Corel Painter Essentials
| Company type | Software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Digital art software |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Products | Digital painting software |
Corel Painter Essentials is a user-friendly software designed for home use that transforms photos into digital paintings. Currently in its eighth edition, it supports both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.
Workspaces
Painter Essentials provides two distinct work environments:
- The Drawing and Painting workspace allows users to create sketches or paintings from a blank canvas.
- The Photo Painting workspace enables users to convert photographs into paintings using a variety of one-click styles or to paint manually with automatic color sampling from the original image.
Tools
This application offers a wide range of brushes and artistic media including oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, ink wash, pencils, pens, charcoal, pastels, chalk, and blending tools. Users can enhance their artwork by choosing from different paper textures or canvas backgrounds.
Color management features traditional paint palettes, adjustable controls for hue, saturation, and value, as well as a mixing palette that mimics the experience of blending colors on a physical painter’s palette. The canvas can be rotated freely during the creative process to improve accessibility.
Essential image editing capabilities such as layers and filters are also incorporated.
Learning Material
Included with Painter Essentials are instructional videos presented by John Derry, which cover topics ranging from automated photo painting techniques to manual enhancements and creating original artwork. These tutorials are supported by sample files and a comprehensive manual offering written instructions, reference information, and artistic advice.
Versions
- Corel Painter Essentials (2003)
- Corel Painter Essentials 2 (2004)
- Corel Painter Essentials 3 (2005)
- Corel Painter Essentials 4 (2007)
- Corel Painter Essentials 5 (2015)
- Corel Painter Essentials 6 (2018)
- Corel Painter Essentials 7 (2019)
- Corel Painter Essentials 8 (2020)
Relation to Corel Painter
Corel Painter Essentials serves as an entry-level version of Corel's Painter software suite aimed at hobbyists in art and photography. In contrast, the comprehensive Corel Painter X targets professionals such as commercial designers, entertainment artists, photographers, and fine artists.
While Painter Essentials includes many fundamental features found in Painter X, it offers fewer options for customization. For example, Painter X boasts over 800 brush types compared to roughly 90 available in Painter Essentials, along with advanced interface customization designed for professional workflows.