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 2018

Corel Painter 2018 introduced the following features and enhancements, which are also available in Corel Painter 2019.

New! Thick Paint

Thick Paint has brushes inspired by traditional tools that you’d instantly recognize in any art supply store. There are a range of bristle brushes and palette knives carefully crafted to deliver the feel and behavior you’d expect. These new brushes use paint that has pigment and volume that behaves just like real paint. This means you can blend, build up, push, pull and scrape the paint using the pressure, tilt, and rotation of your stylus.

These variants deliver versatile, scalable brush loading, so you can spend more time focusing on your work and less on the UI. Using a quick keyboard shortcut and dragging, you can precisely load the brush on the fly, thanks to a cursor that displays the amount of paint you’ve loaded and the color.

Just like in the real world, you can create strokes that have ridges of paint within. But what really makes the ridging pop, of course, is shadows in the canyons of the stroke. With that in mind, Painter lets you adjust the shadow strength and ambient lighting to get depth in a brushstroke like never before. What’s more, the ability to tweak the transparency of brushstrokes and control how paper texture interacts with the paint opens up a world of creative possibilities.

The Thick Paint property bar offers presets for painting technique, as well as quick access to settings that allow you to prevent the brush from running out of paint and control how new brushstrokes blend with existing ones. This makes it easy to jump in and get stunning results right away. Or if you'd rather tinker and experiment to get a certain look, there are new Thick Paint panels where you can modify controls. For more information, see Thick Paint.

Thick Paint brushes create visible brush and knife marks in the painting. Artwork by Cher Pendarvis.

Enhanced! Cloning

A range of cloning enhancements lets photo artists to do more, in less time.

You can increase the sophistication of your photo composites in Painter 2018 with new cloning transparency support. You can use transparent and semi-transparent clone sources when creating a collage, so all elements in a composite interact naturally. And for even more accurate transparency cloning, there’s a precise cloning option that picks up colors from the center of the brush dab.

Photo artists can use a texture as a clone source. Transformations can be applied to texture clone sources, so you can resize and shape them to easily and intuitively craft a composite.

The user interface has been streamlined to simplify switching between clone sources. The revamped cloning controls give you more space to work, but not at the expense of easy access to the settings you need most. All critical cloning controls are easily accessible from a flyout on the property bar. Whatever your favorite cloning workflow is, Painter 2018 has you covered. Whether tracing paper or a crosshair cloning cursor works best for you, the choice is yours.

And when you find or create a clone source that you want to reuse, you can save it with the image as an embedded source or as a texture in the Texture library so it’s always at your fingertips. There’s also an option that lets you embed a clone source in a document, saving you time finding the source when you get back to work and simplifying sharing with other photo artists. For more information, see Image cloning and sampling.

Use cloning techniques to transform your photo into a work of art. Artwork by Bill McEntee

Enhanced! Drip and Liquid brush technologies

Brushes that use the Drip method (all subcategories) or the Plug-in method (Liquid Brush subcategory) are even more versatile in Painter 2018. Take, for example, the Sargent Brush, one of most popular Painter brush variants ever. Loved by artists for its rich brushstrokes, the Sargent Brush can now be used on an empty layer to blend the currently selected color with an oil-like transparency. Alternatively, you can use variants that use drip or liquid technologies to pick up color from underlying layers. What’s more, this step forward in brush technology offers artists of all stripes a range of fresh brushes, opening up a world of possibilities. For more information, see Drip.

In this painting, Melissa Gallo used the Sargent brush variant, as well as brushes from the Artists’ Oils category.

New! Texture synthesis

The limitless creative possibilities that made Texture Painting an instant favorite with concept artists and character designers just got even more powerful thanks to the addition of the Synthesis feature. It allows you to capture and synthesize an area of a texture or document and reproduce it on a larger scale, using all the visual elements of the input sample. During the synthesis process, properties of the selected area are randomized, creating a new texture based on settings that you’ve chosen. You can then paint with it to give every texture brushstroke even more depth and detail.

Synthesis gives digital artists of all stripes the ability to create vibrant, one-of-a kind textures. Because you can also use part of an image, you can use favorite brushstrokes as the DNA of a new texture, offering infinite possibilities. The synthesized texture can then be used just like any other texture or it can be exported to a layer.

And you can fill with texture, whether you created it using the Synthesis feature, imported it to use with a Texture Painting brush, or found it in the Texture library. For more information, see Creating textures.

