Corel Painter IX.5 Upgrade Win/Mac

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Product Features

• A highly-sophisticated painting and illustration application, the fastest version of Corel Painter yet
• Most brushes work, on average, twice as fast; includes more than 30 brush categories plus custom brushes
• Animators can now test frame rates directly in Corel Painter; movies can be saved as animated GIFs, QuickTime movies or AVI movies
• Supporting industry-standard ICC4.0 profiles, this software enables color matching between on-screen and printed colors
• Includes Corel Painter IX, both Mac and Windows versions; libraries of unique gradients, nozzles, patterns, stock photos, paper textures, and brushes; The Corel Painter IX Handbook

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00030CBUE
• Item model number: PTR9ENGPCMUG
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 18, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,486 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

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  #43 in	Software > Macintosh > Graphics > Illustration
  #65 in	Software > Macintosh > Graphics > Professional Design
  #98 in	Software > Graphics > CAD

Product Description

Amazon.com
Corel Painter IX--the world's most powerful Natural-Media painting and illustration software--features unique digital brushes, art materials and textures that mirror the look and feel of their traditional counterparts. The newest version of Corel Painter takes digital design to unprecedented levels with the revolutionary Artists' Oils Painting System, Snap-to-Path Painting, Quick Clone for photographers, and brushes that perform up to 10 times faster than in previous versions. Corel Painter enables some of the world's most accomplished creative professionals--including commercial designers, artists and photographers--to extend their natural talents and techniques to create original works of breathtaking digital art.

See the product tour

What’s New in Corel Painter IX.5

• Turn Photos into Paintings with the NEW! Photo Painting Palettes Create stunning paintings from photographs, with ease. Includes the Underpainting, Auto-Painting, and Restoration palettes. With the ability to automatically apply random, handpainted stokes to your photograph, it’s never been easier to get started with Corel Painter.
• 11 hours of movie-based training from lynda.com – now included for free with the purchase Corel Painter IX.5! This movie-based tutorial is designed to give new and existing users of Corel Painter a basic understanding of the new and improved features in Corel Painter IX. Enjoy over 50 movies on 2 CDs, hosted by Painter Master John Derry and Tanya Staples. Includes exercise files.
• NEW! Eraser Tool Provides easy access to a standard eraser to erase any medium in Corel Painter IX.5!
• NEW! Rubber Stamp Tool Now you can do point-to-point cloning in Corel Painter IX.5, from this easy-to-access toolbox tool.
• NEW! Cloner Tool The new Cloner tool - conveniently located in the toolbox - provides immediate access to the last-used Cloner brush and brush variant.
• NEW! Corel Paint Shop Pro support Now Corel Paint Shop Pro users can open Paint Shop Pro X files directly in Corel Painter IX.5 (Windows only).
• NEW! Corel Photo Album support Now it’s easy to send images directly from Painter Essentials 3 to Corel Photo Album 6 (Windows only).
• Apple iPhoto support, and support for Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) Work seamlessly with Apple iPhoto (requires changing ‘Preferences' in iPhoto).
• Wacom pen tablet support Extended support for Wacom's new Intuos3, Cintiq 21UX, and the new 6D Art Pen.
• NEW! Art Pen Brush Category These 10 new brushes are specifically designed to work with the new Wacom 6D Art Pen. Perfect for calligraphy!
• NEW! Dual Monitor support on Windows XP and Window 2000 Now Palettes, toolbars and the toolbox can now be moved outside the application window.

Also includes: Airbrush enhancements; Targa channel support; enhanced Photoshop file support; improved zoom functionality; enhanced brush resize functionality; and digital watercolor improvements.

Improved Features

Corel Painter IX adds a range of tools and features that increase performance, fuel creativity and further extend compatibility with other industry-standard tools and applications. With improved Help features, tutorials by world-class digital artists and free access to selected lynda.com training videos, getting started with Corel Painter IX is easier than ever.

Performance and Productivity

Improved Speed
Increasing the overall speed, performance and stability of Corel Painter IX was Corel's top priority. Working closely with Apple, Intel and AMD, Corel engineers created improvements wherever possible. The result: Corel Painter has never been a more efficient and powerful application. This is the fastest version of Corel Painter yet, with some brushes performing up to 10 times faster than in previous versions, and all brushes working, on average, twice as fast. In addition, you can now change the default scratch disk location in the Preference settings.

