The smooth white pinstripe along the car body
was made using the handy Snap-to-path tool.

Other notable additions in Painter IX included Quick Clone (one step instead of several); customizable shortcut keystrokes; and a very handy iterative save feature that automatically attaches a version number, such as image.rif_001, image.rif_002, and so on.

My most-used standard keyboard shortcut: is Option + Command. This gives me instant on the fly resizing of my current brush. (Note:  Painter “Help” documentation erroneously reads: Shift + Option + Command, but Shift voids this shortcut.) You can also use programmable ExpressKeys for keyboard shortcuts on a Wacom Intuos3 tablet.  

Painter IX.5 Update

This update, a free download for registered IX users, gives professional photographers and artists new and easier to use tools for transforming photographs into paintings. Corel Painter IX.5 also adds support for Rosetta, enabling users to run Corel Painter on the new Intel-based Apple Macs.

Photographers, in particular, benefit from this update since these new Photo Painting Palettes will help them generate additional revenue by creating handcrafted paintings from their photographs for their clients. Although these new tools help speed up some effects, rendering a good portrait involves a lot of additional handwork.

Painter IX.5 includes new palettes and tools for rendering photographs into paintings. In this example, I began to experiment on an oil portrait I had already completed using the Underpainting Palette (right) to set Style to Saturate and Edge Effect to Jagged Vignette.)

New enhancements in Corel Painter IX.5 include:

·     Photo Painting Palettes – The Photo Painting Palettes, including the Underpainting, Auto-Painting, and Restoration palettes, work together to help users kick-start the process of creating a beautiful hand-painted work of art from a photograph.

·     Support for Rosetta running on Intel-based Macs – Those running the latest hardware from Apple can expand their options by using Corel Painter and their Wacom pen tablet, including support for the Wacom Intuos3 and the 6D Art Pen.

·     Eraser Tool – erases any medium on the canvas. Removing paint is also a creative act. 

·     Rubber Stamp Tool – makes it easy to set up point-to-point cloning. This tool gives you the flexibility of setting a source and destination reference point, enabling you to clone within an image file or between different areas of separate image files. 

·     Cloner Tool – provides immediate access to the last-used Cloner brush and brush variant.

Pricing and Availability

The Corel Painter IX.5 update is available free to registered Corel Painter IX customers and for purchase by new customers from www.corel.com at the suggested retail price of $429 US ($579 CDN) for the full version, $229 US ($309 CDN) for the upgrade version and $99 US ($119 CDN) for the education edition.  

Note: Registered Intuos tablet owners are eligible for savings on graphics software (including Painter IX.5 for $199 US), accessories like the Intuos3 Airbrush, Art Pen, and more. 

Printing, Scaling and Genuine Fractals

While you can print from within Painter, most professionals save their final Painter documents as PSD files and do their printing from within Adobe Photoshop, which offers more precise control over color settings and ICC printer profiles. You may, for example, find that you to scale your image upwards in both resolution and size for print because your client or patron wants a larger print. So—that image you created at 200 dpi resolution at 8-1/2 by 11 inches now requires 300 dpi at 14 x 19 inches. You could use Photoshop’s default bicubic interpolation method for resizing images. But this upscaling method falls short of good quality because it averages out pixels, making enlargements “soft” and lacking in detail.

I have had excellent results in “up-rezzing” images to higher resolutions by using Genuine Fractals, a Photoshop plug-in available ($159.95) from One on One Software. Genuine Fractals approaches the scaling problem differently. Before any scaling is done, Genuine Fractals first evaluates the image. It then samples a larger area of the image than the bicubic methods to determine the new color values that are to be created. If the new color values are not within an acceptable range of colors—one that resembles the original image—those color values are adjusted so they match. The result is a significantly sharper image, which retains much more of the detail found in the original “pre-interpolated” image.

Genuine Fractals: Increasing the resolution with Genuine Fractals (right) compared to Photoshop Bicubic Smoother (left), which is the method that Adobe says is their best upsampling method. The original image has been scaled up 400% in both cases. Genuine Fractals maintains sharpness anddetails such as the veins of the leave remain visible. The upscaled image using Photoshop is soft and small details disappear.

Longtime users of Genuine Fractals remember having to save files as a .STN file before being able to scale the image. Now in Genuine Fractals 4.1, any file that is opened in Photoshop can be scaled in one easy step. You can still take advantage of the .STN file format when you save the "up-rezzed" image.

A Few Final Strokes

Other reasons to appreciate and embrace Painter IX include: an endless source of paints, mediums, and surfaces, tools that never wear out, the welcome absence of toxic chemicals, and speed—the ability to do more work, which is especially welcome for both production artists and those creating a body of personal work.

