Corel Painter - 12 Getting Started Guide

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Corel® Painter™ 12 Getting Started Guide

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Contents

Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

What’s in This User Guide? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

What’s New in Corel Painter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Using the Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Additional Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Workspace Tour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

The Document Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Exploring the Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Displaying the Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Displaying the Media Selector bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

The Property Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

The Navigator Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

The Brush Library Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Exploring Panels and Palettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Working with Panels and Palettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

Corel Painter for Users of Adobe Photoshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Creating Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

Understanding Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

Opening Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33

Resizing Images and the Canvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33

Contents | i

Saving Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

Closing Documents and Quitting the Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

Painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Choosing a Painting Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

Exploring Painting Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Working With the Canvas and Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

Brush Tracking and Calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Applying Freehand and Straight Brushstrokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

Working With Composition Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Using the Layout Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Using the Mirror Painting Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Using the Kaleidoscope Painting Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Selecting, Managing, and Creating Brushes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Understanding Brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

Selecting and Searching for Brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Setting Basic Brush Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

Exploring Brush Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Creating an illustration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Painting Chun Li in Corel Painter 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

ii | Corel Painter 12 Getting Started Guide

Getting Started

Corel® Painter™ 12 is the ultimate digital art studio. Its inventive drawing tools,
realistic brushes, cloning capabilities, and customizable features let you expand your
creative output in exciting new ways. When you use the pressure-sensitive brushes of
Corel Painter, they become fluid extensions of your hand, so the resulting
brushstrokes are unrivaled in texture and precision. What’s more, features such as
the ability to build your own Natural-Media® brushes and customize how brushes
interact with the canvas give you countless ways to develop your artistic ideas.
Corel Painter takes you far beyond what’s possible in a traditional art environment.

This section contains the following topics:

• What’s in This User Guide?

• What’s New in Corel Painter?

• Using the Documentation

• Additional Resources

• Registration

What’s in This User Guide?

This user guide provides step-by-step instructions to help you get started with
Corel Painter 12. The content describes the most common tasks performed with
Corel Painter 12. Please note that this guide is not an exhaustive reference for every
tool. If you require additional information, refer to the application’s Help system.

A stunning collection of artwork, created in Corel Painter by renowned digital artists,
is included in this user guide to inspire you and show you what you can do with the
application.

Getting Started | 1

What’s New in Corel Painter?

In this section, you will find information about the new and enhanced features of
Corel Painter 12.

Workflow and customization

Redesigned user interface The Corel Painter workspace has been redesigned to

give you easy access to tools, media, commands, and
features. The redesigned workspace also includes an
improved Brush Library panel that integrates both
brush categories and variants.

Enhanced Cloning capabilities The new Clone Source Panel lets you visualize and

manage clone sources. In addition, you can use one
or multiple clone sources in a document, which are
now embedded in the clone document.

New Navigator panel The Navigator panel allows you to better orient

yourself in the document window and quickly modify
the document window display. You can also enable
various tools from the Navigator including the
drawing modes, Impasto, tracing paper, grids, and
color management.

Enhanced Library
management

New Temporal Colors palette The new Temporal Colors palette is a floating color

Enhanced New Image dialog
box

2 | Corel Painter 12 Getting Started Guide

The libraries have been enhanced to help you better
organize and manage a collection of similar items,
such as brushes, paper textures, color sets, and
gradients.

palette that displays in the document window and
lets you view and choose colors within the context of
the image.

The enhanced New Image dialog box lets you set the
size, resolution, paper texture, and paper color of a
new document. You can also create presets for
canvas settings that you use frequently.

Enhanced High Quality
Rendering

Corel Painter 12 renders smoother-looking images
onscreen when you zoom in and increases the speed
of rendering images when you zoom out.

New Computed Circular brush
dab and controls

The Computed Circular dab type and controls let you
customize dab profiles, instead of choosing preset
profiles.

Enhanced Dynamic brush
adjustments

You can now set brush size, opacity, angle, and
squeeze dynamically onscreen, which is useful for
sizing and shaping a brush within the context of the
image.

New Brush Calibration
Controls

The new Brush Calibration controls let you calibrate
individual brush variants to match your stroke
strength when you use a pressure-sensitive stylus.

New Multicore support for
brushes

Multicore brush support maximizes brush
performance when you work on a multicore
computer.

New Smart Blur effect The Smart Blur effect softens the appearance of an

image by smoothing out the colors and sharp details.

Progressive digital art capabilities

New Mirror painting tool The new Mirror painting tool allows you to create a

symmetrical painting.

New Kaleidoscope painting
tool

The new Kaleidoscope painting tool lets you quickly
transform basic brushstrokes into colorful and
symmetrical kaleidoscope images.

New Gel brushes and Merge
Mode controls

The new Gel brushes allow you to tint the underlying
colors of an image with the brushstroke color. You
can customize Gel brushes by using the new Merge
Modes brush control to produce different effects.

New Digital Airbrushes The new Digital Airbrush variants allow you to apply

brushstrokes that do not build up color on single
brushstrokes. You can achieve color buildup by
overlaying multiple brushstrokes.

Getting Started | 3

Unmatched Natural-Media capabilities

New Real Watercolor brushes
and Controls

New Real Wet Oil brushes and
Controls

The Real Watercolor brushes and controls allow you
to apply pigment to the paper in a very realistic way.
The brush control options allow you to precisely
control water consistency and movement. You can
also control the way the water and pigments interact
with the paper.

The Real Wet Oil brushes and controls allow you to
achieve the look and feel of real-world oil paints. The
brush control options allow you to precisely control
paint consistency and movement. You can also
control the way the paint interacts with the canvas.

The perfect complement

New Content Corel Painter 12 includes various new content, such

as brushes, papers, nozzles, and other media, that
you can work with or integrate into your images.

Compatibility Corel Painter 12 is compatible with your tools and

workflows:

• Mac OS® and Windows® — compatible with both
Mac OS and Windows (including Windows 64-bit)
operating systems

• Adobe® Photoshop® support — lets you import in
and export to the Adobe Photoshop file format

• Wacom® Pen and Tablet support — lets you
maximize the Natural Media brush capabilities of
Corel Painter

New Web-based Help Corel Painter 12 now includes a web-based Help

system in order to provide up-to-date help content.
However, if you’re working offline and need to
consult the Help, a Help file is installed locally.

4 | Corel Painter 12 Getting Started Guide

Using the Documentation

This guide provides basic information about Corel Painter 12 features. For more
comprehensive assistance, you can refer to the Help, which is available from within
the Corel Painter workspace. The Help gives you access to a full range of topics in a
searchable format.

To access the Help

• Choose Help  Corel Painter 12 Help (Mac OS) or Help Topics (Windows).

To access a PDF version of the Help

• Choose Help  User Guide.

Additional Resources

You can access additional Corel Painter resources online to learn more about the
product and connect with the Corel Painter community.

Resources To access

Corel Painter page on the Corel website http://www.corel.com/painter

Corel Painter Factory http://www.painterfactory.com/

Corel Painter on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/corelpainter

Corel Painter on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/corelpainter

Registration

Registering Corel products is important. Registration provides you with timely access
to the latest product updates, valuable information about product releases, and
access to free downloads, articles, tips and tricks, and special offers.

You can register at www.corel.com/support/register.

Getting Started | 5