What was new in earlier versions of Corel Painter

This topic describes what was new in earlier versions of Corel Painter.

What was new in Corel Painter 2016

Corel Painter 2016 introduced the following features and enhancements, which are also available in Corel Painter 2017.

Rotatable media

In Corel Painter 2016, you can change the angle of paper textures and flow maps to get an unprecedented variety in the look of your brushstrokes. For more information see Rotating paper texture and To customize a flow map.

Rotatable media can help you vary the look of your brushstrokes.

Default-settings restoration

Corel Painter 2016 makes it easier to preserve custom content when you reset the application to its factory settings. Now when you restore default settings, you can maintain custom brushes and palettes, paper textures, nozzles, scripts and more. In previous versions, retaining any customizations required exporting libraries, restoring default settings, and then importing the libraries. For more information, see Restoring the default Corel Painter settings.

Dynamic Speckles

This feature combines Particle System physics and brush-thickness control linked to your touch, allowing you to create luscious Natural-Media brushstrokes or progressive-looking Pollock splatters. You can use this feature with select Bristle, RealBristle and Particle brushes, so you can take full advantage of those revolutionary, Painter-exclusive technologies. For more information, see Dynamic Speckles controls.

Dynamic Speckles generate a continuous brushstroke from discrete spots of color or speckles.

Audio Expression

Corel Painter 2016 lets you use an audio input device, such as a microphone, or internal audio to modify the look and feel of any brush. For example, your brushstrokes may change their appearance in synch with streaming music. Audio Expression allows you to link a variety of brush controls to audio input. In addition, you can adjust the strength of an audio signal, controlling its impact on a brush. For example, if you link brush size to quiet audio, increasing the strength will result in wider brushstrokes. Conversely, if the audio is loud, decreasing the strength will result in narrower brushstrokes. In addition, you can set the range of the audio expression to achieve a wider range of brushstroke variation (for example, minimum to maximum brushstroke width) regardless of whether the audio is consistently strong, low, or varies. For more information, see Audio Expression.

Document Views

Whether you are working on a project, showing your work, or demonstrating a technique, Corel Painter 2016 makes it even easier to switch between document views. You can switch document views from the toolbox, the Window menu, and by using keyboard shortcuts. The Default view shows all the open documents together with commonly used application controls while the Single Document view lets you focus on the active document. The Presentation Mode hides the menu bar and the taskbar of the operating system, leaving only essential controls. For more information, see Switching document views.

Single Document View (left); Single Document View in Presentation Mode (right)

Brush Hints

Depending on the brush type you are currently working with, context-sensitive brush hints (Help Hints) provide useful tips about brush technologies. It’s a great way to discover different ways you can take advantage of a variety of unique Corel Painter features, including Particles, Watercolor brushes, Liquid Ink, Cloner, Impasto, and the new Dynamic Speckles.

Visual tooltips

Some tooltips include illustrations that show the effect of using high and low values of specific settings.

At a glance, you can see the effect of high and low setting values.

Adobe Photoshop brush file import

With Corel Painter 2016, you can import the brush stamps of pixel-based Adobe Photoshop brushes stored in Adobe Brush Resource (ABR) files. These files contain a collection of Adobe Photoshop brushes, including shape, texture, dynamics, and other brush information. All other brush attributes specified in the ABR files are not imported, but can be fully customized in Corel Painter. For more information, see Importing Photoshop brush images.

Each imported brush stamp appears as a new brush variant.

Custom content sharing

Corel Painter 2016 simplifies sharing content saved in a custom palette. When you save a custom palette as a Painter Custom Toolbox (BOX) file, all custom brushes, papers, patterns and flow maps in the palette are saved with the file.

You can share content saved to a custom palette.

Welcome Screen

With the Welcome Screen, you can quickly start or open an image, choose a workspace that suits your needs, access online learning videos, find new brushes and other content online, and get inspired by a gallery of original artwork created with Corel Painter. The Welcome Screen appears when you start the application, and you can also access it by clicking Help Welcome.

Special media brushes

Corel Painter 2016 offers additional dab types, which are methods for applying media to the canvas. The new dab types use both Particles and Liquid Ink or Watercolor dabs. These combination dab types include: Liquid Ink Gravity Particles, Liquid Ink Flow Particles, Liquid Ink Spring Particles, Watercolor Gravity Particles, Watercolor Flow Particles, and Watercolor Spring Particles.

Layer blending

Whether you are painting with a single color or blending two or more colors on a layer, the Enhanced Layer Blending option can help you produce brushstrokes without white fringes. For more information, see Blending controls.

Brushstrokes without (left) and with Enhanced Layer Blending (right)

What was new in Corel Painter 2015?

Corel Painter 2015 introduced the following features and enhancements, which are also available in Corel Painter 2017.

Particle brushes were used to create the sparks and wisps of smoke in this image. Artwork by Don Seegmiller

Angle Jitter applied to a brushstroke without Jitter Smoothing (top) and with Jitter Smoothing (bottom).

Real-Time Stylus and Windows Tablet PC support let you create art on the go.

What was new in Corel Painter X3?

If you are upgrading to Corel Painter 2017 from Update 2 of Corel Painter 12, you may not be aware of the features and enhancements that were added in Corel Painter X3. These features and enhancements are also available in Corel Painter 2017.

Changes to the brush control panels

In Corel Painter X3, a number of brush controls panels were more logically organized to better reflect the structure of the Corel Painter brush engine. The following table maps the Corel Painter 12 brush control panels to the Corel Painter X3 brush control panels.

For more information about the brush control panels that include the new Jitter controls, see Controlling the behavior of Jitter variants.

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