Corel Announces Painter Essentials 3.0

Painter Essentials provides a new way to explore creativity with digital art and photography

Corel Corporation has unveiled Corel® Painter™ Essentials 3. Built on the award-winning power of Corel® Painter™ IX, Corel Painter Essentials 3 is a complete home art studio for novices and experts alike. It includes everything you need to explore digital art, and to create stunning paintings from your photos.

New features include Photo Painting Palettes, letting you create Paintings from Photos in three easy steps. Artist Oils brushes let you smear oil paint on the canvas–complete with realistic textures and bristle marks. A new sketch effect automatically creates sketches from photos. Digital watercolors that mix the paints as if they were real even stay wet between sessions so you can come back at any time and work on your paintings.

With support for other graphics software built in, you can open Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro files directly in Painter (Paint Shop Pro is Windows only). Apple iPhoto support has been enhanced on the Mac, and files you work on from iPhoto update automatically.

The software is now available from Corel (www.corel.com) and will be hitting store shelves in North America later this month.