Corel Painter
Nov. 17th, 2006 10:49 amHas anyone reading this used Corel Painter before?
I took a look at the website, and it was like browsing through an art supply store all over again... only much more expensive for the initial outlay, and I'd never run out of ink/paint/etc. Painter seems to mimic natural media much better than Photoshop, and looks like fun to play with. Of course, it's not really surprising that a dedicated image creating program would do a better job than an image manipulation one, but Photoshop is my main point of reference here.
They also have a very pretty collection of artwork made in Painter - have a look at the gallery if you want some eye candy to flick through.
The Good Things: looks like a very powerful bit of software. I want to do a lot more illustrating, as there seems to be a dearth of illustrators relative to the number of writers around here :)
The Bad Things: Expensive, especially as I'll already be upgrading my copy of Photoshop with Creative Suite 2.4. No guarantee that I'll pick up the interface easily, although I can download a trial version first.
Next year will be an expensive one - CS2 (and a computer that can run it!), plus a scanner, and a Wacom tablet. On the plus side, they now count as business expenses.
* Edited to add: I've just discovered that having Photoshop CS makes me eligible to purchase Painter at the Upgrade price. Via the Australian online store, that's $214. Not in the range of "spare change", but compared to CS2 it's a drop in the ocean. Hmmm...
I took a look at the website, and it was like browsing through an art supply store all over again... only much more expensive for the initial outlay, and I'd never run out of ink/paint/etc. Painter seems to mimic natural media much better than Photoshop, and looks like fun to play with. Of course, it's not really surprising that a dedicated image creating program would do a better job than an image manipulation one, but Photoshop is my main point of reference here.
They also have a very pretty collection of artwork made in Painter - have a look at the gallery if you want some eye candy to flick through.
The Good Things: looks like a very powerful bit of software. I want to do a lot more illustrating, as there seems to be a dearth of illustrators relative to the number of writers around here :)
The Bad Things: Expensive, especially as I'll already be upgrading my copy of Photoshop with Creative Suite 2.4. No guarantee that I'll pick up the interface easily, although I can download a trial version first.
Next year will be an expensive one - CS2 (and a computer that can run it!), plus a scanner, and a Wacom tablet. On the plus side, they now count as business expenses.
* Edited to add: I've just discovered that having Photoshop CS makes me eligible to purchase Painter at the Upgrade price. Via the Australian online store, that's $214. Not in the range of "spare change", but compared to CS2 it's a drop in the ocean. Hmmm...