Product ReviewsDesign/DTP
Painter 5 is firmly established as the leading natural media painting application, but at £299, it's rather overpriced for the home market. To address this, MetaCreations has produced Painter Classic, a cut-down version of Painter 5. That said, it's still a powerful painting tool in its own right. There may be no floating layers, dynamic plug-ins or advanced colour management tools, but it still retains the feel of its big brother, while providing the vast majority of its functionality. And for home users, the advanced features of the full version are likely to be of little interest, although a competitive upgrade is available. For those coming fresh to Painter, working within a natural media environment feels light years away from the rigorous, unyielding painting tools in Photoshop and its stablemates. Here you can choose from a vast array of brushes, pens, felt tips, palette knives, airbrushes and crayons that behave almost exactly like their real-life counterparts. Wet, oily brushes daub brush strokes across the canvas; dry brushes and palette knives smear and fade convincingly; dirty felt pens smudge and pastel chalks leave authentically rough edges. You can even simulate the effects of dripping water onto a wet canvas and, unlike real water, you can control its movement precisely. One of Painter's strengths is its ability to add paper and canvas textures, lighting effects, and recognisable artists' styles (Van Gogh, Seurat, Impressionist) to any image. You can start with a photograph or a blank canvas, building up or modifying your image as you go along. And because Painter supports multiple undo (unlike the real thing), it's easy to experiment with different effects and brush types without irrevocably ruining your picture. Whereas
The ability to play and record scripts within Painter Classic is a truly powerful feature. Every action, brush stroke and effect is faithfully recorded and can be played back either in a continuous stream or as a series of individual steps. The recorded scripts supplied with Painter form an intriguing tutorial that demonstrates the best features of the program. You can see which tools are being used, and the effects being applied. You can also pause the playback at any time to check how particular effects work. One of the drawbacks of Painter 5 has always been speed of operation; its creation of large, high-resolution images suitable for commercial printing entails sluggish operation, which frustrates many designers. But when working at screen resolution or for output to home inkjet printers, Painter Classic works fast and well. You still have to wait while some filters are applied, but brush strokes are added as fast as you paint. It requires just 12Mb of application RAM in which to run, although it prefers 20Mb or more, which means it will work with ease on any of the current range of home Macs, and unlike most advanced graphics programs, there's no steep learning curve involved: you really can just sit down and try out all the brushes to see how they work. With Painter Classic, what you see is exactly what you get. For anyone curious about natural media technology, or who has read about Painter but been put off by the price, Painter Classic is the ideal introduction to this extraordinary program. Even for the jaded professional, Painter Classic is hugely enjoyable to use, offering a great release from the rigours of other illustration applications. An hour playing with Painter Classic is more fun, more productive and more relaxing than an hour blasting aliens in Duke Nukem. By Steve Caplin |
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