New to digital art? No problem!
Corel® Painter® Essentials™ 6 is custom designed to inspire you to freely create blank canvas and photo art creations using award-winning Natural-Media® brushes. As an intuitive paint program, Essentials offers a welcoming environment that will encourage you to have fun while using powerful and realistic art tools to reach your goals. Turn a photo into an amazing oil, pastel or impressionist work of art, or use pencils, pens or particles to paint, draw and sketch on a blank canvas. The best part? Connect with a solid social community of fellow painters who are passionate about painting and providing feedback. There’s an artist in all of us.
Immerse yourself in Natural-Media®
that mimics reality
Craft your masterpiece with stunning reality using authentic dry media like chalks, pencils and pastels, or realistic wet media including oils, airbrushes, pens, digital watercolors and more. There is no experience required so that you can plunge right into an art studio that’s easy to learn and produces impressive results.
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Easily transform favorite photos into paintings
Produce incredible art with the powerful, user-friendly SmartStroke™ brush technology. Choose from two simple methods: let Painter® Essentials™ quickly Auto-Paint any photo, or you can paint from the photo to get a hand-hewn work of art.
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Invaluable illustration tools
Craft characters and environments using tools built for the job. The Mirror tool saves you half the painting time, the Particle brushes bring fur, hair, fabric and smoke to life, and F-X effects brushes add that extra special edge to your work.
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Paint program with award-winning brushes
Create using media that you can trust as the best out there. Although Essentials is built for beginners, the brush technology has stood the test of time. Every brush in Essentials was custom selected for new digital artists from our professional Painter art studio so that you can make the most of your digital art experience.
Acrylics & Oils
Airbrushes
Artists
Photo Painting
Blenders
Chalks, Pastels
& Crayons
Digital Watercolor
F-X
Particles
Pattern Pens
Pencils, Pens
& Markers
Sponges
Pressure sensitive memory
When painting with a drawing tablet, you will have full pressure sensitive control of every brush allowing you to recreate the look and sensation of painting with traditional media, even if you have never used it before. Splay brush bristles or accentuate a paper texture using the stylus to control every amazing stroke.
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Built-in learning resources
Launch the Essentials application, and the intuitive Welcome Screen will greet you with helpful tutorials and workflow tips. In addition, you can explore an exciting gallery of Essentials artwork that will inspire you to create your own new masterpieces.
Superior speed & performance
Manage memory-intensive operations, such as working on large canvases, plus zooming, rotating and working with layers, all at top speed. Equally important, your brushes will blaze across the canvas allowing you to lose yourself in painting.
Paint software you can grow with
Comfortably experiment with a variety of custom selected media types and uncover your favorites. Join our free webinars to learn valuable tips and hone your skills in Essentials. When you are ready to go pro, just upgrade to Painter for unlimited artistic possibilities.
Subscription-free and compatible with Mac, PC & Photoshop
Own your paint software outright! Essentials will fit right into your workflow, allowing you to save to .PSD while preserving layers, or
open Photoshop files to add extra special brushstrokes to your work.
An art studio to suit your imagination
We’ve got you covered. Whether you are drawing and painting or creating photo art, Essentials has the tools you need to execute your vision and let your art speak volumes.
Updated user interface
Launch the newly designed Welcome Screen to kick start your painting experience. Create new documents and templates, choose from workflow UI layouts, see what is new and exciting in the world of Essentials, access helpful tutorials, view an inspirational art gallery and check out our brush packs for specific workflows.
Dry Natural-Media®
Sketch your vision using the perfect pencil for the job, choose from grainy, thick and thin and scratchboard tool variations. Then, render your masterpiece using an exciting variety of Chalks, Pastels, Crayons & Charcoal including blunt, soft, square, tapered and jitter variants that will suit any task at hand.
Wet Natural-Media®
Create an oil or acrylic painting using clumpy, glazing, flat or filbert brushes, spray fine, coarse or soft airbrush paint all over your canvas, dip in to digital watercolor to wash, spatter or diffuse paint and emulate Impressionist Masters like Sargent and Post-Impressionists like Van Gogh. No matter what, you will have fun experimenting!
Signature Painter media types
Create with unique Painter media types like dynamic Particles that spring, flow and gravitate across canvas, plus F-X effects that sprinkle fairy dust, glow, jitter, shatter, distort and more! Or grab a Pattern Pen to stroke decorative brushstrokes across your canvas like magic.
Smart photo-painting tools
Start off easy using the one-touch Auto-Paint tool. Simply open the photo of your choice, select a painting style and click play. As a must-have paint editor, Essentials will magically paint the photo for you using Smart Stroke technology that follows the lines and contours in your image, no hands required.
