Review by Laura

I thought it would be hard to improve upon the 2015 version of Painter but there are tons of additions/improvements, including the ability to import Adobe Photoshop .abr brush files, retaining such things as dab shape, texture, dynamics, but note that other attributes which are not supported will require some customization of brushes after import…at least an encouraging improvement that will probably be tweaked and further improved in future versions. Most important to me is improved performance and stability with brushes up to three times faster, not to mention tons of new brushes. You can also now rotate paper texture and flow maps. There is a dedicated icon for default settings restoration where you can preserve custom brushes, palettes and paper textures. You can switch between default, single document and presentation views from three different areas (toolbox, window menu, keyboard shortcuts). They have added the very cool Dynamic Speckles, the speckles in the brushstroke being generated as you paint. Also new is Audio Expression, brushes that react to sound, using audio from streaming music or your computer’s microphone which you can sync to brush controls like brush size, angle, color. Also very helpful are visual tool tips with illustrations which show how your attempted adjustments will affect the custom brushes applied to your creation. You can now personalize your workspace by modifying the UI color scheme.

My favorite area is working with existing photographs as I’m just better at transforming than creating from scratch. There is something for everyone, photo artists, traditional artists, illustrators, or just non-categorical individuals who want to have some creative fun.

If you are not already familiar with this type of program be aware that there is a pretty steep learning curve. Be prepared to spend a significant amount of time just to get started, with possibly hours of viewing tutorials and instructions and practice, practice and more practice….but if you are willing and determined there are many talented and helpful users willing to share their expertise via video on You Tube and other sites. The place to start is the Corel site itself which provides integrated training which automatically updates based on what you have already viewed on the site.

Another consideration before deciding to purchase Corel Painter is that it does require higher CPU and memory resources, which is to be expected with any advanced graphically intense software, so make sure you carefully check the system requirements.