MXSMaker Main Window

MXSMaker is a minimal application with only one button that does one thing – make MXS files for Painter, and it is as easy to use as it looks:

1. Click the Select Image button
2. Choose an image from the dialog
3. Save the converted file

In addition to the button, there are three other ways to create Mixer Pad files with MXSMaker, and all are just as easy and fast.

• Drag any JPG, PNG or GIF file over the application window and drop the file
• Copy and paste any compatible file from your OS’ filesystem using standard OS shortcuts
• Copy and paste any image data from any application (ex. a selection from Painter’s canvas, Photoshop, SnagIt or your web browser)

Automatic updates are included in the application and are checked every time the application starts if an active internet connection is available. This behavior cannot be turned off; however, downloading and installing an update is your choice.

Special thanks to Kaburaya for the first Mixer Pad online converter and David Gell for sharing it.

Using an MXS File

To load a converted MXS file into Painter, first make sure the Mixer panel is open. If it isn’t the panel can be accessed through the menu Window > Color Panels > Mixer or by using Ctrl/Cmd+2 from the default keyboard shortcuts.

Painter 12 Mixer Panel

Next, be sure to save the current Mixer Pad file if you’d like to use it again later. Painter will not ask you to save before opening the new MXS file, and the old Mixer Pad will be lost forever. The save command is in the Mixer panel’s menu at the top-right of the panel.

After saving, click the menu button once more and choose Open Mixer Pad. After choosing your file, it will be loaded and ready for color mixing and picking.

Known Issue

Copy and paste only works with Ctrl+V in Mac OS instead of Cmd+V because the default Paste shortcut from the application menu is taking over the command. An update will be issued to address this at a later date.

Update issued as version 1.0.101 that corrects all known issues.

New Painter 12 logo and splash screen. © Corel Corporation.

The Interface Overhaul

The biggest, instantly noticeable change is the brand new user interface. It takes on a more modern look with unique, stylized icons and leaving behind the mismatched default system windows. Palette windows now have dark title bars which match across both the Mac OS and Windows platforms. The darker color helps palettes fade into the dark gray background outside of the canvas (for those that use a windowed viewing mode).

Panels, a slight terminology change for individual palette containers, have lost the long title bar in favor of tabs which can be docked side by side inside of a palette window or one on top of the other to create groupings. This space-saving feature also solves a frustrating usability problem of individual panels being too easy to accidentally expand, collapse and move around the workspace while interacting with them. Now instead of a single-click, a double-click is required to collapse or expand a panel. Small changes like this are sprinkled throughout the interface to make the Painter experience more enjoyable.

Other areas such as the toolbox and the various media library selectors also received updates. By default, the new toolbox is a single column with larger icons that should be easier to select quickly with a Wacom pen. The new arrangement takes up as little space as possible, leaving a larger working area for the main canvas.

While talking about Wacom pen friendliness, all of the main controls, like sliders, have been slightly enlarged as well. For sliders in particular, both the draggable thumb and track are larger, making more accurate value selections easier with a pen. Again, small details go a long way.

One last area of interest in the new interface are the docking bars both at the top of the Painter window as well as the bottom, which returns from older versions of Painter. These new docks are sticky – the brush selector will stay put!

Brush Selector

The Brush Selector received a massive overhaul along with the rest of the interface. Now, both categories and individual variants are seen at the same time instead of having to open two separate dropdowns. This will be a huge timesaver. Also included above the lists is a row of the 10 most recently used brushes (these are also in the property bar of the main interface in the Default workspace). The Recent Brushes selector works exactly like the Tracker palette from Painter 11 and is the Tracker palette’s replacement.

The Brush Selector allows both categories and individual brush variants to be viewed in an icon view without names or as a list view with names.

Along with the redesign, the Brush Selector also helps keep brush libraries and categories organized. The display order of categories and brush variants can be changed to the user’s preference through drag and drop right in the Brush Selector panel. In Painter 11, this was available in a separate dialog window, which was a little clunky and often forgotten. Now the action is front and center and where it matters most.

