Customer Reviews

Corel Painter Essentials 4 (Win/Mac) [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I have children 14, 11, and 9, and I was looking for software that would appeal to their creative side. I am a fairly sophisticated software user, and used to do some programming myself, but had never really ventured into these type of painting/art programs.

Bottom Line: I was blown away by this program, totally impressed!!

Why?

#1 It's easy to use out of the box--- many of the controls are easy enough to figure out just by using them, it installs easy on both Mac and PC systems (I installed the program on both an old eMac and a low end Vista laptop successfully).

#2 It's really powerful--- once you really get into the software, it's amazing all the different brushes and textures and effects that you can do to make really impressive art.

#3 The tutorials are first rate--- A thick instruction manual that actually is well written, and actually teaches you about basic principles of art and painting. There are also a whole series of video tutorials included free. You can tell that a lot of hard work and frankly a lot of love went into this, which is a rarity for computer software these days.

#4 It's a great value--- For all you get, the price is very reasonable. And check the company's website, if you're still not sold they were at the time of this writing offering a 60 day free downloadable trial.

One more tip: Get even a low-price graphics tablet to go along with the software--- you'll be glad you did!

Whether you're using a Wacom tablet or just a mouse, you can quickly achieve painterly styles either free hand or with existing art and photographs with a few clicks and create unique pieces of art with minimal effort.

Being a user of Photoshop for about 14 years, I can tell you, this is not a competing product - it is a complementary product. The two do very different things in very different ways. Great for amateur artists or professionals, Painter 4 Essentials has great video tutorials to get you started.

I installed this on two different machines to test it out - once on a one-year-old MacBook that has the older video card w/ 64MB of shared graphics memory and on a new (early 2008) iMac with a 512MB graphics card. The difference is striking on performance. While this product would probably be great on one of the newer MacBooks with 144MB of shared memory, it stuttered and was slow on my older MacBook. It flies on my iMac... and this is clearly due to the graphics memory differences and not because of a moderate processor jump.

I'd recommend anyone trying this new out of the box to sit through the tutorials at least once to familiarize themselves with the interface - to me, it was not initially intuitive.

Fun, affordable, powerful product.

I've used previous versions of Painter, long ago. When my kiddo became interested in doing more complex drawings than KidPix would support I immediately thought of Painter Essentials.

Amazon delivered the package quickly, and I've spent the past two mornings working with Corel support trying to get the program to run. I've also spent the past two mornings, while on hold, reading many comments online (the painter factory, etc ) about people recently having troubles with Painter 11 and Painter Essentials 4 running - and stopping running if it had been previously running.

The program displays a its splash screen and then disappears.

From comparing the un-installation instructions, which I've done 10 times or more, to the files installed on the computers hard disk I can see that some of the files which are supposed to be there are not. Support has no explanation for this discrepancy, but has said 'it shouldn't matter.'

as a software developer I find this a curious state of affairs.

I'll be contacting Amazon for a refund.

Length:: 0:53 Mins

I am not an artist, not computer savvy and used this product with a mouse. And even with all those disclaimers I can tell you it was not easy to use until I read the booklet and watched the tutorial. So I suggest you watch the tutorial videos that come with it first. After a little practice I was able to produce "paintings" from photos as it promised. This lets you upload a photo and basically paint over it. And expect to be able to improve as I learn more about all that the software has to offer and of course 'Practice'. I cannot imagine how easy and useful this product would be with a tablet.

As you may be able to tell from this review, I mainly wanted this so that I could enhance my photographs. The Photo Painting was quite nice. When you upload an image all you do is select which parts of it you want shown by using the same variety of paint tools available in the Drawing & Painting workspace. And there are a lot of choices; many that I am not using at the moment, but will with time. You are even able to change the texture of the image by changing the paper; you can change the brush type and width, and even use different kinds of paints. It will take more time to learn all that this software is capable of. The Amazon description shows the wealth of options available within this product.