New Welcome Screen
Getting down to the job at hand has never been easier, thanks to the Corel Painter IX Welcome screen, which launches at startup. Divided into four sections, the Welcome screen gives quick access to recently used files, tutorials, brush and color-management settings, and artwork from renowned Corel Painter masters.

Making on-the-fly changes to brush settings and variables is as simple as dragging a slider.

Brush Control Palettes
Brush Control palettes provide easy access to all brush settings and controls. Making on-the-fly changes to brush settings and variables is as simple as dragging a slider--without any disruption to workflow. For example, the new Boost slider, found in the General palette of the Brush Controls, instantly enhances brush speed. Just drag the slider and see brush performance accelerate.

Frames-per-Second Control
Animators can now test frame rates directly in Corel Painter. With the new Frames-per-Second Control, you can set frame rates and preview them in a range of 1 to 40 frames per second.

Rotate/Flip Canvas
Now you can easily rotate or flip entire images directly in Corel Painter. You can also verify image composition at the touch of a button.

Customizable Shortcut Keys
Corel Painter now offers you an unprecedented level of control over your workflow by enabling you to completely customize shortcut keys. Corel Painter IX also includes a handy printable template for quick reference.

Multiuser Support
Corel Painter now supports multiple users on both Mac and Windows platforms. User files are stored in the user file directory, ensuring that users in a networked environment can retain individual settings and preferences. In addition, all settings are easily reverted to the default without having to reinstall the application.

Acting as a "virtual brush diary," the Tracker palette tells the story of an image created with Corel Painter IX brushes.

Tracker Palette Enhancements
The Tracker palette stores historical information about every brush stroke that is applied to the canvas. Acting as a "virtual brush diary," the Tracker palette tells the story of an image created with Corel Painter IX brushes. Brushes used in the last session can be recalled in the next, and favorite brush variants can be locked so that they are always readily accessible.

Iterative Save
Iterative Save lets you quickly save sequentially numbered versions of an image with a simple menu command. The first time you use Iterative Save, "_001" is appended to the file name. Each subsequent time the number increments by 1, and a new sequentially numbered file is created.

Session Memory
When Corel Painter IX launches, it displays settings--such as color sets, paper textures and last color used--from in the previous session. Corel Painter IX also remembers the last folders in which you opened and saved files.

Enhanced Color Handling
Enhanced color sets can be appended to each other, and any color set can be loaded in the Mixer palette.

Enhanced Zoom
Area-averaging zoom control gives you higher-quality zoomed-out views.

Other Improvements

• Choose from a range of cursor icons, including the popular Triangle Cursor
  
• Select your background color as you work
  
• Use Enhanced Selections on layer masks
  
• Hide or display multiple layers with a simple click and drag
  
• Experience more intuitive brush profile icons in the Brush Creator
  

Creativity

Artists' Oils Painting System
The Artists' Oils Painting System is a milestone in the evolution of digital art. This new painting system enables you to apply paint blends created in the Mixer palette directly onto images in the document window. Each brush dab loads the brush variant with a finite amount of oil. As the oil runs out, the brush stroke becomes fainter. Plus, brush strokes interact with any paint already on the canvas just as they would with natural media.

Snap-to-Path Painting
When you need to create a perfect curve or shape, Snap-to-Path Painting is a great time saver. It makes it possible to constrain a brush stroke along a path or a shape by clicking a button or using a keyboard shortcut. With a simple click, you can now create a precise brush stroke that reflects the attributes typically found in a Corel Painter stroke, such as pressure, tilt and bearing.

Digital Watercolor

The wet fringe of digital watercolor brush strokes allows for experimentation after the brush stroke has been applied.

Digital Watercolor has been significantly enhanced in Corel Painter IX. Paint stays wet between sessions, allowing you to start one session where the last one ended. The wet fringe of digital watercolor brush strokes can now be changed dynamically, enabling experimentation after the brush stroke has been applied.

Quick Clone
Quick Clone is ideal if you're a photographer because it enables you to transform your photos into paintings. This new feature speeds up the image-cloning workflow and reduces five steps to one. You can define Quick Clone settings on the General page of the Preferences dialog box.

