Corel Painter Essentials 6 Quick Start Guide
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Contents | 1
Contents
Corel Painter Essentials 6.......................................................................................................................................................................3
Using Corel Painter Essentials 6 with a computer, tablet, or 2-in-1 device.............................................................................................. 5
Photo art: Auto-painting........................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Photo art: Painting by hand................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Photo art: Tracing...................................................................................................................................................................................7
Drawing and painting from scratch........................................................................................................................................................8
Choosing brushes................................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Acquiring brushes.................................................................................................................................................................................10
Exploring brush categories....................................................................................................................................................................11
Exploring the toolbox........................................................................................................................................................................... 17
Exploring panels and palettes...............................................................................................................................................................19
The Corel Painter family of products.................................................................................................................................................... 21
2 | Quick Start Guide
Corel Painter Essentials 6 | 3
Corel Painter Essentials 6
Corel® Painter® Essentials™ is an intuitive, lightweight, agile software that enables you to create paintings from photos, or draw and paint
from scratch. A variety of painting styles let you produce compelling preset-driven photo art with a couple of clicks. Or you can use the
available brushes to create your own paintings and illustrations.
The clean look and feel of the Corel Painter Essentials 6 workspace has been designed to give you easy access to the most frequently used
tools, effects, commands, and features in a clutter-free environment.
Artwork created with Corel Painter Essentials. Image by John Grant
4 | Quick Start Guide
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. (Artwork by Alan Wade)
Part Description
1. Toolbox Access tools for creating and modifying images
2. Brush selector bar Choose brushes
3. Menu bar Access commands and options
4. Property bar Access settings that relate to the active tool
5. Photo Painting panel Paint on a photo automatically or by hand
6. Mixer panel Blend colors
7. Color Set panel View the colors in the current color set
8. Paper selector Choose a paper texture
9. Current color View or change the current color
10. Color wheel Choose a color to paint with
Corel Painter Essentials 6 | 5
Using Corel Painter Essentials 6 with a computer, tablet, or 2-in-1 device
The application features a dual workspace that automatically adapts to your device configuration from laptop to tablet mode on a 2-in-1
device, and optimizes the interface for tablet use with larger icons and buttons. You can also switch between tablet and laptop mode at any
time by clicking Window Layouts Quick Switch and choosing the option you want.
Corel Painter Essentials 6 supports Wacom-compatible tablets and devices as well as devices that support the Real-Time Stylus (RTS) feature
of the Windows operating system. Both groups have multi-touch capabilities.
Wacom-compatible devices are supported on both Mac OS and Windows. RTS-compatible devices include tablet PCs and graphics tablets
and are supported only on Windows.
By default, Corel Painter uses tablet options that are suitable for Wacom-compatible devices. To take full advantage of your RTS-compatible
graphics tablet or other device with Corel Painter, you must configure it first. Otherwise, you cannot use stylus information such as pressure
and tilt to adjust and control brushstrokes.
Stylus settings (Windows only)
If you received Corel Painter Essentials 6 pre-installed on your computer, pre-configured pen tablet support lets you engage seamlessly with
the application when switching from mouse to stylus or vice versa.
If you downloaded the product, and if you are using a stylus, you may need to change the tablet settings for the stylus to work properly. The
tablet preferences let you choose a suitable option for the tablet and other devices that you use with the application on Windows.
To change the stylus settings
1
Click Edit Preferences Tablet.
2 In the Tablet Options area, enable one of the following options:
• Wacom-compatible device (Wintab) — allows you to use compatible Wacom devices
• RTS-compatible device (Real-Time Stylus) — allows you to use a tablet or device that has the RTS feature
Photo art: Auto-painting
A great way to become acquainted with Corel Painter Essentials 6 is to create photo art by painting on a photo. All you need to start is a
photo to use as a source image. The tools for creating photo art are found in the Photo Painting panel. Available presets include painting
styles such as Impressionist Painting and Watercolor Sketch.
6 | Quick Start Guide
You can use various preset styles to turn your photo into a painting.
Auto-painting may leave portraits looking too blurry. In such cases, you can refine the auto-painting by hand, by using a brush such as the
Soft Cloner in the Photo Painting Brushes category to add back some detail to the eyes and face. For information about choosing a brush,
see “Choosing brushes” on page 9.
To auto-paint
1 Open the photo that you want to turn into a painting, and click Use Open Image on the Photo Painting panel.
If you want to use a different image, click Browse .
2 In the Auto-Paint area, choose a preset style from the pop-up menu.
3 Click the Start button.
The auto-painting stops automatically when the painting is finished. To stop the auto-painting earlier, click the Stop button.
You can apply any finishing touches by hand. To vary the look of your painting, experiment with different brushes, paper textures,
and other settings.
Photo art: Painting by hand
In addition to using preset painting styles, you can paint a photo by hand. Paintings do not typically contain the fine detail that photos do.
When painting by hand, choose a key compositional element, and begin painting the selected area by using quick, loose strokes. Don’t
attempt to paint every square inch of the canvas. Allowing some of the canvas to show through adds to the loose, fluid quality of the
image. Don’t be concerned about slight overlaps with adjacent areas. The basic idea is to work quickly and with spontaneity.
It is recommended that you use a stylus and tablet to achieve the best artistic results.
When painting a photo by hand, you can experiment with different brushes from the Photo Painting Brushes category to achieve different
styles. For more information, see “Choosing brushes” on page 9. You can enable tracing paper, which helps you apply clone colors
precisely. Tracing paper displays a faded-out version of the source image in the clone document. Unlike traditional tracing paper, the Corel
Painter tracing paper is not a real object, such as a layer or a document. It's a viewing mode that allows you to see the clone source image
and use it as a reference when painting. When you enable tracing paper and start painting, the media is applied to the clone document
the way it would be applied to traditional tracing paper. If you can’t see all image details when tracing paper is enabled, you can toggle the
tracing paper view to switch between showing and hiding the clone source. You can also control the opacity of the tracing paper.
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