Corel Painter generates a large texture (left) from a small sample (right) by taking into account its structural content. Image (right) by Henk Dawson

New! 2.5D Thick Texture brushes

Concept artists and character designers love Texture Painting for its ability to deliver powerful realism, and Painter 2018 takes the experience to a whole new level. New 2.5D Thick Texture brushes apply strokes that feel like they are jumping off the canvas. Do you need to make a character authentically reptilian? You can paint thick, exotic scales that look like they’re rising off the canvas. Or when you need to make skin more lifelike, Thick Texture brushes let you paint cavernous pores and amplify them by adjusting the directional lighting and appearance of depth. For more information, see Add depth to a Texture brush.

An example of a Texture brush that uses the impasto Depth method (left) and the impasto Color and Depth method (right). Model by Cris Palomino.

New! Selection Brush tool and Selection brushes

Because selections are critical to so many digital-art workflows, Corel Painter 2018 gives you more choices when you need to isolate an area of an image. How much time could you save if you could create a selection as easily and precisely as you can apply a brushstroke? The new Selection Brush tool lets you do just that. To make it easier to distinguish between selected and protected areas, you can display a color overlay when you apply a stroke. You can fine-tune the overlay to make it suit the document that you’re working in. There's a new Selection brush category with new variants designed specifically for creating selections when working with a complex shape or image area. There’s also the option of turning any stamp-based brush variant into a selection tool, giving you even more flexibility. What’s more, you can tweak a brush just as if you were using it to paint, then save it as a custom selection variant for reuse. And in response to artist feedback, there are a series of selection improvements in Painter 2018. For more information, see Selecting areas by painting.

Examples of selections (right) created with brushes that use the Selection method. The color overlay (left) that appears as you paint helps to distinguish selected areas from protected areas.

New! Natural Media Brushes library

The new Natural-Media brush library makes it easy for artists transitioning from traditional to digital art. It gives quick, one-stop access to brushes that mimic traditional media, from pencils and pastels to oils and acrylics, and much more. If you’ve used it in the real world, chances are you’ll find the digital equivalent in the Natural-Media brush library. You can access the new collection by opening the Brush Selector and choosing Natural Media Brushes from the Brush Library list box. For more information, see Exploring brush categories in the Natural Media Brushes library.

Examples of brushstrokes created with brush variants from the Natural Media Brushes library

New! Random grain rotation

Another user request in Painter 2018 is random grain rotation. This new feature slightly rotates the paper grain in each stroke, giving brushstrokes a more natural, organic look. For more information, see Grain controls.

Select your favorite grainy brush, enable Random Grain Rotation, and Corel Painter will slightly rotate the grain in each individual stroke. Brushstrokes with Random Grain Rotation disabled (left) and enabled (right). Grain rotation varies every time you lay down a brushstroke.

What was new in Corel Painter 2017

Corel Painter 2017 introduced the following features and enhancements, which are also available in Corel Painter 2019.

New! Texture Painting

This groundbreaking new brush category with source-blending technology makes it easy to integrate complex textures into your work. Whether you're aiming for a look that is more lifelike or one that's completely futuristic, or you want to make a digital painting look authentically timeworn, Texture Painting offers limitless possibilities.

Texture Painting isn’t simply manipulating a layer’s opacity. It lets you intelligently blend a texture into existing content using a range of stylus expressions, such as pressure. It respects the transparency of the selected texture, giving you full control of when, where, and how much texture is used. You start by choosing or creating a texture and pairing it with brushes designed specifically for adding texture. And by combining Texture brushes, flexible brush customization options, and the ability to capture and import your own textures, you can add any number of surfaces styles to your work. You can even add Dab Stencils, grain, and smudging to the brushes with all the speed, precision and control you expect from Painter. In addition, you can make your own custom textures from scratch or by modifying a preset texture. For more information see Texture painting.

A 3D model is rendered into a 2D bitmap image (left). Texture is added to the image in Corel Painter to give the character more appeal and realism (right). Artwork by Mike Thompson.

New! Interactive Gradient tool

In Corel Painter, getting stunning painted backgrounds is easier than ever with the new Interactive Gradient tool. It lets you quickly create and edit a gradient to give paintings a range of depth and lighting variations. If you’re just starting a new document, you can kick-start things by filling the background with a gradient and experimenting with different preset styles. Or if you have an existing sketch or painting, you can apply and tweak a gradient in context of your work with edit nodes. Corel Painter has a library of gradients to choose from, or you can create your own and save it for reuse. For more information see Applying gradients.

Gradients were used in this artwork by Marian Basinger.

