Digital camera users or anyone who uses a camera to capture special moments and express their creativity can find new ways to add unique touches to their photos with Corel Painter Essentials 4. The completely redesigned user interface and the simplified Photo Painting System make it easy to add artistic flair to any project. With the new Smart Stroke™ technology, it's now even easier to turn a photo into a natural and expressive hand-painted work of art.

Working with photos, sketching and painting are some of the hands-on projects enjoyed by scrapbookers and arts & crafts enthusiasts. Corel Painter Essentials 4 makes it simple to transform a photo into a painting, sketch or paint an original image, or add creative elements to any project. It's easy to create stunning images that are perfect for hanging on the wall or for adding an extra personal touch to scrapbooks or other creative projects.

Corel Painter Essentials 4 gives students and teachers a way to explore the visual arts without the costs and mess associated with traditional art supplies. Whether they're working at home or at school, students and teachers can enjoy an ideal learning environment that combines the techniques of classical art training with the unique possibilities offered by digital media.

You can create a painting from a photo in just three steps:
• Open the photo you want to paint in the Source Image palette. Your photo will be saved with the Painter Essentials file format, so it's easy to return to a project later
• Choose one of the preset painting styles from the menus on the Auto-Painting Palette to get the look you want
• Let new Smart Stroke™ technology create stunning paintings—with brush strokes that follow the form of your photo!

Discover an Expressive and Natural painting experience. The Drawing and Painting workspace is designed to put the tools you need at your finger tips.
• Identify and choose brushes easily with the New Brush Drawer
• Go back to recently used brushes quickly with Brush History
• Organize your favorite brushes in one spot for easy access
• Select paint colors with a single click on the New Colors palette
• Create new colors easily with the convenient New Mixer palette

Explore Learning Materials
• Free video tutorials by Painter master John Derry, combined with the tutorials printed in the user guide, make it easier than ever to get started—and get the results you want.

Photo Painting
New! Redesigned Workspace

Work within a tailored environment that includes all the tools you need to paint your photos.
New! Smart Stroke™ Technology

Quickly achieve impressive paintings or sketches with intuitive tools. Built into the Auto-Painting palette, Smart Stroke technology paints with brush strokes that follow the shapes and contours in your original photo. It dynamically changes brush size, stroke length and pressure, based on the detail and focal areas of the original photo.
New! Updated File Format

Quickly return to a project for further editing. Corel Painter Essentials 4 now saves the source image with your painting so you can continue working at any time.

Drawing and Painting Tools
New! Brush Drawer

Easily select brushes by previewing brush stroke samples and quickly access your most recently used brushes. You can also easily add your favorite brushes to the Brush Drawer column.
New! Mixer Palette

Get the exact color you want every time. In addition to the traditional Color Wheel, the new Mixer palette simulates the traditional experience of mixing colors on an artist's paint palette, making it easier for you to blend colors and get precise results.
New! Colors Palette

Pick a color with a single click.
New! Tablet Support

Easily navigate with a tablet thanks to redesigned workspaces that feature larger icons, buttons and sliders.
New! Magic Wand Tool

Easily select specific portions of a photo or painting.
New! Paper Selector

Enjoy quick access to a greater selection of paper textures that accurately reproduce the feel of using traditional art materials. You can even control the texture of the canvas to achieve the results expected from using traditional media on a given surface, like pencil on watercolor paper, felt pens on cotton paper, or chalk on the sidewalk.
New! 32 Undo Levels

Go back to earlier versions of your work to view or undo portions of your painting.
New! Online Print Services

Order prints of your artwork on canvas, watercolor paper and other fine art materials directly from the File Menu.

More Natural-Media® Tools
New! RealBristle™ Brushes

Authentically reproduce the natural movement of your brush, right down to the individual bristles.
New! Pens

Expand your artistic range with Scratchboard and Smooth Edge Calligraphy tools, which are perfect for inking comic books or doing calligraphy.
New! Charcoal Brushes

Apply realistic charcoal drawing effects to your artwork with new brushes that range from pencils to hard or soft charcoal sticks. As with other dry media brushes, the opacity is linked to pen pressure.
New! Sumi-e Brushes

Create flowing sumi-e-style brush strokes. Sumi-e is a style of painting that is characteristically Asian, and has been practiced for well over a thousand years. Literally ink painting, it is an art form that strives to distill the essence of an object or scene in the fewest possible strokes.
New! Sargent Brush

Paint in the style of Master Artist John Singer Sargent.
Enhanced! Brush Ghost

Receive unprecedented visual feedback of brush stroke behavior and enjoy better control as you apply brush strokes.
New! Nozzles

Apply special images to your canvas with handy Effects brushes, such as Nozzles. These are special image files that work with Image Hoses to "paint" images instead of colors. Each nozzle file contains multiple images.
New! Pattern Pens

Apply unique patterns to your images, and vary the size and transparency of the pattern.

Learning Resources
New! Tutorial-based Guidebook

Learn to use Painter Essentials 4 while completing fun, instructional projects.
New! Video Tutorials

Access video tutorials from Painter Master John Derry directly from the application.
New! Sample Files

Quickly find sample files for the guidebook and video tutorials right in the File Menu.

File Compatibility
New! Universal Binary Support

Painter Essentials 4 is optimized for use with Intel® processors. Enjoy improved performance with PowerPC® processors and Mac® OS.
New! Windows Vista® Support

Enhanced! Support for Wacom® Products

Use Painter Essentials 4 with any product in the entire Wacom line, including Graphire® pen tablets, Cintiq® 21 UX interactive pen display, the Intuos® 3 pen tablet and the Wacom 6D Art Pen.
Enhanced! File Compatibility

Easily share files with major photo-editing applications, such as Adobe® Photoshop® Elements, Adobe Photoshop, Corel® Paint Shop Pro® and Corel® PhotoImpact®.

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