KPT Filters
KPT filters are renowned, powerful plug-ins that creative professionals rely on to produce stunning effects quickly and easily. Seven powerful KPT filters are included in Corel Painter IX: KPT Gel, KPT Goo, KPT LensFlare, KPT Lightning, KPT Pyramid Paint, KPT Reaction and KPT ShapeShifter. These plug-ins are valuable additions to the impressive array of effects available in Corel Painter IX.

Compatibility

Enhanced Adobe Photoshop Support
Moving between Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter IX is simple. Files saved to the Adobe Photoshop (PSD) file format open in Corel Painter IX, with layer masks, alpha channels and layer sets (layer groups) maintained.

Layer behavior in Corel Painter IX is very similar to layer behavior in Adobe Photoshop. New layers are added above the selected layer, layers with different merge modes are collapsible, and it is now possible to hide or display multiple layers by simply clicking and dragging. In addition, Corel Painter IX supports Adobe Photoshop plug-ins for Mac OS X.

Enhanced Wacom Support
Corel Painter IX features support for Wacom's newest pen tablet model--Wacom Intuos3--and the entire Wacom tablet product line. Wacom Intuos3 has touch strips that can be configured to control brush size, zooming and many other functions, eliminating the need for a keyboard while painting. In addition, tablet keys can be used as modifier keys, such as Command, Option, Shift or Spacebar on a Mac; or Ctrl, Alt, Shift or Spacebar on a PC.

Get accurate color reproduction when images are printed.

Enhanced Color Management
Corel Painter IX includes an enhanced Color Management System that ensures accurate color reproduction when images are printed. Supporting industry-standard ICC4.0 profiles, Corel Painter IX Color Management enables color matching between on-screen and printed colors. A color-management tutorial helps you configure your system for optimal color reproduction.

Mac OS X Enhancements

• Support for Mac OS X Adobe Photoshop plug-ins
  
• Improved function inlining and memory usage
  
• Enhanced for G5 (square root function calculations)
  
• Numerous application-specific optimizations
  

Learning

Improved Help
A revised User Guide and Help system provide information and fast solutions. The Corel Painter IX Handbook, which is included with Corel Painter IX Full and Upgrade versions, offers a collection of step-by-step tutorials created by well-known creative professionals.

Free Access to Selected lynda.com Training Videos
Corel Painter IX includes access to a selection of training videos created by lynda.com--one of the world's most renowned graphics training companies--to guide you through the Corel Painter workspace, tools, features and techniques.

Free Academic Courseware
Corel Painter academic courseware consists of complete lesson plans and exercises for 10 classes on a variety of subjects.

Favorite Features

If you're a long-time Corel Painter user, you can continue to enjoy the favorite features that have been the cornerstones of the application for years. Whether you're a commercial designer, artist or photographer, the following features let you leverage your natural talents and techniques to create original works of art, and they distinguish Corel Painter from other applications.

Brushes

There are more than 30 brush categories: some that mirror the look and feel of traditional brushes, others that are one-of-a-kind.

Brushes are the heart and soul of Corel Painter IX. There are more than 30 brush categories, ranging from crayons, chalk and charcoal to acrylics, watercolor, artists' oils and liquid ink. While most brush categories mirror the look and feel of traditional brushes, others offer a one-of-a-kind creative tool.

Brush Control palettes provide quick, easy access to the settings for every brush control. Brushes are organized into distinct categories, each featuring a multitude of variants.

Oil: Oil brushes produce the effects expected from oil paints. All brush variants in this category cover underlying brush strokes, many are capable of multicolored strokes, and others interact with underlying pixels to create realistic effects.

Watercolor: Watercolor brush variants produce natural-looking watercolor effects. Almost all brush variants in the Watercolor category interact with the canvas texture. For most of these variants, stylus pressure affects the width of the brush stroke. As with traditional-media watercolor brushes, increased pressure widens a brush stroke and reduced pressure narrows a stroke.

Cloner brush variants take their color information from a clone source, rather than the color palette.

