#Corel painter essentials 3 review full
#Corel painter essentials 3 review software

By default, the two workspaces are shown in different shades of gray, but you can easily adjust these values as well as just about everything else in the interface.īoth workspaces include a Learning Center in the Palettes drop-down menu with explanations on the use of the tool you have selected. You can switch between the Essentials and Complete workspaces at any time by selecting the large “home” icon at the top of each workspace or by going to File and then Workspaces.

#Corel painter essentials 3 review full

There is still an Adjust drop-down menu and the Enhance Photo drop-down menu duplicates a few of its controls.Ī full complement of pro-level tools, as well as the Manage file management mode, are part of the Complete workspace. Many of the Complete tools and palettes are available in the Essentials workspace, but hidden by default.Ĭorel has chosen to hide the Adjust tab found in previous versions in order to simplify the workspaces, though you can still bring it back using the Preferences menu. A Quick Customize button at the bottom of the tools panel allows you to add or remove tools for your particular workflow.

The Essentials workspace presents a simplified set of the most common editing tools. The first time you choose either the Essentials or Complete workspaces, a wizard opens in an inset screen and introduces the workspace. The enhancements Corel made to the user interface will benefit both new and existing users. All told, Painter Essentials 3 is a strong and economical choice if you want to explore digital painting.The Manage mode of the Complete workspace is a file management system as well as a file browser. But this drastic reduction was still a wise choice on Corel's part, as it gives beginners a good sampling of tools without overwhelming them. Painter has 34 brush categories to Painter Essentials' 18, and it offers six times as many Artists' Oils brush variants as Painter Essentials. Though Painter Essentials has power, serious digital artists will want to stick with Painter's more robust toolset. Painter Essentials' set of calligraphic brushes gets an extra touch of realism when used with the 6D Art Pen. We tested using the Wacom Intuos3 tablet with the 6D Art Pen, which adds support for rotation to the Intuos's pen pressure and tilt support. When you start to experiment with the program's full range of tools, using a pen tablet is essential. And Painter Essentials has inherited a number of Painter's best new features, such as the excellent Artists' Oils brushes and the nifty sketchbook-style welcome screen. Still, it's a fun and effective way to give a second life to your digital photos.Īnother new feature is the context-sensitive Quick Guide palette, which offers helpful information about interface features. Corel should simplify this entire process even further, perhaps with an additional menu of overriding presets for these three palettes. You can achieve striking effects, but it may take a good bit of experimentation to find useful Auto-Painting settings for a given image.

The process lets you create your own printable artwork or spruce up images to use on your photo cards, business brochures, or what have you.

If parts of your image end up looking too smeared, the Restoration palette lets you selectively restore details. You select a stroke type from among 19 different choices (such as Hatch, Scribble, and Short Dab), tweak the settings as desired, and then watch Painter Essentials automatically 'paint' your photo with random strokes. Then choose a Cloner brush from the Brush Selector bar and it's on to the Auto-Painting palette, where the fun begins. You start with the Underpainting palette, which can perform simple image enhancements, add an important touch of 'smart' blurring, and apply edge vignettes. Version 3's chief innovation lies in three new palettes that consolidate and simplify the process of applying a hand-painted look to digital photos. If you're at all curious about digital painting, this affordable ($99 direct) program is a very good way to get started. But with Painter Essentials 3, Corel has decided to release the product to the world as a standalone application. Painter Essentials isn't exactly a new product the 'lite' version of Corel's $429 Painter IX application has previously been bundled with related products like the Wacom Graphire pen tablet.

#Corel painter essentials 3 review software

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