Apple Mac
Create any artwork you can imagine with this powerful painting package. FULL VERSION $429.99, UPGRADE $179.99 | PAINTERARTIST.COM | NEEDS MACOS 10.13 OR LATER
Corel has been bringing digital graphics software to the world since 1989, making it one of the longestestablished developers offering these packages to the consumer and professional markets. With its Corel Painter 2020 suite, the company has refined the software and added smart new tools, further empowering digital artists of all levels to create stunning designs and blurring the lines between physical and digital artworks.
On first boot, the application can run a performance optimisation process to automatically adjust its settings to suit your hardware. The base requirements are quite modest – a Core 2 Duo CPU running macOS 10.13 or later, and 2GB RAM. There’s a Brush Accelerator option in the preferences that, once run, will enable you to activate your Mac’s dedicated GPU if it has one. Brush speed using the integrated graphics on our 2013 MacBook Pro 15 was respectable when using the basic graphics chip, but sped up noticeably once we activated the dedicated GPU instead. As ever with professional software, a faster Mac with more RAM will always do better.
Create a canvas of any size you like, choosing from the virtual papers supplied with the software. From there you begin painting, either using the mouse or trackpad, or more likely with software such as this, a tablet and pen. The tools on offer are powerful, and you will definitely get the most out of them by using a more advanced input method with features like pressure sensitivity, which is of course supported in the software.
BRUSH CONTROL
There are over 900 brushes supplied and these can be quickly chosen from the picker – there are far too many to list but they cover every conceivable thing you could need from brushes and pens to sprays, particles, textures, oils and much more. Naturally each one can be precisely configured in terms of the way it behaves regarding its size, feathering, hardness and much more. There’s an intuitive colour selector with many nice little touches such as ‘harmonies’, a section that displays colours that complement the one you’ve chosen. The tool palettes can also float and snap to each other.
A handy layer system gives you Photoshop-style control of masking and layering, and there are advanced photo painting tools including auto-paint, where the software can turn a photo into an artwork. There are simpler apps that can do this, but not with the flexibility found here. While the toolset on offer is formidable, there is a learning curve for the less experienced in terms of the concepts and techniques at work, so creating something amazing will require skill. Luckily there is a good set of how-to videos available for free on Corel’s website.