Corel Painter 11

[Rachel]

I know some of you use Painter, so I thought I’d look around for a decent deal on it. Well, I came across the full Painter 11 on Amazon for $75, so I snatched it up! So far, it’s pretty intuitive. We’ll see as I do more with it. I’ve had an Intuos 3 tablet for a while that hasn’t been used in a while, so it’s good to get it back out. The last time I used it, I was making skins for avatars on Second Life. I didn’t spend much time doing that, so they weren’t great, but it was kind of fun.

[Jennifer]

Let me know what you think of it! I have Painter 10. I tried painter 11’s demo and the pencil tool was AMAZING but overall the program ran very sluggishly and was glitchy for me. I will stick with painter 10 for now.

Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.com

[Rachel]

So far, I really haven’t noticed any real problems. There might be a little lag/hesitation, but nothing to really bother me. I fiddled around with some brushes for about an hour, then spent about half an hour on this. I’ve never used Painter before and I am actually finding it pretty intuitive.

[smugbug]

From what I’ve seen, Painter 12 is amazing. I have Painter 11 and can’t upgrade on my main desktop (it’s a pre-intel Mac; Painter 12 wouldn’t work…*sad, pouty face*). However since I work in both Photoshop (CS2) and Painter 11, let me provide a couple of tips:

*Painter is NOT Photoshop. 😉 So…

* You can’t work in multiple layers like Photoshop. It’ll begin to lag – big time. I’ve worked with 4-7 layers in
Painter before with little issues. I just like to get the sketch done in Painter – move to PS and get the brunt of the
work done (esp if I need to use a number of layers); then I flatten the image and move it into Painter and finish.

* It’s best to work at less than 50% in size. I usually work when my canvas is at 33% or less. On the other hand, in
Photoshop, you can work larger and up to 100%.

* Both Painter and Photoshop share similar keyboard commands. I’m big user of keyboard commands – speeds up
work.

* Painter’s default format for saved documents is RIFF. I like to save as .PSD so I can toggle between the two.
I usually don’t use the elements unique to Painter, like Digital Watercolor layers, Liquid Ink layers, mosaics, etc.,
so I can. BUT, if you do – then DO save as RIFF as it’ll preserve those layers.

And…the “WOW” books. Like the Painter 10 WOW Book and the one for Painter 11. VERY handy. Lots of fabulous tips and information with some inspiring art. Check this book out! There’s also one for Photoshop, btw!

Have fun! I loooooove Painter. It’s a great program.

[Rachel]

Thanks for the great tips, Smugbug! I did also get the WOW book for Painter 11. I had a credit at Amazon, so I figured that it would probably be worth it considering how much praise the WOW books get.

Unfortunately, I won’t be getting PS anytime soon. I just can’t justify the cost for the doodling I’m doing. I’m not a great artist, and quite frankly, I haven’t been particularly artistic (outside of music) since I was a kid…a LONG time ago. I got Corel 11 because I found the full version for a GREAT price.

I did try a couple of layers, and I’m not feeling any significant lag, but then I’m not really doing any heavy work in the program. I do notice a catch once in a while, but I suspect that it’s the way I hold the pen on my pad because it doesn’t happen if I adjust the way I’m holding the pen. I will have to get used to that.

I have no artistic training, so this is a learning experience in many ways. I like the freedom of being able to play with so many different types of media without having to throw the canvas away every time I screw up…which happens a lot since I really don’t know what I’m doing and I’m having to force my creative juices to flow after so long of not really using them (I used to be able to ‘see’ things even if I couldn’t translate them to paper/sculpture/whatever, but now, it’s even hard to just ‘see’).

[Author]

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