Corel Painter - X3 Reviewer's Guide

Contents
1 | Introducing Corel Painter X3............................................. 1
2 | Customer profiles .............................................................. 3
3 | What’s included?................................................................ 5
4 | Key features........................................................................ 7
A platform for inspiration, creativity, and reflection ...................................7
The innovator in digital art ......................................................................... 9
Easier to learn and use ............................................................................. 12
Einar Lunden
Introducing Corel® Painter® X3
Corel® Painter® X3 is the ultimate digital art studio. It gives artists the freedom to create without boundaries, offering a wondrous collection of lifelike and expressive Natural-Media
®
brushes, innovative drawing tools, effects, and media, as well as endless customization options to tailor the workspace to their preference.
Changing what’s possible in art
Painter evolves with the help of an Advisory Council, which consists of working artists in a range of professions across the globe. These artists actively participate in Painter’s development, offering constructive feedback and ensuring that our efforts are targeted with real users and real-world scenarios in mind.
With Painter X3, we’ve introduced a brush search engine that makes it easier to discover brushes. A simple keyword search will unearth a trove of suitable brushes, offering the potential to inspire by presenting complementary choices. A new, resizable Reference Image panel lets artists create while keeping an eye on a visual source of inspiration. And we’ve enhanced the Stroke Preview panel so that it accurately portrays brushstrokes.
Ever the innovator, Painter X3 also introduces a new universal jitter expression, available for various brush settings. This means that artists can add varying degrees of controlled randomness to their brushstrokes, increasing the ability to put their own unique stamp on their artwork. There are also 25 new, ready-to-use Jitter brushes available in a spectrum of brush categories. In addition, Painter X3
continues to work in tandem with the latest developments from Wacom
®
and their multi-touch
pen tablets and displays.
A new, contextual brush controls panel displays settings and options that are relevant for the currently selected brush. With upwards of 16,000 available brush settings, this demystifies brush customization, making it easier to identify which settings affect a given brush. Painter X3 also provides new Perspective Guides, which make it easier to accurately draw toward vanishing points.
We’ve also enhanced layer functionality so that artists can apply transformations across multiple layers. And for Adobe
®
Photoshop® users, Painter X3 provides enhanced support for layer preservation, layer masks, alpha channels, and composite methods. This ensures that files can be easily transferred between the two applications. There are additional notable new features that were previously included in updates since version 12, such as Flow Maps for working with watercolors, as well as changes to make brush management and sharing quicker and easier.
Built to inspire you to create
Like any work of art, Painter needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated. Its responsive brushes, revelatory textures, and depth of color options are enough to whet the budding artist in anyone. So please, be our guest and put brush to canvas — digitally with Painter X3. We’re confident that you’ll be surprised and inspired by what you can achieve together.
Reviewer’s Guide [ 1 ]
Eric Scala
Customer profiles
Photo artists
Photo artists capture a moment with their camera and transform the image into a work of digital art. With its powerful image cloning and painting features, Painter X3 offers photo artists everything needed to produce visually stunning photo art that will dazzle clients and bolster their professional services.
Traditional artists
Traditional artists prefer time-honored techniques and the freedom of working with a blank canvas. With Painter X3, traditional artists can combine classic art practices with state-of-the-art Natural-
®
Media impressive as that found on any physical canvas.
technology to create digital art that’s as
Illustrators
Illustrators tell visual stories that elicit emotion and produce an intended result. With Painter X3, illustrators can vividly express their creative visions and leave a lasting impression, whether on storyboards, in magazines, or in books.
Manga and comic artists
Manga and comic artists strive to present emotion, expressiveness, and even visual motion in static imagery. With its streamlined tools and colorful digital media features, Painter X3 helps them explore the depths of their imaginations to easily produce storyboards and graphic novels as well as to draw manga and comic art.
Concept artists
Concept artists are dedicated to bringing incredible ideas to visual life. Whether they’re creating fantasy artwork, or developing material for film, television, video games, or movies, Painter X3 offers the professional tools needed to turn a creative concept into reality.
Designers
Designers create art that speaks to a particular audience. Whether they’re developing a print logo, working on images for a web page, or creating industrial designs, Painter X3 provides unique digital art tools and cutting-edge design options that will help them stand out from the crowd.
Students and teachers
Painter is an asset for all budding artists and an important component for art curriculum worldwide. With digital tools that mimic the look and feel of their real world counterparts, Painter X3 offers a natural way for students to learn traditional art techniques in an environment that’s very conducive to experimentation — without the cost, toxins, and mess associated with traditional art supplies.
