What’s new in this version of Corel Painter

New! Thick Paint

Ask a digital artist to list off the things that make Corel Painter so different from every other paint program, and one thing always comes up — the ability to easily combine classic art practices and time-honored techniques with state-of-the-art Natural-Media technology. And this tradition continues in Corel Painter 2018 with the introduction of Thick Paint, which mimics the look and feel of thick paint with remarkable fidelity.

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

It’s easier to create compelling photo composites in Painter 2018. A range of cloning enhancements let 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 now 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 now 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 you 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 in Painter 2018 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 it 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 their 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.

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