
Painter is a survivor, which is a tribute to its appeal for creative users. On the flipside, MetaCreations also left a legacy of opaque interfaces, and mystifying workflows. The implosion of MetaCreations as a company at the turn of the century is a big bang event that scattered innovative modeling and imaging technology throughout the tech universe like seedlings. They were early pioneers in computer graphics software for artists and the work they did lives on at Daz3D, Poser, and most vibrantly at Corel in Painter. The Painter family of products has its origins in MetaCreations, a digital arts development powerhouse in Santa Barbara. Let’s take a walk through the software.Latest version of Painter includes benchmark tool giving users insight into how brushes work. There are a few other bells and whistles, including a kaleidoscope painting function and other one-off special effects that are fun for awhile. Painter Essentials 5 is compatible with popular Wacom tablets. They recommend using a tablet and stylus to lay down the strokes, and that’s great advice.

In this second function, Painter Essentials 5 provides a very broad assortment of brushes and cloners and a powerful color mixing palette. The second function is creation of original art, either by starting with a literally blank canvas or by overlaying your choice of colors and patterns onto a tracing paper copy of a digital image.

If you are accustomed to “getting what you want” through creative control instead of happily “wanting what you get” through random alterations, you may be disappointed.

However, this function is automatic to the extent that other than choosing the style (e.g., Watercolor or Pencil Drawing) the user has no control over the creative process. It can automatically render any digital image into a painting or drawing and provides 11 style choices. Painter Essentials 5 has two primary functions.

A thinned version of Corel’s professional Painter 2018, which has a hefty MSRP of $429, Painter Essentials 5 is affordable ($49) yet surprisingly powerful. If you’ve ever had the itch to paint-or to turn one of your digital images into a great looking painting without taking up a brush-then Corel Painter Essentials 5 software may be just the ticket.Īvailable for Windows 7-8-10 and Mac OS X platforms, Painter Essentials 5 is “a painting, cloning and smart photo painting” program that is thoroughly satisfying to use and fun play with.
