Why Painter?

[Sigurd]

Please excuse my ignorance. I am not fishing for a 'which is better' war between photoshop and painter and I would be happy to look at any sources people can recommend.

Why Painter? What is its appeal and what niche does it fill. I have seen photoshop and it seems very powerful but I haven't been able to see painter in action. In this forum there seems to be some loyalty to earlier versions of Painter, what is up with that?

Corel seems to be offering a reduced price on the latest painter (9.5???) They are selling full packages at their upgrade price for everyone. Help me make up my mind if this is something I want before this deal ends at the end of May.

I dont want to buy software based on the box or just professional reviews. What do people her think of it. What sort of things do you use it for and how does it compare to Photoshop?


Sigurd

[PeterO]

One feature I really appreciate with Painter is how you can rotate the canvas, so you can always perform your strokes in your natural direction.

Having been used to working with PS it took me a little while to get a comfortable feeling using Painter, now I tend to switch between the two depending on what I want to do.

[mQe]

Painter is good for drawing/painting whereas photoshop is good for manipulating the image. So if you want to draw i recomend painter and thats coming from someone whos been used to photoshop for years and just switched yesterday :P

[Jin]

Hi Sigurd,

It's not really a matter of which is best as both Photoshop and Corel Painter are powerful and complex programs that many artists use together to complete their paintings and other images. Each does some things better than the other so it's great to have both programs at hand. While Corel Painter is my personal favorite, I use Photoshop sometimes to make color adjustments and save images for the Web.

Corel Painter was designed for artists, to provide Natural Media® brushes (collective term) that simulate traditional media drawing and painting tools (i.e. oil, watercolor, acrylics, chalk, charcoal, pastels, oil pastels, felt tip markers, pencils, pens, etc.). It has the most advanced brush technology currently available in any program.

In combination with a Wacom tablet, brush variants (individual brushes within each brush catgegory) can express such aspects as size (stroke width), opacity, grain (amount of texture visible in the brushstroke), resaturation (amount of color in the stroke), bleed (amount of existing color picked up and painted in the stroke) and many others in response to pressure applied with the stylus, or pen. Many other modes of expression are also available, for instance: direction, velocity, tilt, and bearing to name some of them. Tilt is not available with Wacom Graphire tablets but is available with Wacom Intuos tablets and it's used to affect the brushstroke based on the angle at which the stylus, or pen, is held in relation to the tablet surface.

Many of Painter's brush variants interact with the currently selected Paper to allow the artist to even better simulate traditional painting. For instance, in the default Painter Papers library, the Papers include, Charcoal Paper, Simulated Woodgrain, Thick Handmade Paper, Coarse Cotton Canvas, Fine Hard Grain, Worn Pavement, Italian Watercolor Paper, Linen Canvas, Pebble Board, Hot Press, French Watercolor Paper, Artists Canvas, Wood Grain, New Streaks, Fine Dots, Gessoed Canvas, Hard Laid Paper, Retro Fabric, Rough Charcoal Paper, Sandy Pastel Paper, Artists Rough Paper, Small Dots, and Basic Paper.

Though a Painter artist can use the program to do graphic art as well as painting, and can also make their paintings have a slick, digital look, the Painter artist has the option to paint and draw with a much more natural look.

Here are some examples by Paulo Roberto Purim, illustrator/graphic artist:

Digital Bellboy (http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/9726/bellhop00big2tj.jpg)

Le chat botté (http://www.baciadasalmas.com/images/2006/le-chat-botte-b.gif)

Examples by Mike Reed, childrens book illustrator (click Images, then Paintings):

Paintings Gallery (http://www.mikereedillustration.com/)

Examples by more Painter Masters:

On the Corel Painter IX Website (http://apps.corel.com/painterix/masters/gallery.html)

If you'd like to find out for yourself what Painter IX.5 offers, you can download the 30 day trial version here:

Corel Painter IX Website (http://apps.corel.com/painterix/home/index.html)

If you're at all interested, the deal currently being offered is a good one so I'd encourage you to take advantage of it, and buy the full boxed version that includes the Painter Handbook full of tutorials by Painter Masters and the Painter IX CD with loads of extra brush libraries and art materials.

Have fun!

..............

[evilkuu]

One feature I really appreciate with Painter is how you can rotate the canvas, so you can always perform your strokes in your natural direction.

Having been used to working with PS it took me a little while to get a comfortable feeling using Painter, now I tend to switch between the two depending on what I want to do.

exactly, and that you can grab the canvas and move it all over the screen. I use photoshop and I'm, frustrated "gahhh can't movie this thing nooo"

[FlipMcgee]

I have both apps. I think they're both good. It's really up to the user to pull out amazing works from either of the two.

From personal experience, Painter is a lot more intuitive to learn. Photoshop took me longer to be comfortable with but I ended up working faster with it.

If you have both....well it's <3

[rogfa]

For me, it runs faster than PhotoShop. I can paint at really high resolutions that make PhotoShop stutter. Rotate the canvas as another stated, The brushes feel more like traditional media. The Bleed brush setting is one PhotoShop doesn't have, your brush can blur the colors already on the canvas to bleed together. With PhotoShop you have to switch to the Smudge tool.

But in the end it doesn't really matter, you can create great art with both. Sometimes, I'll bring a piece I'm working on into PhotoShop for some color correction and just keep painting in Photoshop, then switch back to Painter.

Best to try out the demo before making the purchase.