Painter 12

Despite the over-arching dominance of Photoshop in the photography world, Corel Painter still has a rightful place in the hearts of those really creative people who like digital painting. The Societies’ own Marilyn Sholin and Jane Conner-ziser are Painter experts (Marilyn is a featured artist in the manuals and software interfaces http://marilyn.blogsome.com/). We are also able to call on the skills of Carol Tipping for local support. Carol recently gained her Fellowship of the RPS with a spectacular panel of ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ images executed with Painter.

And so we took ourselves off to see Carol, armed with a copy of the new version 12 and an idea for the opening double-page spread. Carol, like many artists, works in bursts of activity and is presently photographing birds as though they are about to leave the country! We had seen her Fighting Godwit image some time ago and decided it would make a super ‘painting’; she was of the same mind and had already done it! With all this in mind we had her recreate the image in Painter 12, making screen gabs along the way and using the basic method outlined later in this feature. She completed the piece in around 19 minutes. Speed is of no relevance to the true artists but if you wish to use the technique for ‘enhance’ wall portraits without bankrupting your studio then things have to be quick!

Painter – The New Interface

For new readers, who might not even be familiar with Painter, it is worth explaining that it is a ‘natural media’ software which can mimic the painting effects of a huge array of artists’ paints, brush strokes and surfaces. This covers everything you can think of, from heavy oils and acrylics through to delicate watercolours and pencil sketching. You can start with a photograph as a ‘clone source’ and recreate the photograph as a painted clone as if it were painted in oils, watercolour or any other of your chosen media. The effect can be as abstract or real as you wish, there are no limits to Painter.



A graphics tablet is essential to using Painter, a mouse cannot provide anywhere near the feel of brush stroke-making.

For Painter 12 the interface has been redesigned with the aim of improving interaction and to make it more intuitive. Although we do not care at all for the rather childish simplification of the tool icons, some of the interface modifications such as presenting a palette of ‘recently used’ brushes are actually very useful. The interface will be vaguely familiar to Photoshop users and some the terminology and short cuts are identical.

The integration with Photoshop is vital for users of the program and most people will own both. Most take a finished image into Photoshop for final tweaks prior to printing and we certainly uncovered some flaws in the allegedly improved colour management engine. We also note that integration no longer extends to CMYK images and that 16-bit and Lab images are also incompatible. There is no RAW file capability. The Twain Acquire interface has also gone although it has disappeared from Photoshop as well (certainly on our machine) – it might be a 64-bit thing.

ABOVE: The colour management defaults may be set up to mirror those of your Photoshop application.

The colour management Painter preferences may be set up to mimic your Photoshop defaults. At Professional Imagemaker we use Adobe RGB, Fogra 39, with all profile warnings enabled. An image brought to Painter and requiring the assignment of a different RGB profile is not a good idea, the colour went way off. It is better to prep your files in Photoshop and then transfer to Painter without any re-mapping of colours or changes of profiles.

Overall we found the program was responsive in Windows 7 64-bit. Both Wacom and Hanvon tablets worked OK.

ABOVE: The colour management does not perform a clean translation from one RGB colour space to another. On the right is Photoshop as it should be.

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