Corel Painter 2017

The veteran natural-media app is back for more

$399 Manufacturer Corel, corel.com Requirements OS X 10.9.5 or later

The last few years have seen Painter keep its place at the top of the naturalmedia painting app pile, but it’s been hard to see where it could go forward. Fortunately, in the 2017 edition the developer has innovated with new tools, as well as improving existing ones.

The app itself hasn’t changed much in feel or operation, which is a good thing and ultimately allows the new features to feel less like bolt-ons for the purposes of upgrades, and more like integral parts of the software.

The toolset is pretty comprehensive, as well as very realistic. It’s very easy to get to grips with, especially if used with a tablet. Many tools respond to stylus angle and rotation, as well as position, so you can angle to create broader shading with a # 2 pencil, or work with shaped-tip ink pens.

Painter 2017 adds a number of new tools, the most notable being the texture and glazing tools. The texture tools enable you to intelligently work textures into your work based on underlying imagery. There are a number of presets, but it’s simple to add your own. You could easily take a photo of a concrete wall, define that in Painter, then use that to add texture to your artwork in a variety of ways. The most obvious use for this would be for fast-working concept artists who need to define a look, or even for 3D artists painting texture maps for use in CG.

The glazing tools are a set of transparent brushes that build up as a real-world glaze would, enhancing depth and color. Painter comes with a number of preset brushes and, as with all Painter brushes, there is a huge amount of control and customizability available. This continues with the interface as a whole, with palettes that can be moved, collapsed, stacked, or hidden, and layouts that can be saved.

Painter 2017 doesn’t stop there. The interactive gradient tool has been tweaked and now gives better performance, alongside some new options, such as edit nodes – a helper for applying gradients to existing art. There’s also a new Gradient Express tool, which is aimed at relieving the problems of staring at a fresh document and not knowing how to start. The gradients can have brush styles applied for rapidly working out a color theme or background, to get you thinking creatively when you need it. This, in conjunction with the texture tool, is a great way to start any piece.

It’s hard to criticize what is an excellent app, but if anything it can suffer from being too comprehensive; it’s easy to forget some of the options, as there are just so many. The interface isn’t as modern as many other apps, but it does its job well.

the bottom line. A surprisingly innovative update to an excellent art app, with interesting new tools and enhancements. Rob Redman