Corel Painter 6.O Upgrade

Rating:
Summary: Different strokes for different folks.
Review: As a fine artist in both oils and digital, I love the brush selections and versatility. This program is very painterly and the textures are almost palpable. Do wish it had Photopaint's masking abilities, though. The two programs marry well for fine art production.

Rating:
Summary: Thumbs up for Version 6.0 from a longtime Painter user
Review: I've used this software from the time it started out as Fractal Designs and the appealing Sketcher program in a cigar box package(charcoal, grey scale only.) Then it became Metacreations and came out with Painter in a cutesy paintcan. They really have progressed from their first versions of software designed to imitate all sorts of artists' media like oil, pastel and airbrush. Metacreations has been purchased by Corel and this seems to be a good match. And Version 6.0 is just terrific.

(And there is a free downloadable 6.1 patch fyi. Visit the Corel website.)

I thought I really shouldn't spend the additional bucks to upgrade my Painter 5.5 because I already liked it well enough. But I was incredible pleased with the upgrade. Small changes, like a better brush control interface and even a tinier change like putting "paste" and "paste into new image" as separate menu items instead of pulldown from a single "paste" are welcome improvements. But the new features such as Impasto art materials are stunning. New effects let you can paint with neon, acid etch, and do wood cuts. In my first session experimenting with the new upgrade, I was able to create a virtual brass plate from impasto and etch it with acid to create a bullet-ridden metal effect. Very fun.

Bugs in Version 5.5 have been repaired as well. I give this version a huge thumbs-up and if you have the previous version, I do recommend you go for the 6.0 upgrade. It's really stupendous.