Cloners: Painting with a cloner brush is similar to painting with any Corel Painter brush, except that cloner brush variants take their color information from a clone source, such as a pattern or another image, instead of from the Colors palette. Some cloner brush variants reproduce a source image directly. Other cloner brush variants reproduce a source image with low opacity and soft edges, or they use paper grain and specialized dabs for particular media effects.

Brush Creator
Corel Painter IX offers a large and varied brush collection. In addition, you can customize your brushes. Brush Creator allows you to create custom brushes by providing three flexible options for designing a brush: a) randomly modify an existing brush, b) combine the characteristics of two brushes, or c) create a custom brush from scratch.

Choose from the brush collection, or design your own.

Papers
In the real world, an artist's brush or drawing tool produces different results when applied to surfaces with different textures. Corel Painter allows you to control the texture of the canvas to achieve the results you'd expect from natural media on a given surface. Brushes interact with paper grain, just as natural tools react with the texture of the surfaces beneath them.

Mixer Palette
Colors not found in the Color palette can be created from scratch in the Mixer palette. This innovative feature includes tools, such as a brush and palette knife, designed specifically for painting and color mixing. With an Artists' Oils brush, you can sample and use multiple colors in the same brush stroke.

Colors not found in the Color palette can be created from scratch in the Mixer palette.

Animation
Corel Painter has an impressive array of animation features. The Onion Skinning feature allows you to view previous and future frames while working on the current frame. The Rotoscoping feature enables you to paint and modify a single frame of an existing movie. Animated movies can be saved as animated GIFs, QuickTime movies or AVI movies.

Scripting
Scripts allow actions to be recorded and played back, saving you time when performing the same operation on a collection of images. Scripts can be played back at any resolution, allowing you to automatically re-create high-resolution output from scripts recorded at low resolution. Scripts are also a great educational resource. Viewing a script of an artist's image-creation process is like looking through the artist's eyes.

Support for Industry-standard File Formats
Corel Painter IX lets you open and save Adobe Photoshop (PSD), TIFF (CMYK and RGB), Windows Bitmap (BMP), PC Paintbrush (PCX), TARGA (TGA), GIF, JPEG, Mac PICT, QuickTime (MOV), and Video for Windows (AVI) files. In addition, you can import and export Adobe Illustrator (AI) files. You can also save files in encapsulated PostScript (EPS) format.

Image Hose
The Image Hose behaves like a brush, but it sprays images instead of applying paint. You can also load your own image or select an image from the library included in the application.

What's Included with Corel Painter IX

Corel Painter IX - Hybrid CD: The Corel Painter IX CD includes the following: Corel Painter IX, both Mac and Windows versions; libraries of unique gradients, nozzles, patterns, stock photos, paper textures, and brushes, including the new Artists' Oils brush category; the User Guide in electronic (PDF) format; and access to selected free lynda.com training video content.

The Corel Painter IX Handbook: The Corel Painter IX Handbook is a unique full-color, spiral-bound guide to Corel Painter IX, executive edited by Cher Pendarvis, author of the Painter WOW! book series. The Corel Painter IX Handbook includes: a foreword by Painter pioneer John Derry; a Painter history, with contributions from Painter founders Mark Zimmer and Tom Hedges; Getting Started information, including an illustrated guide to Corel Painter IX brushes; and professionally crafted tutorials written by Jeremy Sutton, Cher Pendarvis, Don Seegmiller, Chris Welch, John Dismukes, Joyce Ryan, Andrew Jones, Chet Phillips, and Ryan Church.

Note: The Corel Painter IX Handbook is included only with the Full and Upgrade versions of Corel Painter IX.

Product Description
For more than 13 years, Painter has been the world's pre-eminent Natural-Media painting and illustration software. Corel Painter IX offers the same breathtaking brushes and features that Painter artists have grown to love--but with significantly enhanced speed and performance. All brushes now operate at an average of twice their former speed, and some brushes are 10 times faster. Corel Painter IX also unveils the brand-new Artists' Oils Painting System, a revolutionary Natural-Media painting technology that enables you to sample multiple colors from the Mixer palette and apply them as wet oily paint to your canvas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Painting Software ever, February 2, 2006

By	D. Cox (Denver, Colorado) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have been using this since version 7 (Procreate Painter 7). It does have quite a steep learning curve and it took me quite a while to get used to it. Once you learn how to get around the program is wonderful. I use it mainly to turn photographs into paintings and once I got the hang of it I have been able to create some pretty stunning stuff from a photograph. Most of the cloner brushes make the photograph painting look fake so I stay away from those and rather use the artist's oils and acrylics. The watercolour is great when painting a sketch. You can checkout :
http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/free/gallery.asp?memberID=105385

And see some of the paintings I have done from photographs.