Reviewer’s Guide [ 3 ]
Robert Chang
What’s included?
Main application
Corel Painter X3, Mac OS® and Windows® versions
Content
Libraries of unique brushes, gradients, nozzles, patterns, stock photos, and paper textures
Documentation
HTML Help (Windows) and Apple Help (Macintosh
®
) files
Online User Guide and Getting Started Guide (PDF)
•Network Deployment Guide (PDF)
Welcome Screen
Minimum system requirements
Mac OS® version:
•Mac OS
•Intel
®
X 10.7 or 10.8 (with latest revision)
®
Core2 Duo
Windows® version:
•Microsoft
®
Windows® 8 (64-bit), or Windows 7
(32-bit or 64-bit editions), with the latest Service Packs
•Intel
®
Pentium® 4, AMD Athlon™ 64, or AMD
Opteron
•2 GB of RAM
450 MB of hard disk space for application
1
files
Mouse or tablet or supported motion gesture controller
1280
× 800 screen resolution
DVD drive
•Microsoft
®
Internet Explorer® 8 or higher
•2 GB of RAM
350 MB of hard disk space for application files
•Mouse or tablet
1280
× 800 screen resolution
•DVD drive
Safari v5 or higher
1. Additional space may be required for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
Reviewer’s Guide [ 5 ]
Karen Bonaker
Key features
Corel Painter X3 is the ultimate digital art studio.
A platform for inspiration, creativity, and reflection
Painter has long set the standard for digital art creation. Its brushes, effects, media, textures, and color options are designed to inspire artists and give them the freedom to create without boundaries. With Painter X3, we’ve introduced new features that make it easier to discover brushes and their potential uses. And we’ve also added new features that promote creativity.
New!
Brush search engine:
introduction of a new brush search engine makes it faster and easier to find that perfect brush. You simply type a keyword into the Search Brushes bar, and then Painter X3 will instantly present all the brushes that match the search criteria. You can also use multiple keywords, such as bristle, rotation, wet, or oil, to narrow down your search. And if you search by ‘brush name’ and by ‘brush setting’, the combination of both search terms will return fewer, more targeted results.
This powerful new tool can inspire artists by presenting creative options that they hadn’t considered prior to searching. And with close to 1000 brushes in 30 categories, it can also quicken brush discovery for both new and veteran users alike. The Search Brushes bar also provides an enhanced brush preview, which gives you clear representations of how each brush’s dab and stroke will appear on the canvas.
With Painter X3, the
The new Search Brushes bar, which includes a live Stroke Preview, makes it fast and easy to find that
perfect brush.
Give it a try
Using the brush search engine
1
In
Corel Painter X3
Brushes
application window, and then press If you do not see the Search Brushes bar, click
Window Search.
bar at the top-right corner of the
, type
oil
in the
Enter
Search
.
Reviewer’s Guide [ 7 ]
Give it a try
2 In the list of brush variants, hover over any
variant to display a preview of the brushstroke.
3 Select a brush variant, press and hold
and then drag the variant onto the workspace. This creates a custom palette.
4 Try typing another search term. For example,
X3 will return the brushes that are new to this
version of Painter.
New!
Reference Image panel:
This new panel
Shift,
makes it easy to keep a visual source of inspiration within sight while you create. It’s the perfect way to capture subtle elements that will enhance your artwork without disrupting your workflow. And you can resize the panel by simply dragging from the lower-right corner. In the Reference Image panel, you can sample colors from the image, reposition the image, as well as zoom in or out.
You can choose colors from a series of inspirational
mixers designed by Painter Masters.
You can use the new Reference Image panel to keep a
visual source of inspiration within sight as you paint.
New!
Inspirational mixers:
With Painter X3, you can sample colors from four new inspirational mixers, which were designed by Painter Masters Jeremy Sutton, Karen Bonaker, Skip Allen, and John Macolm. You can also import a RIFF, PSD, JPG, PNG, or TIFF file for use as a custom Color Set Library, which can now include 1-256 colors. In addition, the Mixer panel is now set to the Sample Color tool by default, which prevents accidental mixing.
Enhanced!
Stroke Preview panel:
When you’re working with brush controls in Painter X3, you can take advantage of the enhanced Stroke Preview panel, which offers a much more accurate depiction of how a brushstroke will appear on the canvas. The Stroke Preview is dynamic, offering a real-time visual representation as you adjust parameters such as blending, erasing, mixing, jitter, and texture. This eliminates the need to use a test canvas when adjusting brush settings.
