SYSTEM
• Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT4.0 or Windows Me
• IBM-compatible PC, Pentium® 200 or higher
• 64 MB RAM
• 24-bit (800 x 600) color display
• 2X CD-ROM drive
• Mouse or tablet

PRICE
Painter 7 Macintosh
Full - $479 USD
Painter 7 Macintosh Upgrade - $199 USD

Painter 7 Windows
Full - $479 USD
Painter 7 Windows Upgrade - $199 USD
 
 
 
COREL PAINTER 7
 PRODUCT REVIEW

INTRODUCTION



Version 7 already! Wow, where did the time go, it seems like only yesterday that we were all trying out Painter Classic with our new wacom tablets and wondering what the heck Fractal was trying to get us to do with a 'floater'. Several versions down the line, owned by Corel now, we have the natural media giant that is Painter 7.

The website for Painter 7 is to be found at www.procreate.com which is the banner under which Corel now promotes its new and upgraded line of graphic applications for the 'creative professional' (see inset)

It must be said that Corel do promote their wares well. To review Painter 7 they sent me the software CD itself, a 30 page (a4) reviewers guide and a glossy flyer detailing all the main upgrade features. To check out the cool new stuff I simply worked my way through the reviewers guide page by page.

Developers take note, this is how to get your software reviewed in a favorable light! Make the reviewers life easy.

The interface and layout in Painter 7 seems much the same as version 6 at first glance. I can only believe that artists must have given good feedback on the V6 design and Corel decided to focus on adding features and let a well liked front-end remain intact. The tools are at your finger tips, the drop down palettes give you instant access to the hidden treasures etc.

One of my first complaints when I fired up P7 was that the screen still seemed a little clogged as in earlier versions. Corel have tried to help by giving us the option to set which palettes appear at start up. This is pretty much how I work in Photoshop, having only the most used palettes available so I found it a big help. Usually the way isn't it? a small enhancement but it makes the software that little bit better to use.
ON THE WATER FRONT

First of the main additions on the feature list is water colour painting. In Painter 7 you can create as many water colour layers as you like or need.
A new option appears in the Brush control palletter called 'water'. Clicking this gives you access to a range of sliders that control all aspects of the new feature. The main settings include:
Wetness The greater the number the more the paint runs down your page or diffuses outward. A realy cool feature when you first use it
Pickup The lower the setting the less the colours mix and blend together. High numbers really do feel like water colour painting with lots of water on your brush
Dry rate Hight settings stop paint mixing as it simulates drying. Starightforward really!
Evaportaion threashhold low setting, more diffusion into the paper and vice versa
The wind dial at the bottom tells the paint which way to run off the paper. You can get some good effects when you set the wetness and diffusion settings high.

I liked messing with the new water colour features and they really did impress me at first use. I do use traditional watercolors and the effects you can achieve with P7 are very life-like indeed. Water colour enthusiasts the world over must be rubbing their hands togther with glee after getting this upgrade.
One thing that I found annoying is that several times during this review whilst using the Water colour tools Painter 7 crashed on me. It simply vanished off screen, no blue screen of death or locking up, it just vanished. I reviewed P7 on an AMD 1 Gig with 512MEG of RAM with Windows 2000 and I would like to think that that this was a machine specifiic (or OS) bug, but I tried it on my VAIO with XP and it also happened on that machine although not as frequently.
INK WITH NO SQUID

Another natural media tool addition is the new Liquid Ink technology and I think I will let Corel describe it:
Liquid Ink mimics the viscosity and surface tension of a thick, gluey medium like ink.
Bascially it's like painting with glop! Real, old fashioned sticky glop.

Much the same as the new water colour technology in terms of having loads of new slider options, Liquid Ink leaves you wondering what part to tweak first. There are so many variations that it can be difficult to keep focussed on what it is you are trying to achieve.

The effects vary wildly depending on you and your preferences. You can use Liquid ink to create a splattered ink page or make it simulate a page full of gluey gunge.