Although Painter IX.5 is the most stable release to date, it is still necessary to save files often because the app sometimes (infrequently) quits for no apparent reason. A couple of small gripes: the online help manual (you can purchase a hard copy) loads into Safari, where you access information. But if you leave that browser page, and then return to Painter help, the browser gets stuck in an endless loop of reloading. According to Corel, this is a bug within Safari (version 2.0.4). We trust that this issue will be sorted out in subsequent releases from Apple and Corel.

I would also appreciate a layer merge down feature (like the one offered in Photoshop) where you drop the layer above to the layer directly beneath it with one command. While you can also achieve this in Painter IX.5, it requires a couple of extra steps: you must first merge then collapse the two layers together for the desired outcome.

Painter IX.5 is a must-have for every artist who wants to explore the mind-blowing new possibilities available in the 21st century.  

Tutorial and Insights

Customers purchasing Corel Painter IX.5 also receive 11 hours of lynda.com training videos on 2 CDs—a $65 (USD) value. John Derry and Tanya Staples host these excellent movie-based tutorials that will give you a basicunderstanding of latest version (It does not yet cover the new features found Painter IX.5).

The training begins with an overview of the Corel Painter IX interface, a reviewof basic tools, and tips on working with a Wacom tablet; it then moves to practical sketching and painting exercises, including how to convertdigital photographs to drawings, paintings, and mosaics. Exercise files accompany the training, allowing you to follow along and learn at your own pace.] These training videos are a great beginning. Although CorelPainter IX.5 ships with a Getting Started manual that explainsthe various tools and actions, both new and current users willearn more about what is possible with Painter in the followingbooks; each contains insightful presentations, procedures, valuable lessons, and useful tips that will elevate your understanding and first-hand experience from apprentice to mastery of Painter IX.5.

The Painter IX Wow! Book

by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis 

This expanded favorite explores exciting new techniques and special effects, including the new Artists Oils and improved Digital Watercolor mediums and how to integrate them into your Painter digital art studio or Painter workflow. The Building Brushes section is now a separate chapter on how to create and organize custom brushes. The updated printmaking chapter investigates creative printmaking techniques

Other chapters focus on: new creative drawing and painting techniques using new high-performance natural-media brushes; special effects for graphics and type; creating images for the screen and for printmaking; and color management, printing options, managing prints and editions on paper.

New Painter users will find thorough explanations of Painter's interface, as well as drawing and painting exercises to help them get up to speed with Painter quickly, while readers who are familiar with traditional artist tools will learn how to transition from traditional art media to digital tools.

The Painter IX Wow! CD-ROM includes new custom brushes built by the author, extra textures and custom lighting effects, recorded scripts, stock photographs and video clips, filters, software demos, and The Painter IX Wow! Study Guide, a study guide/instructors guide for self-study or classroom use. ($49.95 from Peachpit Press)

The Corel Painter IX User Guide

This impressive 400-page spiral-bound manual in color contains commonly used procedures and detailed technical information on every aspect of Corel Painter IX. This is the hard copy version of Painter IX help available from the app’s onscreen dropdown menu. ($39.95 from Corel Corporation)

Painter IX Creativity

by jeremy sutton

Painter IX Creativity provides easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions. The author is an internationally recognized computer artist and Painter master specializing in portraits. The book focuses on portraits, but readers can apply Sutton’s methods to any type of artwork. This comprehensive workbook addresses both creativity and technical proficiency. Sutton encourages readers to experiment, loosen up with his “mucking up” techniques to express feeling over the futile quest for perfection.

Visual artists, photographers, designers and illustrators can adapt Sutton’s creative techniques, which are clearly demonstrated with full color examples.

The companion CD-ROM includes custom brushes and art materials not supplied with Corel Painter IX, plus tutorial images for all projects. The author’s custom art brushes will motivate you to explore on your own. One of my favorites in the group is “Jeremy’s Grainy Sketcher,” which I often use to sign my artworks. ($49.95 from Focal Press)

Painter IX for Photographers

Creating Painterly Images Step by Step
By Martin Addison

The premise of this book is clearly stated in the title, but it also contains useful tips beyond creating artwork from photographs. Addison explains—and in great depth—many of Painter’s features and tools, including the brush creation process, special effects, how to work with layers, papers, textures, and montages. The book also features a color catalog of all the papers available in Painter IX, making this book a handy visual hard copy reference. 

Painter IX for Photographers is illustrated throughout. It includesa CD-ROM packed full of photographs, ripe for experimentation. ($44.95 from Focal Press)