Painter Reviews & Product Details

I love how Painter allows you to create artwork that looks like real oil, acrylic, watercolor paint. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I dislike the lag on my computer, I'm not sure if it is only because I am running it off of a laptop. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It was a free, complimentary software bundle with a Wacom tablet. That seems to be the only benefit for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I feel like the brushes in the software are not as good as what they could be, and the blending process is more difficult than it needs to be. There have been several problems in the installation and startup processes, and I frankly just don't find it appealing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Corel painter has the most realistic paint simulation for illustration! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I feel like corel painter has never made efforts to cater to the tablet market like the surface pros and surface books. please transform the UI to a more finger friendly interface. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I had a formal education in arts, that means I used charcoal and graphite and paint, and worked over paper and canvas. Painter is the best software to my knowledge that replicates all classic artists materials.

It provides a really broad whole range of materials and different specs for every feature, allowing the user to change and adapt the tools for their better use.

Even though, if the user doesn't have experience with analog materials, Painter becomes a playful and dymanic software.

another feature, really important for an illustrator is that you can swap among Ps and Painter, coming back and forth as long as necessary, so the user can start a project on Painter or PS and it doesn't affect the finished piece.

Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As I mentioned the swap between PS and Painter. I would like that it would be more fluid and organic, easier to swap, still it's a pretty good option.

A problem it has sometimes is the brushes, specially the ones the user modifies can get damaged, and start behaving differently. It requires a good reset of the program to fix the issue, but still, took me a while to notice that.

Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Where do I begin? The simulated real world brush tools and drawing tools are bar none the best in art programs I have used. I have been a Painter user for over a decade and would give it the highest marks based on usability. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The size of the virtual memory used when it's on is a huge load. I have 16 gb of ram and it's still taxing. You have to shut all other programs down and pray it doesn't crash in the middle of a project sometimes. overall it's reliable but every once in a while it breaks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When it comes to digital Natural Media painting, there is nothing like Corel Painter. Its realistic looking and acting painting and drawing media are world class. Painter can do things that programs like Adobe Photoshop simply cannot do. The Real Media tools are among my favourite tools: Pencils for Sketching, Acrylic and Oils for Painting, Water Colours that spread and bleed and swirl with Flow Maps. Use of a pressure sensitive drawing tablet such as Wacom is vital to using Painter as it is intended to be used. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The interface is complex with a dated GUI and a dizzying array of brush controls and settings. New users often find Painter's steep learning curve daunting. Corel keeps adding dumb new features like the Audio Brushes, rather than focusing on bug fixes and stabilization. It took forever to finally get a full 64-bit version of Painter on the Mac (Painter 2015 was 64-bit for Mac and Painter 12 was 64-bit for PC released years before). Also, Corel seem to have switched to a paid yearly release for Painter. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When I use Painter, I fell in love with the way it can mimic traditional mediums. Not only can you choose a "medium" like charcoal, graphite, marker, etc, but you can select a paper texture, and if the brush has been set up to react to that texture you can get some pretty realistic results. My favorite brushes were the drawing mediums like the square chalk brush or graphite as it does a good job replicating the look of the mediums it is supposed to represent without the mess. Plus, they were very easy to work with and intuitive. I've had many people not realize that those pieces were done digitally. Additionally, Painter provides a more natural way to add textures to your work. Because of this, Painter is my Go To program when I want to achieve certain results that I can't do as quickly, as well, or as comfortably in Photoshop. The customizeability of the brushes is also great and gives you a lot of options to get the effect that you are looking for. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While I do love many of the brushes in Painter, there are others that I avoid. Some brushes like the watercolor brush don't function properly in accordance to how watercolor would react in real life and you would be better off mimicking them in a different way or just doing an actual watercolor painting to achieve the effect that you want. Other brushes, like some of the acrylic brushes leave streaks in the brush strokes for "texture" that a real brush wouldn't do. This isn't to say that the brushes are completely unusable (I did complete a skull still life painting that turned out very well with the acrylic brush mentioned above) you just have to be aware that not all brushes will act like the medium they are supposed to represent. However, you could use their quirks to your advantage in art pieces if you know them well enough. Additionally, Painter was not always as stable as Photoshop and the details provided by the brushes caused it to crash on occassion, so you had to save often or risk losing your work in one of the unpredictable crashes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What i like the best when i use painter is the natural "look" of the painting. Even if it's made digitally , painter is the only software that have this talent to reproduce the real and natural look of the brush , thickness , tints and mix of colors. On this aspect "painter" is definitely the number 1 ( For this review i 'm talking about the X3 version). You can choose special papers that will modify the options and how paint will react to paint .

Watercolor is awesome and oil / acrylic are also fabulous in term of textures and natural feel. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is only 1 point that can devaluate painter in comparison to adobe photoshop : The interface / user experience when we use the software. I must admit that i mainly use photoshop even if i know that painter got better results in terms of painting skills. This result comes from small problems in the options to use the software. Photoshop is definitely the champion when it comes from helping you achieve things you want to achieve. You can easlily crop , trnasform , mirror images and sort layers . When you use photoshop often it may be a bit hard to work with painter when you've got small problems with shortcuts and images transformation options. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Painter's brushes are without equal. The factory brushes it comes with can give you wonderful results and for the most part, accurately imitate most kinds of traditional media beautifully. The real power with Painter, however, comes when you get under the hood and start modifying and building your own brushes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Painter updates frequently do not address critical areas in which the program has lagged behind its competition, instead for whatever reason Corel continues to focus on adding ridiculous new features (like sound-activated brushes) that no one asks for or wants. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As a fine artist I found Corel Painter to deliver a very similar experience to the traditional process of drawing and painting. It can emulate everything you need to fool others into believing your work is a photograph of an actual piece. I recognized the potential of tweaking my brushes to deliver a realistic feeling, so I spent the time watching tutorials to understand how each setting affected my brush performance. It takes training to get the most out of the program. As a beginner or casual user you can still make great artwork with no training whatsoever.

My favorite two features are the unlimited symmetry axis tool and the tracing pictures tool. These two helped me saving time when running with creative design projects and illustration work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Like with any other software there are always some technical limitations. Probably those limitations will be fixed in upcoming versions.

In a sense having a lot of control over your dabs is a great feature for the proficient user, as a beginner though I found the interface and all these controls to be overwhelming and sometimes the tab titles a little confusing.

I would like to see hinting bubbles where I can read what each feature does. That could help a lot a beginner to figure out what are all these functions for. At the time when I started using this program (around version 10), they didn't have any visual help. I worked a nice illustration and I used a bunch of different brushes, it resulted that one specific brush pattern couldn't be saved in my jpg, so I had to figure out a way around to show that layer. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.