I found the Liquid Ink feature hard to grasp when I first used it. I couldn't really see where I would use it and what I could achieve with it. As I messed with the settings I found that it was getting easier to create nice effects with different brushes and by varying the settings.

PHOTOSHOP FRIENDLY


One very well received feature is the ability to save and load PSD's (Photoshop native file format). Corels aim seems to have been to make Painter 7 a better partner for Photoshop users by giving them the ability to share files with their layers intact.

Again, this isn't a giant leap in technology but for me it means that the company is really listening to what its user base is saying. I suppose one worry would be if Adobe ever want to steal some market share and go all out to produce natural media tools then there could be a bit of a fall out but for my money, keep your enemies closer as they say.

I use Photoshop everyday and the fact that Painter now gives me a familiar layered-format means I am more likely to use it.

Corel have also added the ability to convert your files to CMYK from RGB, another little upgrade that would have been done in Photoshop previously.
ZOOM ZOOM
This little feature lets you use a little Zoom slider at the bottom of every image (or the image you are working on if it is maximised).
Acting very much like the navigator in Photoshop it lets you zoom in and out using the slider rather than entering a number which quite frankly was always a bit clunky.

By clicking the little up-arrow on the zoom bar you get a small version of the image to navigate around which can also prove useful when you are working with bigger, RAM hogging images.
MORE FONT FUN
Text capability has changed from a shapes-based text tool to a more familiar 'type it on the screen and modify it' tool that is familiar to most bitmap graphic packages. The screen shot opposite gives you a good idea of the text tool and as you can see you can modify font, size, shadow, opacity etc. The tool works fine for me, as you would expect and really gives me one more reason not to flip into Photoshop to get a task done. I suppose if you are are in a postion where you can only have Painter or Photoshop this features adds one more tick in the 'pros' column for Corel.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Perspective grids bring a set of overlay guidelines that have been seen in some vector package in the past. I think they are a great idea when you want to produce quick sketches that need a little realism.



The grid is switched on from the top menu bar and the options include color, vertical and horizontal spacing and position. To move them on screen you simply click on the eye level line and move it with your mouse. Simple but effective.
KPT THREE
To compliment the upgrade Corel have thrown in a trio of Kai Power tools 5 filters:
KPT Fraxflame Weird and wonderful fractals if you like that sorty of thing.
KPT Shape Shifter Shape creator giving you numerous shape with refacting edges, a webpage-button creator for some people.
KPT SMoothie Helps create smooth edges on black alpha masks. I have to be honest, I don't see where I can use this one.
Not what I would call an essential in this upgrade. You are either a fan of Kai Power tool or you hate them. I loved most of the earlier tools and find KPT6 has a few useful plugins but KPT5 I could leave alone and not miss. Some of the Fraxflame effects are nice to look at but over all it feels like an attempt to add more to a version upgrade to make it feel like a better deal.
CONCLUSIONS
A very powerful market leader (in its own area of natural media) that has a plethora of features, brushes, textures, paper types and general effects. It has been improved but not re-designed leaving much of the successful Version 6 in place whilst adding much needed enhancements and new features.

A good upgrade, worth the wait and well worth the upgrade cost.
If you are new to digital painting packages and are making a choice over Photoshop or Painter you will still find photoshop the clear winner in the photo manipulations and genreal image enhancing areas.

Painter gets a little more like photoshop with some of its latest additions but Corel has clearly decided to market it as a sit-along-side companion. They must be praying that Adobe doesn't start getting all painterly in the next few incarnations and start adding natural medium enhancements.

If you can afford it, you need both packages. If you want to concentrate on your fine art digital skills, then Painter 7 is your tool.
 

Supported Import File Formats

• RIFF
• TIFF (CMYK or RGB)
• PICT
• PSD (CMYK or RGB)
• BMP
• PCX
• Targa
• GIF
• JPEG
• EPS