Procreate Painter 7 - Macintosh Version

Ian Mankowski September 1, 2001 Painter comes back to us for another version in the hands of Corel and proves that Corel knows how to go one better on an already excellent and mature program. Those digital artists out there have more reason to rejoice with Painter 7, and the doubting traditional artists have a little bit less to doubt. A First Run Painter 7 comes in a stunning white box with a single magenta trickle of paint running down the side. Elegant in it's simplicity, it's a box that immediately looks like it belongs next to the OSX box. Even better, it looks like it belongs in a newly opened Apple Store, already smells like a conspiracy. The plot only deepens when one spies the small black rabbit in the upper right corner and the word "procreate" beneath it. Looks suspiciously like the new "Pro Create" ads Apple has been running recently. But then, none of this is surprising if one has followed the news since Macworld, where Corel initially showed off Painter 7 and revealed their deep commitment to the Mac, as well as showing off their affinity for OSX. Thus with Painter 7 Corel has debuted the procreate line of products that will eventually expand to include future versions of KPT and KnockOut. The Painter 7 CD comes with 2 CDs. One with the Painter 7 application program, and another filled with extra content: brushes, pens, papers, the Painter standard suite of goodies, but expanded quite a bit. An initial look through reveals that Painter is no longer an artist's studio, but rather an entire art store brought within the confines of the computer. Installation in OSX is a snap, with only the minor annoyance of having to drop into Classic to perform part of the installation/registration process. First passes reveal something I've already suspected; the completely insufficient speed of OSX is only magnified when working in Painter 7. Gawking at the aquafied interface is marred by the fact that tools and large documents respond slowly, much too slowly for an artist's typical patience meter. Painter also brings to light another deficiency in OSX that I've been able to ignore since I acquired OSX, that is the fact that Wacom art tablet drivers have still failed to arrive for OSX. If ever a program demanded an art tablet, it's Painter, and not being able to use my art tablet is infuriating to say the least. After a last forlorn look at an aquafied Painter, I return to OS 9.2 to utilize the speed and tablet support that are a part of the older operating system. Soon I'm happily painting on a large document at 300 dpi. Painter 7's biggest feature is the new natural media brushes and enhancements. Specifically the new Watercolor Technology. I select a nice big wet wash brush and lay down a stroke on my art tablet. The brush crawls disappointingly slow across the screen as I watch my computer process the complex new watercolor effects as the pigment drips towards the bottom of my screen. The end result is one of the biggest "oh wow!" moments I've had, and also one of the most acute experiences that the new Painter 7 is not meant for the weak of processing power. Which makes sense, Painter is marketed as a procreate product, I only warn the pros out there that if you have anything older then a 2001 G4, you'd best be picking up a new Mac immediately before you order Painter 7. The test system used in this review was a 2000 dual processor G4 500 and I wouldn't consider using it with the new watercolor technology, it's that intensive. So much for first looks, let's take a deeper look at what Painter 7 offers over its predecessors. What's New? If you've got the power, Painter's new Watercolor Technology is quite impressive featuring pigments that pool in the cracks in the paper and diffuse appropriately on the paper according to the wetness control slider. The Watercolor Technology has been so enhanced from previous versions that it now features its own window of options which feature sliders to control evaporation rate, dry rate, and grain soak-in rate as well as numerous other options. A new wind modifier has been added which adds a blowing affect to your paint strokes, making your paint run and diffuse in the direction of the wind. Personally, I've never blown my washes and pigments, but the wind effectively can be used as a gravity modifier, and I am pleased at how the paints diffuse towards the bottom of my screen like they typically do when I work with traditional watercolors. The new Watercolor Technology is truly incredible, while it doesn't perfectly simulate real watercolors, I found myself running around my studio looking for ductape where I proceeded to tape one of my old brushes to my pen. Having done that, I brought out my easel and placed my 9*12 tablet on it and delighted myself in being able to paint with full arm motions across the screen. I have never been motivated to do this before, but Painter 7's new Watercolor Technology comes close enough that I was truly inspired to work in a full canvas mode. It was nothing less then a euphoric high as I reveled in the full arm motion I was able to use. Note to self, after cracking Apple's and Intuos's collective heads together to create some OSX drivers, I need to talk to Intuos about creating some digital brushes to use with the art tablets. To polish all this off, Painter 7 now supports watercolor on layers! No more restriction to the Wet Layer of old, now you can apply pieces of your painting to each layer, all in watercolor. Let us all now collectively clap or hands for this excellent modification to what once was a terribly frustrating limitation. The downside? All this awesome painting technology requires some awesome hardware technology to use effectively, if you're getting Painter 7 for the new Watercolor Technology and you're running an older G4 or G3, don't. Sink