Digital painting is what Painter Essentials is all about, and version 4 gives you more tools than ever to help replicate the real-world painting experience on your computer.- Next: Will It Make You a Master? Want more flexibility? You can also take several colors and then swirl them around in the new Mixer palette as you might on an artist's wooden palette. The new Color palette displays 88 preset colors like orderly dabs of paint on a canvas. In the Drawing & Painting workspace, there are two new ways to choose. Of course, it's not only the brushes (and pens and so on) that are important, but also the colors. I really liked the extra control this feature gave me, but if you find it distracting, not to worry: It's easily deactivated. This display remains on screen as you paint or draw. Basically, as soon as you touch pen to tablet, you get a visual representation of your current pen's size, shape, rotation, and paint flow. Confused? You won't be when you try it out, because it's much simpler than it sounds. The most innovative new brush feature, however, is the new Brush Ghost cursor, which helps you predict your pen's behavior before you even start painting and control it as you draw. Version 3 also had these trippy brushes, but version 4 gives you more things to do with them, though not as many as I'd like. Painter Essentials also comes with Painter X's Image Hose and Pattern Pen brushes, which spew out patterns and streams of little photographic images of objects like flowers and butterflies. Otherwise, I found the new brushes a much-appreciated addition. My only complaint: The new Sargent brush somehow didn't make me paint like another John Singer Sargent. Improvements have been made to existing brushes, and some brand-new brushes have been added, such as the hyperrealistic RealBristle category-carried over from the professional-level Painter X-as well as new charcoals and pens. When closed, the drawer displays your most recently used brushes and your designated 'favorite' brushes in a column beside the toolbox for easy access.Īnd it's not just the new Brush Drawer that I like. Now expanding out logically from the toolbox, the Brush Drawer offers clearly delineated categories of brushes. I'm especially fond of the new Brush Drawer.

Tool icons and slider controls are larger, therefore much easier to control with a pen tablet. Some enhancements pertain to both workspaces, such as the vertical toolbox that stretches down the left side of the screen. The bright yet nondistracting interface is divided into two tabbed workspaces: Drawing & Painting and Photo Painting.

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