10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Painter Perfect, July 22, 2005

By	Daniel Fields "Digital Artist" (Texas, US) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In response to review rated at a "2":

I am a professional graphic designer and so Painter along with so many other digital artistry programs such as the line to be found with Adobe, are a must have on my computer. And since I am the owner of my home-based business with little to no income most of the time because of the software costs...well, purchasing upgrades is not always something I can do. My point coming to this....you really need to evaluate your goals and desires before purchasing costly programs in the digital artistry field. I have yet to find great software that isn't expensive. And if you expect to find a fantastic manual with your software then 9 times out of 10 you'll never see it. Corel Painter, any version really, have all been fantastic and they continue to improve but if you're just starting out and your funds are limited or you are not a professional and you just want to play or have a side hobby then buy an older version, a used copy, or look for company specials, and save yourself some money. Painter is an awesome program and there are no two ways about it. My recommendation to you simply:

If you are not a serious artist, you do it as a hobby, or maybe you are a student, then get an older version, a used copy, a company special or a student rate when you purchase your copy of painter. Next, don't expect anything from the manual you may or may not get depending on your purchase choice. Concentrate on buying a book later on that specializes in Painter. There are some terrific books out there from student to hobbiest to professional.

If you are a professional then I don't need to tell you anything that you didn't already know. Painter is a fantastic program and coupled or grouped with other programs such as Photoshop, you can let your creativity soar.

Last, don't bad mouth a product because of your own nievity. Dont' cry because Corel decided to create a program that was awesome and it didn't fit in with your budget...you have choices you can make it's just a matter of making good ones based on your needs. Do your homework and think about what your goals are. If you want to spend a lot of money but can't then save up for it if it's that important to you. Believe me when I tell you...Corel has done no wrong here.

13 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Overpriced, stick with Painter 8, June 1, 2005

By	P. Smith (Northeast) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In every way, Painter IX is geared towards the professional user (even by the admission of a Corel marketing manager I spoke with). Most of what has been "improved" in this version simply will not make an investment of $200 worth it for the non professional. With the upgrade or full boxed version, you receive only a handbook (not to be confused with a manual) that tells the history of Fractal Designs, MetalTools, Metacreations and now Corel with regard to Painter and gives a few artsy fartsy tutorials that the average user could care less about. And I must add that to get a true manual such as what was supplied as part of the Painter 8 package (which has highly technical information, help and that you can actually learn the ins and outs of the program from) you have to hand over an additional $50. So the true upgrade price, at least on Amazon, begins at around $250 when you consider the cost of the manual. Granted, the manual is in pdf format on the Painter IX CD disk, but in that format it is virtually useless. Each new term or example leads to a hyperlink and before you know it every page of the pdf "manual" has fifty hyperlinks on it and you begin to feel you're going mad trying to navigate around this behemoth of a pdf file. Try going from hyperlink to hyperlink for 400 pages, not to mention while sitting in front of a montior rather than in a nice comfortable chair . I guess Corel feels the manual isn't very important in this version as their users are seasoned professionals with regard to Painter and the truth is that the "upgrades" to this version really aren't that substantial. Getting back to the high costs of this ugpgrade, According to the high level marketing manager at Corel I spoke with, the overall costs of this version is not a concern to Corel or their user base because they believe it is overwhelmingly professional (people who make their living with Painter). So for us hobbysits and weekend professionals, take a pass on this version and on any subsequent versions until Corel begins considering non professionals as a valuable part of it's user and consumer base and gets back to basics rather than wasting time and resources on artsy, useless handbooks instead of a physical manual and other down to earth resources. By the way, I did buy Painter IX, not realizing what the handbook was and that I wasnt' getting a manual. At this time, I am strongly considering returning the software as I am not part of Corel's professional base.