the cost into the company budget, but don't approach Painter with anything less then state of the art computing power under your hood. The next big feature on the list is the new Liquid Ink Technology. Liquid Ink is also hardware intensive, demanding the most of your system. If you've got a system that can handle it though, Liquid Ink is one the most fun mediums in Painter 7 I've experienced. Essentially, liquid ink simulates "thick viscosious inks." Having no real background in such mediums, I can only describe it as painting with house brushes. The end result is a wonderfully graphic medium that resembles broad vibrant strokes over a t-shirt, or perhaps, graffiti paint on a wall. Definitely very neat for the effect you can get from it. Even more interesting are the resist brush variants. I have no idea what the real world counterpart of resist is, but in Painter 7, it acts like an eraser/thinner. Slap it down on the canvas and clear out the paint from an area. Later when you apply more Liquid Ink to an area that has had resist applied to it, the paint will resist application in that area. Kind of like a combination of an eraser and masking fluid. Whatever it is, it's pretty neat, and some really stylized fantastic imagery can be created. Directional shading is another neat little feature that Painter 7 features. In real world media, when applying strokes of pastel or pencil, the grain of the paper factors greatly in the ability to create an opaque area on the paper. If you keep applying strokes in the same direction, the paper doesn't get any darker or more opaque, only by cross hatching, or by applying strokes in another direction can you make the area more opaque or darker. An excellent little feature that further blurs the line between the digital and the traditional. From a filter perspective, Corel has added the Distress filter to the feature list. The feature is supposed to give an image an antiqued look. I'll just say that it makes my images look like they came out of a very cheap, poorly cleaned printing press from the 50s, which is very useful in some of my graphic art. Definitely a valuable tool in the toolset for those that need it. Three other features bear mentioning. First and foremost are the new Perspective Grids which can be positioned anywhere on the canvas and the horizon line and vanishing point adjusted to the user's needs. This is probably the greatest feature I've seen in any program to date. Such a simple tool, and yet Painter is the first I've seen offer it. Perspective Grids are a gift from the deities above, in this case, Corel. Time for me to break out my digital prayer rug and face Ottawa three times a day to pay homage to those masters who provide such graphical wonderfulness. While Perspective Grids are amazingly cool, they also make apparent what's missing, namely two point perspective grids, three point perspective grids, elliptical grids and all the others you can find on the market. Something to add to my feature list for Painter 8. Corel's method of color management has got to be one of the slickest I've ever seen, and its implementation in Painter 7 is greatly appreciated, the simplicity yet depth of the controls is unrivaled in other program's color management systems. Once upon a time my paintings underwent a noticeable color shift when I shifted from Painter to Photoshop. Today, there is no color shift due to the ease of use of the color management system. This piece of engineering should become a standard, it's that good. Finally, the new variable zoom is very much appreciated. One of the biggest feature requests from Painter users in the past, this feature has been implemented simply, and well, and it'll give any Painter user the warm and fuzzies. Of Raves and Raves Painter 7's incredible selection of preset tools to work with, awesome Watercolor Technology, and fun Liquid inks means that Corel has created a solid winner in Painter 7. Digital technology has a long way to go before it can even consider replacing traditional mediums, but with Painter 7, when I ductaped the brush to my art pen and worked on my art tablet gone vertical, I knew that it was possible. My only warning. The box and advertising material have clearly stated that Painter 7 is part of the procreate line and is being marketed to the pro users around the world. If you want to take full advantage of the power in Painter 7, make sure you own nothing less then a pro computer.   Bottom Line Painter 7 has some very compelling new features, and some wonderful smaller features that greatly aid an artists ability to create consistent artwork. The program is stable, mature, and comes with enough preset content for you to work with nearly anything you can imagine in a 2D art store. To top it all off, it's marketed at the Mac happy people, better, Corel has taken the time to optimize and tweak for the best Mac experience possible and has embraced the next generation operating system openly. A company that puts out solid software and knows how to combine it with the design aesthetics that Mac users demand. How can you possibly beat that? Painter 7, For Windows and Macintosh (Mac OSX compatible) Corel Corporate Headquarters 1600 Carling Avenue Ottawa, Ontario Canada www.corel.com Painter 7 on Procreate website Strengths: Powerful Awesome new watercolor and liquid ink technologies beautiful, optimized interface Perspective Grids Excellent color management system Tons of preset content to work with Weaknesses: Hardware Hog (On Mac OSX Answer: Get a huge system to run all of this wonderfulness on. Minimum System Requirements Macintosh Power Macintosh G3 or higher Mac OS 8.6 or later 64MB RAM 128 MB RAM for Mac OSX 100MB hard disk space 24-bit color display (800x600) (1024x786 for Mac OS X Mouse or tablet www.procreate.com Copyright © 2001, Ian Mankowski, All Rights Reserved