Corel Painter 2021 Quick Start Guide
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Introduction to Corel® Painter® 2021 User Guide
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Contents
Corel Painter 2021.................................................................................................................................................................................3
What’s new in Corel Painter 2021..........................................................................................................................................................4
Workspace overview............................................................................................................................................................................. 11
Choosing a workspace layout...............................................................................................................................................................12
Choosing and modifying brushes......................................................................................................................................................... 14
Exploring the toolbox........................................................................................................................................................................... 19
Exploring panels and palettes...............................................................................................................................................................23
Choosing a workflow........................................................................................................................................................................... 28
Additional resources............................................................................................................................................................................. 39
Contents | 1
2 | Quick Start Guide
Corel Painter 2021
Corel® Painter® 2021 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.
Image created with Corel Painter 2021 by using the Colored Pencil AI style preset and Thick Paint. Artwork by Deborah Kolesar
Corel Painter 2021 | 3
What’s new in Corel Painter 2021
Enhanced! Performance optimization
Corel Painter 2021 takes advantage of the latest developments in processor (CPU), graphics processor (GPU) and memory to deliver the best
digital painting experience. With improved GPU compatibility and efficiency, you’ll experience faster brush and tool switching.
The enhanced Brush Accelerator is more intuitive and evaluates your system’s CPU, GPU, and memory to optimize application settings
for better performance. It also offers suggestions on how to upgrade system components, as well as recommendations on which brush
categories are most compatible with your computer.
The Brush Accelerator evaluates your system and generates a report that lets you view the test results.
To run the Brush Accelerator
1 On the Welcome Screen, click the Performance tab.
If the Welcome Screen isn’t open, choose Help Welcome.
2 Click Optimize Now.
To cancel the test at any time, press Esc.
You can also run the Brush Accelerator from the Performance page of the Preferences dialog box (macOS: Corel Painter 2021
menu Preferences Performance; Windows: Edit Preferences Performance) and the Performance panel (Window Brush
Control Panels Performance ).
New! Apple Touch Bar support
Painter provides new support for the Touch Bar on your MacBook Pro, offering context-sensitive controls that change depending on the
selected tool. For example, when you work with brushes, the Touch Bar will display controls for selecting colors, cloning color, adjusting
brush size and opacity, and more.
4 | Quick Start Guide
The Touch Bar content changes depending on the active brush or tool. For example, when you choose a variant
from the Artist’s Oils category (top), the Touch Bar displays commands for selecting colors, adjusting brush size
and opacity, and stroke options; when you choose a variant from the Cloners category (middle), the Touch Bar
provides access to additional controls, such as showing and hiding tracing paper. The Touch Bar also lets you
access useful document options (bottom) for switching document views, flipping the canvas, zooming, and more.
New! Apple Pencil tilt support
With new tilt support for Apple Pencil, you can now tilt the selected brush while you paint to precisely control the shape of the brushstroke,
for example while shading with a pencil, aiming an airbrush, or splaying soft bristles.
Enhanced! Apple Trackpad support
With responsive support for the multi-touch trackpad on your Mac, you can perform useful actions by swiping, and pinching or spreading
your thumb and forefinger on your trackpad. This makes panning, zooming, and rotating your artwork quick, intuitive, and efficient.
To enable or disable trackpad support (macOS)
1
Choose Corel Painter 2021 menu Preferences Tablet and Trackpad.
2 In the Trackpad Options area, enable or disable the Enable pan, zoom and rotate on Apple devices equipped with a Trackpad check
box.
New! Apple Sidecar support
With Painter 2021, you can use your iPad as a secondary display that mirrors your Mac desktop. The Painter user interface will auto-adjust
based on the resolution of your iPad.
New! Clone tinting
You can now dynamically add color to mix with your clone source. While painting with clone tinting enabled, you can add the currently
selected color, or a sampled color, to any brush independent of the clone source. This highly versatile technology is supported by any brush
that responds to clone color or clone method. It also works in conjunction with multi-point cloning, giving you an abundance of creative
options while cloning. Plus, the Clone Color and Clone Source flyouts on the property bar provide quicker access to settings, options, and
panels for an improved cloning workflow.