New! Gradient Express Painting

When a blank white canvas is blocking your creativity or you need a back-drop for a new concept design, the new Express Paint feature lets you create stunning gradients in a matter of seconds. The new Express Paint feature allows you to apply a wide variety of painting styles automatically to any gradient, creating the speed and inspiration you need in virtually any composition. For more information, see Applying paint effects to gradients.

Start a painting by filling the background with a gradient and experimenting with different preset styles.

New! Dab Stencils

Corel Painter gives artists more power to craft and create expressive, unique brushstrokes. Dab Stencils let you change the brushstroke opacity before you paint, basing it on the active paper, flow map or texture. You can fine-tune exactly how much source texture to reveal as you paint and link Dab Stencils to a variety of real-time stylus input factors. Using them with the new Texture Brush variants gives you even greater control over the look and feel of your brushstrokes. For more information, see Dab Stencil controls.

The brushstrokes in this artwork use the Dab Stencil feature. Artwork by Melissa Gallo.

New! Glazing Brushes

Some of the best Painter developments have been the result of user suggestions. Here’s another one — Glazing Brushes. They let you control the evolution of your painting using velvety, translucent paint transitions just like the Renaissance masters. Glazing Brushes deliver stroke-level opacity, so the paint of each brushstroke is applied independently. The paint that each dab deposits on the canvas builds up smoothly from a minimum to a maximum. This creates a smooth blend between colors, with no unwanted colors where dabs overlap. You’ll really see Glazing Brushes at their best when you fluctuate stylus pressure in a single brushstroke. For more information, see Glazing controls.

Glazing brushes were used in this artwork by Héctor Sevilla Luján.

Enhanced! Dropper Tool

Corel Painter makes it easier than ever to sample color. Sometimes what appears to be a solid-colored area is actually subtly shaded or dithered, so what you see onscreen isn't what you get when you sample a single pixel. Now you can get the color that you're seeing with new Dropper tool options that let you average the colors of pixels in larger sample areas, ranging from 3 × 3 to 101 × 101 pixels. What’s more, you can sample a color from the active layer or from all visible layers. For more information, see Sampling colors from images.

New! Palette Drawers

Having the tools that you need right at your fingertips isn’t only important for your productivity, it’s critical for your creativity. That’s why Corel Painter introduces Palette Drawers. This new workflow enhancement strikes the perfect balance between uncluttering your workspace and keeping essential tools handy by letting you combine panels and custom palettes in a convenient grouping — for a particular workflow or project — so the controls and settings are just a click away. And when you’re not using a Palette Drawer, it collapses, freeing up your work area. For more information, see Rearranging panels and palettes.

Enhanced! Property bars

Optimizing brush and tool settings is important. But time spent tweaking controls is time not spent painting. That's why the property bars have been enhanced to make it easier to adjust brushes. For example, when the Brush tool is active, the enhanced property bar gives you quick access to a range of relevant brush-related panels, saving you time clicking through menus. It also lets you choose new dab profiles on the fly, select media like paper, and view brushstroke info. There’s also a new Extended property bar that gives quick access to even more settings. For more information, see Working with brushes using the property bars.

You can access brush controls quickly from the property bar (left) and the extended property bar (right). This example shows the property bar for a selected Particle brush with the Size flyout open and the extended property bar with the Dab Options flyout open.

Enhanced! Brush Selector panel

Corel Painter gives you quicker and easier access to one of the things that makes Painter an industry leader in digital painting — our unrivaled selection of brushes. To that end, you can now display the Brush Selector as a panel. That way, your recently used brush variants are at your fingertips, the entire Brush Library is readily accessible, and you can position it wherever it suits your workflow. And the latest brush packs are available from directly within the Brush Selector. For more information, see Displaying and customizing the Brush Selector.

You can display the Brush Selector as a panel.

Enhanced! Artists’ Layouts

Just getting started with a new project in concept art, fine art, illustration, photo-art or manga? This collection of pre-defined user-interface arrangements is designed to kick-start a variety of digital art workflows by displaying only the relevant palettes and tools. There’s even one that displays only minimal UI, freeing up space for tablet users. You can also choose the two workspace layouts that you use most often and quickly switch between them to suit the current task or the display mode of your device using the Quick Switch feature. For more information, see Choosing a workspace layout.

What was new in Corel Painter 2016

Corel Painter 2016 introduced the following features and enhancements, which are also available in Corel Painter 2019.

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). Artwork by Skip Allen.

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 (right) Enhanced Layer Blending

What was new in Corel Painter 2015

Corel Painter 2015 introduced the following features and enhancements, which are also available in Corel Painter 2019.

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.

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