I'm not into gimmicks like stain-glass filters.
I needed something oriented more towards free-drawing, but with more intuitive photo styling for those rare occasions. So naturally I checked out Corel's latest budget art program, Painter Essentials 4.
Right off the bat, PE4 is light years ahead of Vista's Paint program, and noticeably superior to my old Adobe program. Granted, it lacks some photo-specific options, like red-eye reduction and other assorted filters. The layer system is also a bit more primitive. But it can do everything else and then some. PE4 is more stable and intuitive than PS 5.0 LE, with big friendly icons and tool tips.
PE4 is chiefly an editor. For example, graphic novelists or cartoonists can use it to digitally fill color. However, the toolset supports scratch artwork. To that end, it alternates between two tabulated interfaces: "Photo Painting" and "Drawing & Painting", which can be selected at will from the canvas. All tools are available for either mode.
These include a text box for labeling pics, and a number of shader wizards and style presets to transform photos into paintings or line drawings. Of note is the auto-painter, which accepts a number of presets for Edge, Color, Paper, and Brush types. It does require practice and discretion to make anything look good, as it is easy to overwhelm a picture with garbage. And yes, artists can manually touch-up or alter images without any reliance on auto-painting. Finally, the user can load and save a variety of file formats beyond the default Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), including TIFF, JPEG, bitmaps, Macintosh PICT, and Photoshop PSD. The program also seems to automatically generate backup files in RIFF.
The biggest leg over my old Photoshop, however, are the brushes. PE4 includes 95 different brushes, tips, and blenders called Art Tips, loaded into a tab labeled the Brush Box. Art Tips divide into eight catagories:
Thick Paint
Thin paint
Watercolor
Pencils & Pens
Dry Media
Blenders
Effects
Photo
These implements are all presets; users cannot customize their own brush shape or paint consistency. However, they may vary the brush-size from a pin-point to a dinner plate, adjust the opacity, and alternate between free-hand and straight line strokes.
I don't own a stylus and pad, so I can't review that section, but I can testify to mouse-based art. Right-clicking the cursor brings up a context-sensitive menu, though the options are limited to different brush types within the category, plus incremental size changing. The brushes are self-explanatory and they work the canvas as I expect. Strokes have built-in anti-aliasing and a decent resolution; they still look ragged and a touch pixilated on my high-def LCD monitor, but better than my old programs. Out of the box, the cursor doesn't draw as smoothly as I would like, so users will need to make some adjustments. Images print with soft edges and clear resolution.
The big downside for me has been memory leaks and CPU hogging. Particularly when trying to paste material from another program, PE4 is as slow as a dial-up connection. It shouldn't take five minutes to import a track list or Christmas message from my Word program. And I should not see my CPU running up to 80 or 90%. Simply booting the program is slow compared to my other applications, and I can't see the justification for this.
Also, PE4 should not be seen as a substitute for a document design program. There are no geometry shapes or tables or chart wizards. Just strokes, lines, and your imported images.
On the whole, the program is pretty-looking and diverse enough for my bohemian tasks. It ought to serve any low-budget artist, especially students and hobbyists. However, Painter Essentials 4 does require a patch to deal with these slowdowns and memory leaks, which can drag out the simplest project. Also, the list price of $99 is too high--the Amazon.com figure of 45-55 bones is acceptable.
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