The new Stroke Preview panel provides an accurate rendering of how a brushstroke will appear on canvas.
[ 8 ] Reviewer’s Guide
The innovator in digital art
Painter X3 continues to innovate its emulation of traditional art materials, working closely with Wacom multi-touch gestures. In the very near future, we’ll be introducing motion gestures to the Painter experience. With Painter X3, artists can paint with Natural-Media personal expressions to create signature artwork.
New!
universal jitter means that you can add randomness to your brushstrokes. Painter X3 integrates the jitter expression in a range of brush controls, including opacity, grain, size, angle, airbrush particle size, airbrush flow, liquid ink volume, and color expression.
Universal jitter helps artists produce unique and irregular brushstrokes, giving a heightened level of personalization to their artwork. For example, by simply adjusting the Opacity Jitter setting, you can create brushstrokes with varying degrees of transparency instead of just employing a uniform percentage of opacity.
®
to ensure full support for pen tablets and
®
brushstrokes that emphasize
Universal Jitter:
The introduction of
Give it a try
3 Paint on the canvas.
4 On the property bar, click the
Brush Controls
5 Perform the following adjustments:
in the
slider to
in the
Jitter
slider to 100%.
in the
Stroke Jitter slider to 4.0.
6 Paint on the canvas.
New!
Jitter brushes:
button.
Size panel, drag the Size Jitter
100%.
Opacity panel, drag the Opacity
Stroke Jitter panel, drag the
In addition to universal jitter expressions, Painter X3 also includes 25 new jitter brush variants in a wide range of brush categories. Like all Painter brushes, these new jitter variants are fully customizable and can be easily personalized, exported, and shared.
Brush category/variant Stroke preview
Airbrushes
Coarse Spray Jitter
Advanced
Two brushstrokes made with identical brush settings
and applied pressure on the canvas; the top
brushstroke features no Jitter expression, the lower
brushstroke features maximum Jitter expression.
Give it a try
Working with universal jitter
1 In the toolbox, click the Brush tool.
2 Click the Brush Selector on the Brush Selector
bar, then in the Brush library panel, choose and
Opaque Bristle Spray.
Oils
Artists
Coarse Sargent Brush Jitter
Impressionist Blender Jitter
Sargent Super Jitter
Blenders
Coarse Smear Blender Jitter
Grainy Blender Impasto Jitter
Chalk & Crayons
Real Chalk Jitter
Cloners
Impasto Cloner Jitter Etch
Reviewer’s Guide [ 9 ]
Brush category/variant Stroke preview
Brush category/variant Stroke preview
F-X
Fog Jitter
Furry Airbrush Jitter
Gel
Gel Fractal Jitter
Gouache
Gouache Rake Jitter
Image Hose
Color Hose Jitter
Impasto
Captured Impasto Blender Jitter
Coarse Impasto Jitter
Heavy Impasto Stamp Jitter
Markers
Worn Marker Jitter
Sponges
Grainy Jitter Sponge
Enhanced!
Wacom® multi-touch support:
Painter X3 provides full integration with the entire
®
Wacom
product line, including the Intuos5 and the Cintiq 24HD interaction pen displays, offering the most fluid and responsive digital painting experience available. By using a few simultaneous finger gestures, you can navigate the canvas with ease. For example, you can rotate and move the canvas at the same time with a circular swipe of two fingers across your Wacom tablet. You can also quickly restore the canvas position, rotation, and zoom level.
New since v12!
Flow maps:
Designed to help artists maximize the creative potential of Real Watercolor and Real Wet Oil brushes, flow maps are textured surfaces that direct the flow of paint as it dries. Flow maps work similarly to paper textures, but produce higher peaks and deeper valleys, resulting in paint that flows and settles in unique and irregular patterns.
Oils
Dense Impasto Block Jitter
Palette Knives
Pointed Palette Knife Brush Jitter
Pointed Palette Knife Plow Jitter
Pattern Pens
Pattern Chalk Jitter
Squiggly Pattern Chalk Jitter
Real Watercolor
Light Fringe Jitter
Real Wet Jitter Sponge
Flow maps offer a new level of creative control to
artists when working with watercolors.
Artwork by Skip Allen
[ 10 ] Reviewer’s Guide
With Painter X3, artists can choose from four Real Watercolor variants — Noisy Flowmap Fringe, Melted Flowmap, Real Wet Flowmap Wash, and Wet Flowmap Fringe, as well as seven expressive flow maps. You can also use flow maps with other Real Watercolor and Real Wet Oil brushes, and you can easily create custom flow maps from images or from paper textures.