Stroke Attributes and New Digital Airbrushes

For years, one of the biggest questions asked by new Painter users coming from Photoshop has been, “How do I make the brushes in Painter act like Photoshop brushes?” Before, there were tricks here and there that one could use, but the results were never really the same. The times have changed!

In Painter 12, brush controls have been greatly expanded with the introduction of a brand new circular brush dab and stroke attributes. The Computed Circular dab has settings for both hardness and opacity, and opacity means what it says – strokes can now be partially transparent and brushing over the same area more than once in the same stroke will not build to a totally opaque color.

Quickly brushed gradient using new stroke attributes.

Along with stroke opacity, new Merge Mode controls have been added through a simple dropdown menu in the General brush controls panel. These allow complex color interaction and color mixing on the canvas through all 22 of Painter’s composite methods/blending modes. In past versions of Painter, the only way to achieve these effects was by using separate layers for each blending mode; not anymore. Use Multiply mode to create color washes that combine colors much like watercolor or use Overlay mode with a light color to create glows quickly and easily without having to track down the Glow brush.

Multiply Merge Mode with Yellow.

Overlay Merge Mode with Yellow.

Now for the icing on the cake: Just imagine canvas texture interaction, the already powerful color blending features of Painter and the accurate stroke opacity of Photoshop combined into a single brush. That’s right, stroke attributes work with most of Painter’s huge library of brushes with all of their complex features including grain, resaturation, bleed, bristle sprays, artist’s oils, clone color, pen pressure, rotation, speed and on and on and on. It’s a digital painter’s dream come true.

Real Watercolor

Painter is all about replicating natural media. For the past few releases new “Real” brush categories and types have been added, including Pencils and Hard Media in Painter 11. Painter 12 continues forward with new Real Watercolor brushes.

The new Real Watercolor brushes are, in a word, AMAZING!!! [yes, that was necessary – that's how good they are] To let them speak for themselves:

Real Watercolor sample.

Wet, darkened edges, texture from paper, flowing pigments and simulated soak-in all from a single brush stroke. This is the most realistic digital watercolor available today in any digital painting software. Water flows, evaporates and soaks into the canvas as if it were real paper, and of course, it’s taking color along for the ride. As water pools, so does the color which leaves rich, pigment-saturated fringes around the edges.

The diffusion and evaporation process can be paused over the duration of several strokes by using the pause icon in the brush property bar at the top of the Default workspace. When unpaused, all strokes will diffuse, evaporate and mix together as if they had all been laid on top of a wet piece of paper at the same time.

Next, the color model for Real Watercolor is a huge improvement from the normal Watercolor brushes. With the traditional Painter Watercolor brushes, color builds very quickly leaving a muddy, or completely black, mess on the canvas with saturated color. Real Watercolor, on the other hand, builds smoothly and more realistically. Final colors after diffusion are pure and turn out as expected.

The traditional Watercolor brushes are still available as well. Both Real Watercolor and Watercolor can interact with one another, so favorite effect brushes from the Watercolor category, like Eraser Salt can still be used just as it would normally.

Real Watercolor sample with Eraser Salt applied.

[I could continue gushing over these brushes for another 20 pages; I love them! Hands-down, this is my favorite new feature and I can't wait to see how everyone will use them and the gorgeous works of art that will be created with them.

Bonus: If you are interested in Painter's watercolor abilities, be sure to watch Joan A. Hamilton's Digital Painting Site. Joan is a Painter Watercolor expert with the old-style watercolor brushes. With these new and improved brushes in hand, I can't even imagine what she'll come up with, but I know it will be top notch and amazing – she does tutorials too!]

Real Wet Oil

Building from the technology in Real Watercolor, Real Wet Oil has many of the same qualities of Real Watercolor except Real Wet Oil is opaque and it doesn’t require a special Watercolor Layer. Real Wet Oil diffuses and blends much like, well, real wet oil paint running and mixing across a canvas, and it does it all by itself! With settings adjustments, the wetness of the applied paint can range from creamy oil to almost watercolor.

Along with brushes that apply color, Real Wet Oil also contains a few new blender brushes that act as turpentine (or water) on anything that’s available on the canvas. These both move color around the canvas and blend at the same time. The final result of the Turp brushes can look blurry, so take care to use them sparingly or be prepared to paint detail in on top of the blended color.