For me this is a big upgrade. I have only used PC Paint before and always found myself frustrated by not having a brush size I wanted to use. Painter Essentials 4 gives you many more options and has greatly reduced this level of frustration I use to feel. Another big plus in my opinion is the undo or unedited, whichever term you are use too, works for many levels. I had gone forward and noticed something I did not like. I was able to remove the last 18 modifications I had made to the painting and it looked as if I could have kept removing them.

My sister visited me and is great a sketching. She loved the charcoal brushes range from pencils to hard or soft charcoal sticks. She mentioned that it was not as easy as drawing with the actual stick, but the sketch looked great. And I am sure with a pen attached and practice it would be just as easy.

I remember when a friend bought the first Corel product and was happy with it. I could never figure out how to use it and it was over three times the cost of this. This is worth the price, has many features and gives you an intro to the basics with its tutorial material that is included.

So considering I could use it for my photos and my sister thought it was a wonderful tool for creating art (in her case sketches), I have to give this two thumbs up as a product for the home.

Back in the mid 90's I went to school to become a graphic designer, and while my career ended up going in a totally different direction, I still find the idea of using a computer to create or enhance artwork and photography quite appealing. I decided to take a chance on Corel's new Painter Essentials 4. I liked the idea of "one stop shopping" for both illustration and photo manipulation software, and my experience with Corel in the past was positive.

I've found Painter Essentials 4 particularly useful in creating freehand illustrations (I'm using the mouse only - no special hardware), coloring scanned line artwork, and editing and enhancing photographs. I love to sketch in pencil and then ink, but am an indifferent colorist at best, so Painter Essentials 4 is a nice tool for adding color to my drawings. The photo enhancing features are great for adding fun special effects to photos, and can be used to restore damaged photographs as well. The software features a wide array of available colors and effects, so the sky is really the limit when it comes to what you want to do with this software.

My only complaint is that the operation of this software is not as intuitive as it could be. I was familiar with the various tools and functions (like riding a bike, it all came back pretty quickly), but someone brand new to this kind of software will need to spend some serious time with the users guide before they can take advantage of this program's various bells and whistles.

Other than that, I'm quite happy with Corel Painter Essentials 4. It's not at the same professional level as Adobe's one-two punch of Illustrator and Photoshop, but for everyday users it's an outstanding graphics product.

After trying out this software I am sold 100% and will definately be using this for a long, long time. This software allows users to turn their photos into beautiful works of art. My favorite is to take my childrens pictures and turn them into impressionist paintings or watercolors. I have not yet tried the freehand painting/drawing as I am truly not a good artist, but I have become very good over time at editing photos to create professional quality works. Some of my photos have even been used commercially.

The photo editing portion of this software is what I will be reviewing today. The simplest and easiest way to start out using this software is the use the auto-painting feature. First you select a picture you would like to work with. Then you click on the auto-painting feature where you can select from among 18 different painting methods such as impressionist, chalk, watercolor, pastel drawing, and illustration. Then you apply the auto-painting. It takes a few minutes and then your work of art is finished. If you would like to restore some details (such as eyes) you can also do that with a couple of clicks. The end result is just gorgeous. You can even customize your paper type (canvas, linen, etc) and your brush size to get the perfect picture.

If you are looking for a new and exciting way to work with photos, or you enjoy using online painting programs, this is definately a great product. I can imagine avid scrapbookers will also enjoy using these "paintings" in their scrapbooks.

Corel Painter Essentials 4 is a software package that runs on either Windows or Mac systems designed to enable you to draw or paint using a computer or to edit digital photographs to make them look like drawings, paintings, or to do touch up. The application would be most applicable to artists and designers looking for a tool with which to create new images, or to regular non-professionals looking for a nice way to edit photographs to make them look more interesting for family and friends.