Corel Painter 2021 | 5
Clone tinting lets you add color to mix with your clone source. Artwork by Dana Diamond.
To apply clone tinting
1 In the Brush Selector, choose a cloner brush.
Tip: To paint with a brush from any other category, choose a brush, and click the Clone Color button
in the Color panel (Window
Color Panels Color Panel (Full View)).
2
Click the Clone Color flyout button
3 Perform a task from the following table.
To Do the following
Set the amount of tinting applied to a brushstroke Move the Amount slider.
Link tinting to a specific stylus or mouse movement Choose an option from the Expression list box.
4 Hover over the color wheel in the Color panel and choose a color.
5 Paint in the clone document.
6 | Quick Start Guide
on the property bar, and enable the Color Tinting check box.
Enable the Precise Sampling check box to sample color from the center of the dab, which is useful for cloning images with
transparency.
Enhanced! UI elements
Painter 2021 helps you work faster and more efficiently by giving you quick access to frequently used commands and options. For photo
artists, a new Photo Art command bar lets you instantly clone, access photo art panels, apply surface texture, as well as adjust colors,
brightness and contrast, and equalize. To give you more room to paint, you can move command bars anywhere on the screen.
In addition, Thick Paint brush controls have been reorganized so that property bar flyouts and panels put the most important controls at
your fingertips. An updated Impasto flyout reduces the need to open panels, making it easier to control the interaction of depth on the
canvas. Plus, the Underpainting panel provides instant access to setting up clone documents and brush options.
Enhanced! New Image dialog box
To quickly get started, Corel Painter now lets you start your document by creating a Thick Paint, Watercolor, or Liquid Ink layer, setting canvas
visibility and orientation, and choosing a color profile directly from the New Image dialog box.
New! A.I. Style panel and transfers
The new A.I. Style panel includes presets and styles that use artificial intelligence to create a stylized painting from a photo. You can finetune the settings of AI styles, and save your own custom preset. Plus, you can add style to virtually anything in Painter: a photo, a sketch, a
painting, or even a few simple brush marks. The unique look and feel of an AI style can serve either as an underpainting for your photo art
or inspiration for your next masterpiece.
The A.I. Style panel lets you apply style transfers and presets to any Painter document.
Corel Painter 2021 | 7
To apply an AI style or preset
1 Open an image.
2
In the A.I. Style panel ( Window Photo Art Panels A.I. Style ), do one of the following:
• Choose a style from the A.I. Style list box to apply a style.
• Choose a preset from the Preset list box to apply a preset.
3 When you are satisfied with the result, click Apply .
You can also
Vary the intensity of the effect Move the Strength slider.
Specify the level of detail in the style transfer In the Detail area, enable one of the following options:
•Low
•Medium
•High
Specify the percentage of color matching taken from the original
image
Smooth out the colors and sharp details Move the Smooth Image slider.
Apply a style to the current document Choose Current Document from the Apply to list box.
Apply a style to a new clone document Choose New Clone Document from the Apply to list box.
You can apply an AI style or preset only to default layers. To apply an AI style or preset to Watercolor, Thick Paint, or Liquid Ink
layers, you have to convert them to default layers.
In a multi-layer document, you can apply an AI style or preset only to the currently selected layer.
You can also apply an AI style or preset to a selection. For more information about selections, see “Getting started with
selections.”
Move the Color Match slider.
Tip: Click the Settings button
brush settings, such as clearing the canvas, activating tracing paper,
and switching to a cloning brush category.
to adjust various clone and
You can also access the A.I. Style panel by clicking the A.I. Style flyout button
Command Bars Photo Art.)
on the Photo Art command bar (Window
New! AI style presets
You can quick start your photo art by taking advantage of new AI style presets. These meticulously curated settings are tuned to work best
for specific types of photos, such as architecture, portraits, wildlife, landscapes, and more. You can also experiment with AI styles for fast
results in a Quick Clone workflow.
