After writing over 300 design-oriented reviews for PC Pro over the last 14 years there is clearly a danger of becoming jaded. I have to admit that my heart no longer jumps when the latest version of Paint Shop Pro drops on my desk for example. However there are some programs that still get me creatively excited – the Adobe apps obviously, Cinema 4D, Piranesi, SketchUp and so on. Near the top of this list is Corel Painter, the bitmap editor aimed at professional computer-based artists.

Which makes the latest Corel Painter 11 all the more disappointing…

You can read my full review here. It won’t take you long and you’ll quickly see that there are absolutely no must-have features. In fact there aren’t any oh-that-looks-interesting features either. Or even any I-might-notice-that features. If an admirer secretly upgraded you, you would never know!

The bottom line is that I’ve seen plenty of free security updates that have rolled in more new functionality and to expect existing users to pay £117 for it is ridiculous. That’s around three times the cost of a full copy of Painter Essentials 4 (£38) which did see plenty of development effort on its last release and now, embarrassingly, leaves Painter itself trailing in some areas.

If Corel really has this little interest in developing what remains a flagship program in a key creative field it should pass it on to someone else (ideally Adobe).