The software comes with a tutorial that explains the process and makes the program easy to use. If the uses of this application are something that you would like to do, then this seems to be a very good software package. Take a look at the reviews here for yourself, and you'll notice that the only 1 and 2 star reviews are from people who could not figure out how to install the software or didn't take the time to watch the tutorial to learn how to use it. In other words -- no negative reviews of the actual product itself! That's pretty good design for software.

However, if you are not interested in drawing from scratch or creating painting/drawing-like pictures, this may not be necessary for you. I use Photoshop to edit my photographs, and as I am not a designer, that has been enough so far for me. But I could see uses for this and may use it more in the future should the need arise.

In the years since art programs were first released for home computers, the line between "paint program" and "photo editing program" has significantly blurred; photographs are routinely imported into paint programs, and draw/paint features such as brush type selection and shape creation are standard in photo editing software.

Corel Painter Essentials 4 attempts to distinguish itself from other art programs in a number of ways, but the most obvious is through "photo auto-painting." Once a source photograph (or any image) has been selected, users choose from over a dozen different painting styles (not including the custom settings) and allow the program to turn their photograph into a work of art. Want that picture of your spouse to look like a pen-and-ink drawing? Choose the photo, select the style, push a button, and it is done in seconds. Do you desire a watercolor image of your family? Grab the appropriate picture, select the style, push the button, and you'll have something worth printing and framing in seconds.

Painter Essentials 4 also allows for more "traditional" digital drawing and painting on the computer. Such activities are primarily done with brush tools, but there are also other useful features like trace paper and a "straight line strokes" option. These tools and options are easy to figure out, but tend to be less useful than their Photoshop counterparts. Painter 4 Essentials also lacks a number of the filters and drawing tools that Photoshop has (I still can't figure out how to make a circle shape in Painter Essentials 4), so advanced digital artists may find themselves editing their "to be painted" pictures in Photoshop prior to importing them into Painter Essentials 4.

In other words... Corel Painter Essentials 4 isn't going to replace other art programs like Photoshop; it will, however, give users unique options that they might (or might not) be interested in. If making photographs appear like paintings does not appeal to you, then avoid this software.

Although a bit of a resource hog, the assortment of brush options and the presets make this more than appropriate for someone who wants to do editing or add special effects to their own photos. It's pretty easy to learn and provides instant fun. That's coming from the viewpoint of a graphic designer who has a great deal of experience with Photoshop and similar programs. The program may require more effort to learn from someone without that experience.

Corel has produced a nice product that at a good price. This product is meant to compete with Adobe Photoshop Elements. It tends to be about $10-15 less than Elements, though both have the same list price. The added photo painting routines make this a fun product for those who want to creatively edit pictures.

Pros
+ Nice interface that feels familiar to Photoshop Elements users
+ Great price!
+ Nice photo painting routines and included brushes for quick photo painting
+ Great included tutorials and documentation to get you up to speed
+ Works great with graphics tablets or standard mice
+ Minimal memory and processor requirements (works on older PCs and Macs)
+ Very nice brushes, pencils, pens and papers provide range of textures
+ Runs much faster than Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop

Cons
- Separate learning curve for current Photoshop users
- Some photo painting macros are simply blurring techniques

The main features that make this product stand out are the added brushes and textures and the photo painting routines. These are essentially macros that can turn your photos into drawings, oil paintings, watercolors, etc. Some of them are better than others, including the charcoal drawings and impressionist paintings. Others are amount to little more than blurring.

All of these techniques can be done with full blown graphics programs. PE4 just makes it quicker and easier to do those things.

The included tutorials are nice and will help you get up to speed if you are not familiar with the product. The interface is relatively intuitive.

For those who are Photoshop devotees, learning a separate product may not be worth it. But for those that have not yet invested in Photoshop, the cost of Adobe's full products must be considered.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6
Adobe Photoshop CS3

But at this price, this is a good product for anybody who wants to take advantage of the added brushes and photo painting techniques.

Give it a try! Enjoy!