Beginnings of a koi painted with the help of Real Wet Oil in Painter 12.

Beyond oil painting, the Real Wet Oil brush settings are a huge leap forward. Never before has Painter specifically allowed both wet and dry media to interact with one another on the canvas, at least not with this much freedom. Real Wet Oil is not limited to only oil painting. For instance, the Turp brushes will spread pencils and chalk as if they were watercolor. Start a “to be wet” painting with a favorite brush, add some Turp here and there for blending and on to another brush. It’s digital mixed media at its finest.

Mirrored & Kaleidoscopic Painting

Kaleidoscopic painting has been available to Painter users through a special plugin layer for a long time, but the painting was confined to the specific plugin layer, which may or may not cover the entire canvas. With this release, the Kaleidoscope plugin layer is obsolete. The brand new Mirror Painting Tool and Kaleidoscope Painting Tool are available in the toolbox with all of the other tools. No special layer is needed, even for kaleidoscopic watercolor painting. Just choose the tool and paint on the canvas like with anything else!

Real Watercolor lily painted with the help of the Kaleidoscope Tool.

Kaleidoscopic painting with Real Watercolor in Painter 12 is quite intelligent. Even though the Lily in the example painting above was painted to be completely symmetric from 6 angles, notice the variety in the coloration of the petals. They are similar, but not exactly the same. This lends to a more realistic look in the end. Experiment and see if any other brushes give randomized looks.

Custom Palette Customizations

That’s a mouthful! Custom palettes are sets of tools and commands collected together in one place. One common use is pulling together a favorite set of specific brushes and settings for a particular painting style. In the past, when multiple brushes from the same category were added to a custom palette, their icons all looked exactly alike so it was difficult to tell different brushes apart quickly.

New custom palettes in Painter 12 solve the confusion by allowing icons and buttons to be customized completely. Now separate brushes can have separate icons that the user can distinguish quickly.

Under the Hood & Other Goodies

64-bit for Windows

Painter has had a lot of work done on the surface, but it has also received some attention under the hood. For the first time ever, Painter is a 64-bit application (at least on Windows – maybe next time Mac folks). Being 64-bit, it can access more RAM than today’s desktop computers can hold. This is one of the first steps in preparing Painter for the future.

Multicore Processing for Brushes

Brushes now support multicore processing which splits the painting task into pieces that are passed along to different parts of multicore processors. The more available cores, the faster brushes should work, even large ones. Even without multicore, though, the brush engine has been improved greatly in the area of speed. Large brushes do not lag as much or as easily as in past versions.

Temporal Color Palette

Choose colors quickly and easily right over your canvas with the new Temporal Color Palette. Call the palette with a shortcut key and it will appear under your brush. Choose your color and get right back to painting. The palette itself is partially transparent which allows comparison between the canvas and the color to be selected.

Brush Calibration Palette

Brush Tracking is an existing feature in the Painter preferences file. It controls mapping of pen pressure and other measurements from a graphics tablet. Setting Brush Tracking customizes the feel of all of the brushes in Painter. They are instantly tuned to the user’s painting style.

With Painter 12, Brush Tracking goes even further with the Brush Calibration palette. Every individual brush in Painter’s library can now have its own Brush Tracking preference. This leaves ultimate stroke control with the digital painter and ensures brushes feel just right.

Clone Source Palette

The cloning workflow has received several enhancements along with this update. Previously, only one clone source could be used at once and switching between several was not very convenient. Now, with multiple sources stored in the Clone Source palette, the switch is a single click.

With the Clone Source palette, it is now possible to keep several reference images open at once for clone painting. One common use for multiple clone sources is switching between several different color variations of a photo from other applications or saved from Painter’s own Underpainting palette. Tracing paper controls from the document window frame have also been moved into the Clone Source palette.

High Quality Display

In past versions of Painter, zoomed out views, and sometimes even the 100% view of a painting showed visible pixelation. The new high quality display smooths out all of those rough edges for both zoomed out and zoomed in views. Painter’s canvas has never looked better.