Give it a try
Working with flow maps
1 In the toolbox, click the Brush tool.
2 Click the Brush Selector on the Brush Selector
bar, then in the Brush library panel, choose
Watercolor
3 Paint on the canvas and watch as your
brushstroke diffuses.
and Noisy Flowmap Fringe.
Real
Auto-painting panels:
Painter continues to provide leading auto-painting tools that streamline the process of creating a painting based on a digital image or scanned photo. Previous experience with digital art is not required to use these tools.
4 On the property bar, click the
Brush Controls
5 In the
6 Paint on the canvas and watch as your
Media panel, click the Flow Map
Selector
from the Flow Map Textures panel.
brushstroke diffuses. Experiment by selecting other flow map
textures.
and choose a different flow map
Coming soon!
button.
Motion gesture support:
Advanced
In a free update for Painter X3 customers, Painter will soon introduce motion gestures to the digital painting experience. When integrated with Leap
®
Motion technology, Painter
Freestyle™ Gesture Control is a revolutionary feature that lets you paint with your hands. No screen to touch, or stylus to pick up, you simply use your hands to command Painter Freestyle. It will even let you paint with all five fingers at once.
The auto-painting tools make it easy to transform
photos into painted artwork.
Reviewer’s Guide [ 11 ]
Easier to learn and use
After more than 20 years in development, Painter has acquired quite a following of diverse artists who rely on it day-to-day, including photographers, classic artists, illustrators, concept artists, designers, as well as comic and manga artists. Many of these professional artists are active participants on an Advisory Council, helping us to develop features and enhancements that enrich the user experience.
With Painter X3, we’ve introduced new features that make it easier to learn and use — for both new and accomplished users.
New!
Perspective Guides:
makes it easier to draw accurately in 1-, 2-, or 3-point perspectives. These non-printing and fully adjustable guides are helpful for creating paintings with objects or scenery that show spatial depth.
Four presets help you get started. Each vanishing point includes primary guidelines that allow you to change the alignment to a reference image or brushstroke. Intermediate guidelines provide visual assistance when zoomed into the document. Plus, you can toggle perspective-guided strokes, which snaps the direction of the brushstroke so that it aligns perfectly with the vanishing point.
This new snap-tool
Give it a try
Working with Perspective Guides
1 In the toolbox, click the Perspective Guides
tool.
2 On the property bar, click the
Perspective Guides
3 On the property bar, click the
Guides Presets
the following:
1 Point Standard Horizon
2 Point General Composition
3 Point Top-Down View
3 Point Worms-Eye View
4 On the property bar, click the
Guided Strokes
5 In the toolbox, click the
then select a brush variant from the Brush Selector bar.
6 Paint on the canvas and note how your
brushstokes are constrained to align with the closest vanishing point.
Note: When the Perspective Guides tool is
selected, you can use the property bar controls to toggle the display of:
Primary Lines
Horizon Line
Intermediate Lines
button.
button and choose one of
button.
Enable
Perspective
Perspective
Brush tool, and
The new perspective guides make it easier to
create objects with dimension.
Artwork by Erik Holman
[ 12 ] Reviewer’s Guide
You can also adjust the opacity and color of the perspective guides, drag to reposition the primary line, horizon line, and vanishing point, and drag to rotate a primary line.
New!
Advanced Brush Controls:
Painter X3 introduces contextual brush controls, which display only the panels and settings relevant to the currently selected brush. This eliminates guesswork and makes the process of adjusting brush properties, settings, and expressions more intuitive.
For new users, it makes experimenting with brushes less daunting. The Advanced Brush Controls also include a Media panel, which makes it faster and easier to experiment with different paper textures or flow maps.
Give it a try
Working with Advanced Brush Controls
1 In the toolbox, click the Brush tool.
2 Click the Brush Selector on the Brush Selector
bar, then in the Brush library panel, choose a brush category and variant.
3 Press
4 On the property bar, click the
5 Choose a different brush and note the changes
New since v12!
Command + B (Mac) or Ctrl + B
(Windows). This opens the complete Brush Controls panel.
Advanced
Brush Controls
This opens the contextual Advanced Brush Controls panel.
in the arrangement of the contextual Advanced Brush Controls panel.
button.
