Product Description

Corel Painter Essentials 3 is a complete home digital art studio that helps you turn photos into stunning paintings. Capture your special memories with beautiful, hand-made digital art keepsakes, perfect for sharing with friends and family, and for framing. The all-new ‘Photo Painting Palettes’ make transforming photos into paintings as easy as 1-2-3. Digital art is fun for everyone with ‘life-like’ art tools, such as the new Artists’ Oils brush that smears thick, bristly strokes on the canvas. It’s never been easier to learn how to draw and paint, and get started on your next art project, with help from the included video training and tutorials.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5567 in Software
• Brand: Corel
• Model: PTRESS3ENGPCM
• Released on: 2005-10-18
• Platforms: Windows Me, Windows 98, Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows 2000
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: 3.00 pounds

Features

• Photo Painting Palettes: create stunning paintings from photos in 3 easy steps
• Artists’ Oils: smear colorful oil paint on the canvas with thick, bristly brushes that are remarkably realistic.
• Digital Watercolor: breathtaking brushes behave like real watercolor and stay wet between sessions!
• Welcome Screen: Easily access recently used files, and tutorials. Browse the Painter Masters art gallery.
• Includes brand-new Nozzles and Patterns, and more than 75 Natural-Media brushes.

Amazon.com Product Description
Built on the award-winning power of Corel Painter IX, Corel Painter Essentials 3 is a complete home art studio for novices and experts alike. It includes everything you will need to explore digital art and create stunning paintings from your photos. Built-in tutorials make it easy to achieve the look you desire.

See the product tour

With new tutorials, the Welcome Screen, and the Quick Guide palette -- that gives you tips as you paint -- it's now easier than ever to get started with digital art. View larger.

Experience a huge selection of highly realistic digital art tools that replicate the real-word painting experience -- including watercolors, oils, pencils, acrylics, airbrushes, and more. View larger.

The new Photo Painting Palettes help you create extraordinary paintings from your photos by automatically applying random, hand-made paint strokes that vary in stroke type, direction and pressure. View larger.

Turn Photos into Paintings
The new Photo Painting Palettes help you create extraordinary paintings from your photos by automatically applying random, hand-made paint strokes that vary in stroke type, direction and pressure. With a host of new and enhanced features, it's easier than ever to create outstanding paintings -- perfect for family portraits, vacation mementos and special keepsakes. Meanwhile, the Quick Clone feature simplifies the process of image cloning, and the Sketch Effect tool automatically creates a sketch from your photos.

Have Fun with Digital Art
With Painter Essentials 3, you can experience a huge selection of highly realistic digital art tools that replicate the real-word painting experience -- including watercolors, oils, pencils, acrylics, airbrushes and more. Artists' Oils lets you smear colorful "oil paint" on the canvas with thick, bristly brushes that are remarkably realistic. And if watercolor is your medium of choice, Digital Watercolor features breathtaking brushes that behave like real watercolor and even stay wet between sessions. A new rotate/flip canvas feature extends the flexibility of the digital art studio, while a new eraser tool and rubber stamp tool vastly extends the range of your work.

Brushes are the heart and soul of Corel Painter Essentials 3. There are 18 brush categories, ranging from crayons and chalk to acrylics, watercolors, and the new Artists' Oils. While most brush categories mirror the look and feel of traditional brushes, others offer you one-of-a-kind creative tools. And with new tutorials that give you tips as you paint, it's now easier than ever to get started with digital art.

To ensure that digital camera enthusiasts get the most out of their photos, Painter Essentials 3 supports Corel Paint Shop Pro X, Corel Photo Album 6, Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Apple iPhoto. Painter Essentials 3 also features extended support for Wacom's new Graphire4, Intuos3, Cintiq 21UX, and 6D Art Pen. The newly enhanced Welcome Screen gives quick access to recently used files, tutorials, and brush and color management settings. Quick Start tutorials help you get up and running quickly, while training videos created by lynda.com and GeeGuides, which are included on the CD, guide you through the application and teach some exciting, new techniques.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Results, Stable as a Rock
I've been using Painter Essentials 3 for most of a week, and find it excellent in every way. My four kids are having a ball with it, too. No glitches whatsoever. The [...] tutorial videos that came as part of the package are very effective, too. It takes a little practice and artistry to produce attractive results, but that's exactly as it should be.

I'm using this program on a G5 iMac. Perhaps the folks experiencing the glitches are running that other kind of computer :-(

All in all, a great program at a great price.

Unstable, approach with caution
I got version 2 "free" with my Wacom tablet. After reading another review here of version 3 it seems not much has changed.
Almost every time I try to use this on a Mac it crashes. Not an elegant crash, the app just disappears and the OS tells me "the application has unexpectedly quit". Of course my work disappears with it.
Not very impressive. A piece of software with 5 million features that crashes is useless. Period.
If it actually worked, this would probably be a good piece of software.

Good program, great results; but can be glitchy.
I tried the download trial version from the Corel website. The direction are SPARSE, to say the least, and SUPPORT during the trial is non-existant, but eventually, I was able to use the product to produce some gorgeous "paintings." I used it in combination with effects from Adobe Photoshop Elements, and sometimes with Microsoft Photodraw. Just BEE-YOU-TEE-FULL! When I get a little extra spending money, I may invest in the full product purchase, but leaning toward going all out for the Painter software. I think instructions would have helped me get started sooner --you can check books out of the library-- but I liked the program and think it's worth working with. Yes, it was glitchy sometime, but not much, and certainly not more than AdobePE 3.0. I did reload the trial version once, but then it worked fine. I can't complain--it was a 30 day Free trial from Corel's website. Try it first--they give you that option with many of their programs. You don't like it--don't buy it. All you've wasted is a little time.