Used by professional artists and photographers alike, Corel Painter has the tools to produce original artwork without ever dipping a brush in paint.

This is a ‘natural media’ painting program, meaning that its tools simulate pens, pencils, pastels, charcoals, brushes and palette knives.

It’s best used with a graphics tablet, which gives a more tactile response to artistic flourishes, but it can be operated with a mouse too.

The major new feature of Corel Painter X is Realbristle, which as the name suggests, mimics the look and feel of bristle brushes.

There are 16 Realbristle brushes provided, including blenders, fans, oils, flats and rounds. All tips sizes can be adjusted and the individual bristles splay on the screen, depending on how fast you move the brush and, if you’re using a graphics tablet, how hard you press.

Corel Painter X also includes tools to aid in constructing the Divine Proportion, aka the Golden Ratio of 1:1.618033. This ratio has been used since Euclid’s time to create proportions which are pleasing to the eye and, without getting too Dan Brown about it, can be found in a lot of well-known artworks.

When the 'Show Divine Proportion' option is invoked, a grid - showing rectangles with the proportion – and a spiral overlay - flowing in to a focus point on the canvas – are displayed.

Painter X includes a new grid tool which enables other divisions to be overlaid on the canvas as a painting aid. Preset grids offer ‘rule of threes’, 3x5 and 5x5 grids, but these can be customised. It’s surprising this feature hasn’t been included before in the program.

As well as painting tools, most photo-editing trappings are also available. These include a wide variety of filters, from basic texture effects, to the esoteric, such as adding random blobs to a picture and stretching its image around them. The enhanced photo-painting system helps turn a photo into original artwork by adding brush strokes and using colour palettes drawn from the subject photo.

As with any program of this complexity, it takes a while to get truly impressive results. You'll also need a decent dose of artistic skill to make it work but, if painting is your game, there's a lot to get excited about.

Vista compatible: Yes

Also consider

Ulead Photoimpact 12
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0