Review by Matt Morgan

When it comes to digital artwork and drawing, Corel Painter is the best product available. It has the best support for drawing tablets, it has the highest quality brushes and it has more features and content than its competition (though there are a few applications out there that have more brushes). With the release of Painter 2015, Corel has upped the bar again.

At its heart, Painter is a digital drawing program with a generous set of brushes and content. Skilled artists can create absolutely beautiful drawings with it. However, Painter does more than just allow one to draw on a digital canvas. It is also a capable photo enhancement toolnnAt first glance the user interface has not changed a whole lot since the previous version, X3. The toolbar buttons and main application menu look the same except for a slight change in size. It is only after the user digs down a little that one can find the new features and content. Among these changes are the new particle brushes, a set of randomization brushes that add additional sparkles, brush textures, smears and more, all with a touch of random texture that give strokes more realism. There is at least one other drawing application that has had this kind of brush for some time; that said, Painter 2015’s implementation of these brushes is top-notch and the brushes work smoothly.

Painter 2015 also sports some speed enhancements over previous versions that will be obvious to those who have worked with previous versions of the application. From what I can tell, the application loads faster and saves faster, though the speed difference is modest - not a quantum leap.

I like the new Welcome dialog on launch. When Painter is first started, it offers up a new tabbed dialog box with three tab choices - Inspire, Create and Share & Learn. This is a lot nicer than the clunky unified dialog from previous versions. The Inspire tab offers up sampes of others work that have been submitted. The Create tab is obviously the place to start for creating a new image but theres more to it than that. It also has a link to color management settings as well as to workspace management. There is even a link to get new workspaces but this is just a link to a Coming Soon website. The Share & Learn tab provides links to post works to Facebook and watch tutorials online.

One of the things I like most about Painter, and this has been true with every version I have used so this is not new, is the fact that it has excellent support for drawing tablets. I have an Intuos5 and Painter has absolutely no issue with it whatsoever. It recognizes the pressure levels and it even senses (and displays) the angle at which I hold the pen when I am working. Support is automatic and I didn’t have to do anything special to make it work. In fact, I installed Painter first, then installed the tablet (on a new computer) and Painter immediately started working with it.

So far Painter 2015 is proving to be a solid release with new features and a modest speed boost. Its the top rated drawing program available and after working with it, it is clear why it has earned that distinction. If you do any kind of digital drawing, Painter is the way to go.