8 | Quick Start Guide
Two AI style presets: Fabulous Animals (top) and Painted Landscape (bottom)
New! Apple Core ML
Painter 2021 uses the latest and greatest machine learning (ML) technology from Apple to power your AI style experience.
New! Layer compatibility
It’s now easier to identify which brushes are compatible with which layers in the enhanced Brush selector. As you hover over a brush variant,
layer compatibility icons display for Default, Liquid Ink, Thick Paint, and Watercolor layers. You can also click any layer compatibility icon to
search for all brushes compatible with that layer. Plus, you can use abbreviated search terms "d", "tp", "li", and "wc" in the Search bar to find
respective Default, Thick Paint, Liquid Ink, and Watercolor brushes. In addition, the search term "gl" will instantly find all brushes that require
Gel composite method for optimal look and feel.
Enhanced! Layers panel
You can now add new Default, Thick Paint, Watercolor, and Liquid Ink layers with a single click. You can also adjust Thick Paint visible depth
in the Layers panel to dynamically control the depth of Thick Paint as you apply brushstrokes to the layer. Plus, the Layer options menu on
the panel has been reorganized for quicker access and better alignment with the commands in the Layers menu. And you can right-click
(Windows), or click with two fingers on the trackpad (macOS), the icons along the bottom of the panel to access handy contextual menus.
Corel Painter 2021 | 9
Layers panel: The new Visible Depth slider (1) lets you dynamically control the depth of Thick Paint on a layer. The New Layer
(2), New Thick Paint Layer (3), New Watercolor Layer (4), New Liquid Ink Layer (5) buttons let you add layers with a single click.
Enhanced! Layers workflow
Painter 2021 provides other general refinements to layers workflow designed to help you focus on creativity. Watercolor layers have been
improved, making it easier to merge two or more watercolor layers, convert default layers to watercolor, and flip watercolor layers. Plus, you
can quickly unlock all layers, duplicate layer groups and canvas, retain the first layer name when merging a group, and use the Shift key to
constrain movement while adjusting layers.
New! Brushes
Painter 2021 introduces Clone Tinting and Thick Paint-compatible brush categories, featuring new brushes developed by Painter Masters.
You can take advantage of brushes designed by a group of talented illustrators, fine artists, and photo artists who excel in their craft.
With a variety of brush types and shapes, Clone Tinting brushes pick up the currently selected color and mix it with your clone source. The
Thick Paint-compatible brushes are designed to take full advantage of the depth, lighting, and shadows of Thick Paint technology. Plus, there
are nine additional new or enhanced Thick Paint brushes.
New and enhanced! Thick Paint workflow
Painter 2021 provides an optimized Thick Paint workflow, featuring reorganized brush control panels and property bar flyouts that give you
quicker access to frequently used settings. You can instantly adjust how Thick Paint is applied to the brush, how the brush behaves, and how
the paint interacts by using the revamped Media, Shape, and Wetness flyouts, reducing the need to open their respective panels.
10 | Quick Start Guide
What’s more, Thick Paint layer performance has been improved, making it easier to duplicate and flip layers, adjust visible depth, and
preserve transparency when blocking in color. You can also lift the canvas, such as a photo, or convert a layer, such as brush marks on
default layers, to Thick Paint, offering you a variety of powerful options to add visible depth to your artwork.
New! Thick Paint compatibility
Painter 2021 makes it easier to incorporate Thick Paint in your artwork. The improved brush compatibility offers a much greater variety of
shapes, such as captured dabs and stencils, and media types, such as oily Sargent, chalks and pencils, buildup support for inks, crayons, and
sumi-e, and so much more. In addition, the default appearance and interaction has been improved, making it quicker to make fine, nondestructive adjustments to the visible depth of Thick Paint brushstrokes. All in all, natural-looking mixed media and photo art with Painter is
now more powerful and easier than ever.
Workspace overview
The workspace is organized by using a series of menus, selectors, panels, and interactive palettes.
Circled numbers correspond to the numbers in the following table,
which describes the main components of the application window.
Corel Painter 2021 | 11
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