If you're not familiar with Painter from Corel, think of it as a media creation tool rather than an image editor. Bitmap-based, and using media such as digital chalks, paints and inks, it has long been the tool of choice as a sketch and painting application for digital artists.

Painter's natural media tools have been emulated by Adobe in Illustrator and Photoshop, but where those implementations are slightly gimmicky, they still form the core of Painter's appeal.

Perhaps as a response to this Adobe onslaught, Painter now has full two-way support for the Photoshop file format. This is handy if you have both apps, but Corel has also provided upgrade paths, not only from previous versions of Painter but also for registered users of Photoshop.

The process may not work entirely in both directions, as some psd files we tested contained effects and adjustment layers that Painter claimed were unsupported.

The improved Photoshop compatibility, however, does include support for preserving Painter's redesigned Layer Masks between the two applications (these allow you to hide and reveal areas of images, without making permanent changes).

The biggest change in version 8, however, is the interface, with resizable palettes grouped and stacked on top of each other to create a less cluttered workspace.

A floating toolbar to the left displays selectors for paper, pattern, gradient and weave, look and image hoses, while a context-sensitive property bar floats above the canvas window.

The comprehensive Brush Selector is another Photoshop-friendly addition, while the Colors palette is similar to previous versions, with a Mixer palette below which lets you mix colours interactively.

The palette contains a Brush tool for applying the colour, and a Palette Knife for mixing them. As well as being fast and responsive, this is a lot of fun, and serious artists will find this mixing evocative of traditional colour creation.

It's just another of the aspects that brings Painter back to being a digital alternative to the real thing.p>That's not all though. This major upgrade also includes 400 new brush variants in more than 30 mediums, including acrylics, digital watercolour, tinting, gouache and sumi-e, to name a few.

As before, pressure-sensitive tablets and pens, like those from Wacom, add a new dimension to using the brushes, but there is more variety available too, with the new Brush Creator.

This includes three key features - the Randomizer, Transposer and Stroke Designer - all of which have live previews to let you view modifications.

The first takes existing brushes and randomises their properties to create a new variant - high randomisation results in very different variants.

The Transposer uses the properties of one brush variant to change the look of another, so you can mutate an F-X neon pen by adding some of the properties of a blurry Photo brush.

Stroke Designer, the final tab, creates brush variants using 16 sets of controls including size, spacing, rake, impasto and water.p>This can convert images or photographs to simple 'pencil' drawings, featuring controls for the desired level of detail, the amount of paper grain applied and the heaviness of the pencil line.

It's probably the simplest thing to use in Painter, with the biggest impact on illustrative work. It didn't always work though, as it was temperamental with some jpg images.

You have to be fairly skilled at art and design in the first place to get the best from Painter 8, but it is easy to pick up general techniques.

The new features here set it apart from the image editors, so it's definitely worth a look if you're feeling creative.

Contact:
Corel UK 01628 589 800
www.corel.com

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