Corel Painter 8

Running down the right is the area intended for Painter's palettes. There are now more of these than ever, as each of the previous palette sections, such as Colour Variability and Colour Info, have been promoted to palettes in their own right. They can be grouped and ungrouped, as well as hidden and revealed, and it's possible to save and reload particular arrangements to set up the environment exactly as you want it. The end result is much cleaner, more efficient and more inviting.

By default, Corel sensibly brings together all those palettes that deal with colour, although the sheer range can still be off-putting. Corel's latest addition is the Colour Mixer, which is designed to mimic an artist's palette. It offers a choice of primary colours, a Brush and Palette Knife to mix them and an Eyedropper to pick up the colour. Many Painter users already worked in a similar way using a separate image for colour mixing, but it's certainly handy to have a dedicated palette, especially with the ability to save settings and automatically generate colour swatches.

Sweeping changes

So far so good, but something important is missing: where are Painter's brushes? These remain fundamental to the software, but Corel has chosen to downplay their central role with the understated Brush Selector hidden away at the end of the Property Bar. Essentially, this takes the form of two simple drop-downs - first you select the category, then the actual brush variant. The drop-downs can take the form of visual thumbnails or even sample strokes, but it's easier to choose from the list of names.

The choice of brushes is straightforward, but the range is astonishing. Corel has added 400 new brushes across 30 categories, of which nearly half are new. It sounds like a revolutionary increase in power, but there has also been some creative accountancy at work here. Many of Painter's former categories have simply been split - a good example being the Dry Media brushes, which have been divided into Chalk, Charcoal, Crayons and Pastels. And, within each category, new brushes are usually basic variations of shapes and sizes.

In fact, only one brush category is completely new - Digital Watercolour. This in itself is strange, as watercolours have always been one of Painter's strongest areas, and no-one could say the new brushes are as realistic as the old ones. This is hardly surprising, as there are only two dedicated parameters at work here - diffusion and wet fringe. But, in a way, that's the point. Painter's existing complex watercolours can only be used on their own dedicated 'wet' layers and take time and processing power to apply. The new Digital Watercolours are much simpler and faster, and can be mixed with other brushes to produce attractive results.

By providing a much wider range of brush presets, along with the Property bar for setting the most important brush parameters, there's no shortage of immediate creative power, but there are still occasions where you want greater control. This is where Painter's new Brush Creator dialog comes in. In its main Stroke Designer tab, you can select one of the 16 control sets, such as General, Well, Liquid Ink and Impasto, and the associated parameters appear next to it (a lot simpler than the former Brush Controls palette's outlinable and scrollable system). What really makes the difference is the large preview canvas to the right of the dialog, where you can try out changes before using them in earnest. What's more, the dialog stays open so you can seamlessly swap between your current image and the Brush Creator whenever you want to fine-tune your brush.