Brush management and sharing:
With Painter X3, it’s never been easier to manage and share brushes. You can instantly create, save, and export new brush categories, brush variants, and brush libraries. When you share brushes, the recipient simply has to double-click the file, which launches Painter X3 and automatically imports the brush, category, or library.
In addition, Painter X3 provides greater workspace flexibility by reducing the required steps for saving brush variants. You can now quickly move or copy any brush variant to any category by simply dragging the variant within the Brush library panel.
The contextual Advanced Brush Controls panel makes
it easier to identify relevant brush settings.
Enhanced!
Cloning workflow:
In response to customer feedback, Painter X3 includes support for its traditional cloning workflow. You can now position the source image beside the clone, and take advantage of the crosshair cursor which indicates the area being cloned. The crosshair cursor is especially useful for working on fine details, and for general painting accuracy.
In addition, Painter X3 auto-embeds clone source images of varying sizes, which travel with your file. That way, you can make adjustments to the source image, such as applying effects, and then save both the original and adjusted image.
Reviewer’s Guide [ 13 ]
Give it a try
Working with cloning
1 Open the image that you want to clone, and
then choose The clone is dispylayed in a new document
window.
2 Press
3 Choose
4 In the Clone Source panel, enable the
5 In the toolbox, click the
6 As you apply brushstrokes to the clone canvas,
Command + A (Mac) or Ctrl + A
(Windows), and then choose This clears the clone document so you can
paint on a blank canvas.
Source Image
then choose a Cloner variant from the Brush Selector bar.
the crosshair cursor appears in the source document window.
File Clone.
Edit Clear.
Window Clone Source.
Show
option.
Cloner tool and
Enhanced!
Adobe® Photoshop® support:
You can easily transfer files between Adobe Photoshop and Painter X3 with preserved layers, layer masks, alpha channels, and composite methods. You can also take advantage of third-party Photoshop plug­ins to unlock even more creative options.
Custom palettes:
With Painter X3, you can simply drag a brush variant or media icon onto an open area of the workspace to instantly create a custom palette. To add to a custom palette, you can drag icons from the Brush Selector bar, the Paper selector, any of the five media selectors (patterns, looks, weaves, nozzles, or gradients) or Media Library panels, and the Scripts palette. You can also add menu commands to a custom palette by clicking
Command
Window
.
Custom Palette
Add
You can create an unlimited number of custom palettes, which gives artists the freedom to build special palettes for particular projects or frequently used workflows.
Enhanced!
Transform across layers:
With Painter X3, you can apply a transformation to a selection across multiple layers. You can also apply transformations to layers individually or to multiple layers simultaneously, including layer groups.
Enhanced!
Memory optimization:
For Mac users with 64-bit systems, Painter X3 can now take full advantage of all available system memory. This is especially useful for memory intensive tasks, such as working with large canvases, multiple clone sources, and more. PC users with large amounts of RAM will also benefit from the memory optimizations introduced with Painter X3.
[ 14 ] Reviewer’s Guide
Eric Scala
Art Gallery
Tobias Trebeljahr
Waheed Nasir
Ryan Church
Don Seegmiller
Heather Michelle
Every day, artists around the world trust Painter to help them explore their creativity and express themselves through art. We hope you enjoy these samples of artwork created by our Painter Masters.
Reviewer’s Guide [ 15 ]
Skip Allen
Einer Lunden
Greg Newman
Cher Pendarvis
Yuki Matsumoto
Skip Allen
[ 16 ] Reviewer’s Guide
About Corel
Corel is one of the world’s top software companies providing some of the industry’s best-known graphics, productivity and digital media products. Boasting the most comprehensive portfolio of innovative software, we’ve built a reputation for delivering solutions that are easy to learn and use, helping people achieve new levels of creativity and productivity. The industry has responded with hundreds of awards for innovation, design, and value.
Used by millions of people around the world, our product lines include CorelDRAW Corel DESIGNER
®
Corel
WordPerfect® Office. For more information on Corel, please visit www.corel.com.
Copyright © 2013 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved.
®
Corel
Painter™ X3 Reviewer’s Guide
®
, CorelCAD™, Corel® Painter®, Corel® PaintShop® Pro, Corel® VideoStudio®, and
®
Graphics Suite,
Protected by U.S. Patents 5652880; 5347620; 5767860; 6195100; 6385336; 6552725; 6657739; 6731309; 6825859; 6633305; Patents Pending.
Product specifications, pricing, packaging, technical support and information (“specifications”) refer to the retail English version only. The specifications for all other versions (including other language versions) may vary.
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