Amazon.com: M. A. Ramos' review of Corel Painter Essentials 4 (Win/Mac)

Customer Review

33 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

A fun experience, excellent software, November 21, 2007

By	M. A. Ramos

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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.

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Corel Painter Essentials 4 (Win/Mac) B000WCQCE4 Corel Corel Painter Essentials 4 (Win/Mac) Software A fun experience, excellent software See video on Amazon.com 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. M. A. Ramos November 21, 2007

Overall: 5

Review Details

Item

Corel Painter Essentials 4 (Win/Mac)

(96 customer reviews)

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

$99.00 $48.94

24 used & new available from $33.95

Reviewer

Location: Florida USA

New Reviewer Rank: 460
Classic Reviewer Rank: 444

See all 875 reviews

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Showing 1-4 of 4 posts in this discussion

Initial post: Nov 28, 2007 9:15 AM PST

Pam Tee says:

Thank you for your thoughtful review, M.A. I'm thinking this might be great for a certain family member. Very helpful review.

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In reply to an earlier post on Nov 28, 2007 7:35 PM PST
Last edited by the author on Nov 28, 2007 7:40 PM PST

M. A. Ramos says:

Thank you Pam. I was not sure if I should have created the video, but I thought it would be helpful to see a couple of examples. I am always trying to improve my reviews and am glad it was useful. I as well know a couple of my family members that would enjoy this software as well; would make good Christmas gifts.

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Posted on Oct 5, 2008 10:21 AM PDT

J. Atkins says:

Thank you for your review. It was just what I needed to hear. My daughter has become quite a whiz on Paint, and we have a nice Wacom 3x6 drawing pad that she is now using with Paint. This will make a lovely Christmas present for her! Excellent advice and product review.

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In reply to an earlier post on Oct 10, 2008 12:40 PM PDT

M. A. Ramos says:

Thank you for the kind comment. After I saw how many unhelpful votes I received on this review I stopped using video's in my reviews. I was hoping it would allow prospective buyers a chance to see what a non-computer literate person could do with the software.

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