14 DAY TRIAL // After more than two decades of history, the Corel Corporation arrived to the day of a new software release, and this time it's the former Fractal Design Painter, currently known as "Corel Painter". Today, the Canadian corporation announced that Corel Painter X, the latest version of their painting and illustration software, has just become available.
A leading application when it comes to natural painting and illustration using a computer, Corel Painter works best with a Wacom graphics tablet, and this last version is now able to support their Cintriq21 UX interactive pen display and the Intuos3 pen tablet. Available as a Universal Binary application, this release will work natively on both PowerPC and Intel based Macs.
According to Corel, this new version brings traditional and digital art closer than ever before, and according to Rick Champagne, Corel Painter's product manager, "Corel Painter X is the most natural, organic and powerful version yet". One of the most interesting new features is the RealBristle Painting System, able to provide an organic painting and illustration experience, increasing the responsiveness of the brush and replicating traditional art media with individual blending and splaying bristles, just like in the real world!
The new Layout Grid allows you to follow photography's Rule of Thirds, but you can customize it in order to use any other grid patterns you may need. Also, if you want to paint just like the Masters, the Divine Proportion composition tool is available to provide you guidelines that follow the Divine Proportion, also known as the Golden Ratio.
If you are a Photoshop veteran, you should be very pleased to find out that Layers work almost like when using that program, and when you open Adobe Photoshop PSD files in Corel Painter, the layer masks, sets and alpha channels are maintained.
Packed with a wide range of additional enhancements and fixes, Corel Painter X can be preordered starting today, and besides the Mac version, a Vista one is also available. The English box product will be available through Corel and reseller partners later this month, and the suggested retail pricing is 429$ for the full version, 229$ for upgrade and 99$ for the education edition.