Tracing and cloning images
Sketch right over your photo using Tracing Paper as a guide to ensure that your hand drawn composition is perfection or create a one-of-a-kind photo painting by pulling the colors from your photo through any brush allowing you to fill the canvas with hand-hewn strokes.
Symmetry painting
The time-saving Mirror tool reflects your painting on the opposite side of the canvas using your media of choice. Turn on Kaleidoscope and paint using 3-12 reflective segments and create stunning kaleidoscope paintings.
Drawing tablet support
Essentials incorporates pressure sensitive memory that will adapt to your particular touch. Provide a sample of your stroke in the Brush Tracker to globally set sensitivity or save your pressure for each of your favorite brushes allowing Essentials to remember and respond accordingly.
Superior speed and performance
Manage memory-intensive operations, such as working on large canvases, plus zooming, rotating and working with layers, all at top speed. Equally important, your brushes will blaze across the canvas allowing you to focus on painting.
PAINTER ESSENTIALS VERSION COMPARISON
| Feature | Essentials 4 | Essentials 5 | Painter 2017 |
| Drawing & painting tools | |||
| Revolutionary Particle Brushes | |||
| Jitter Brushes | |||
| Mirror Painting | |||
| Kaleidoscope painting | |||
| World’s most authentic Natural-Media® | |||
| Smart photo-painting tools | |||
| Tracing Images | |||
| Streamlined autopainting with presets | |||
| Real Watercolor Brushes | |||
| Multiple Clone Sources | |||
| Total Brushes | 95 | 126 | 806 |
| User Interface | |||
| Brush Tracking Utility | |||
| 2 in 1 mobile painting interface | |||
| Navigator panel | |||
| Real-time Effects preview | |||
| Transformation tools | |||
| Native 64-bit for Mac and PC | |||
| Enhanced Brushstroke preview | |||
| Enhanced Paper Textures | |||
| Enhanced Wacom tablet support | |||
| Streamlined interface for hobbyists | |||
| Customizable UI | No | Limited | Full |
| Workspace manager | |||
| Advanced brush editing | |||
| Save/Export/Import custom brushes | |||
| Create Custom Papers, Patterns, Gradients, Nozzles, Selections, Image portfolio | |||
| Additional effects with full screen preview | |||
| Perspective Guides | |||
| Reference Image | |||
| Advanced Color Management | |||
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows
- Windows 10 (64-Bit), Windows 8.1 (64-Bit), or Windows 7 (64-Bit) (with the latest updates)
- Intel Core 2 or AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2 GHz or faster
- 4 logical cores or higher (recommended)
- 2 GB RAM (8 GB RAM or higher recommended)
- 1 GB hard disk space for application files*
- Solid-state drive (recommended)
- 1280 x 800 screen resolution (1920 x 1080 recommended)
- Mouse or tablet
- DVD drive (required for box installation)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or higher, with the latest updates
- To activate your product, you must connect to the Internet and register it first
*Additional space may be required for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6
Mac
- macOS 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), macOS 10.12 (Sierra), Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), with the latest revision
- Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
- 4 logical cores or higher (recommended)
- 2 GB RAM (8 GB RAM or higher recommended)
- 750 MB hard disk space for application files
- Solid-state drive (recommended)
- 1280 x 800 screen resolution (1920 x 1080 recommended)
- Mouse or tablet
- DVD drive (required for box installation)
- To activate your product, you must connect to the Internet and register it first
LEARNING
Visit the Discovery Center to view all of our free Painter Essentials tutorials, tips and webinars to get you started.
Drawing and painting from a blank canvas
Every canvas is a fresh start! Experiment with a variety of art tools and bring your unique visions to life on canvas. Painter Essentials 6 offers you the optimal Natural-Media® brushes, paper textures and tools needed to get started in digital art and experience true creative freedom. From loose sketches to full-blown paintings, Painter Essentials 6 will bring out the artist in you.
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Transforming photos into paintings
Turn your photos into eye-catching paintings in just minutes. Painter® Essentials™ 6 makes it easy with one-touch auto-painting that lets you choose a style and watch your painting come alive, stroke by stroke. Or tap into your creativity and create a painting that's as original as you! With exclusive photo-painting and cloning tools, SmartStroke™ brush technology and incredible photo effects, Painter Essentials 6 guarantees your photo art will impress.
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Download Instructions
When you buy a Download version, you can download your software, install it on your computer and unlock it with a serial number that will be provided after purchase.