… and More

Hard to believe, but there are still more new features and enhancements. This is a HUGE update for Painter fans, bringing in enhancements from user requests over the years, stability and a few surprises from the Painter team. For an exhaustive list and video demonstrations of some of the features, head over to Painter’s page on the Corel website.

Give it a try…

To try out the new features, a free 30-day trial is available, as usual. The trial contains the entire Painter application and may be activated with a serial number just as the boxed or digital delivery edition in the Corel store. For new users, Painter 12 is currently $429 and for existing users, of Painter X and 11, upgrade pricing is $229.

For Painter’s 20th Anniversary a Limited Edition Paint Can is available in the Corel store for $449. These begin shipping on May 25, 2011.

What’s your favorite new feature?

What’s your favorite new feature of Painter 12? Have any questions? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Just One More Thing…

Yay!

From the outside, not much has changed between this version and the last, but there were a couple of very minor bugs fixed:

• Update install ran twice during the update process in earlier versions (this caused updates to take twice as long). During the next update cycle, the update will install only one time.
• The RSS panel at the bottom of the window loaded with a lot of filler text while waiting on to see if you had an active internet connection. That clutter has been removed. As a result, it takes the RSS panel a little while longer to populate, but at least you don’t see overlapping text while waiting.

You’ll also notice the large banner for painterLab.com (which is still in the works, but you may subscribe and know exactly when it launches!) has been removed and replaced with sponsor banners. Please visit and support the sponsors as they are helping to keep the Installer portion of the Brush Manager free for everyone and also supporting future developments. If you’d like to support development directly, you may also donate to the project with PayPal.

Also, I’d like to give a quick thanks to everyone for the kind words about the Brush Manager, here, in the forums and privately. Hope you all continue to enjoy it – things will only get better!

Corel Painter 11 box.
© 2009, Corel Corporation.

The wait is over – Corel® Painter™ 11 is here – that’s right 11, not X1! Packed with new features and increased functionality, this is going to be the best version of Painter yet. The new features look great – and it looks like a lot of user-submitted feature requests from over at the Painter Factory community site were included. See – our feedback is important. Congratulations to the Painter Team on the release!

Now onto the stuff everybody wants to hear about:

What’s New?

• Brushes – Adding to the already rich set of brushes available to digital painters, Painter 11 introduces RealBristle™ Dry Media, which includes Rendering Markers, new dynamic Pens and Pencils and Chalk that respond to the tilt of your Wacom stylus!
• Selection Tools – The selection tools of Painter have been improved with a new Polygonal mode for the Lasso tool and improvements to the Magic Wand and other selection methods.
• Color Management – Color management in Painter just got easier. Manage your colors in a familiar dialog window with clearly labeled dropdowns. Get color management right the first time, every time! There is also improved color management support between Painter and Photoshop.
• Colors Wheel & The Mixer – Both the color wheel and the mixer palettes are completely resizable. If the color wheel is too small for your tastes, just make it bigger – same goes for the Mixer – mix more colors at once.
• Transformation Controls – Resize, rotate, move and skew layers quickly with the new Layer Transform tools. No more jumping to Photoshop to resize or adjust a layer only to hop back into Painter to continue painting.
• PNG Image Support – Save your Painter creations as lossless PNG files to share. Also allows opening PNG images to composite into your paintings.
• Performance – Painter 11 is the fastest version of Painter yet with an up to 30% gain in performance for brushes from Painter X.1.
• Of course, I haven’t gone over everything. There is more sprinkled throughout the whole program, but I’ll leave it up you all of you to find the goodies. Go check the Painter 11 page at Corel for more information.

Where to get it?

• ESD (Electronic Software Download) versions and trial versions will be available directly from Corel on February 25, 2009.
• Preorders for the boxed version are also being accepted and are set to begin shipping on March 18, 2009.

Your Thoughts

What feature (or features) are you most excited about in Painter 11 – what do you look forward to using the most? Leave a comment – Corel pops in for a visit every once in a while.

The much awaited Blogging with WordPress for Creative Professionals at the ASTA workshop is coming up very soon (October 3 & 4)! This is going to be an awesome two days all about online marketing through blogging – and with attendees flying in from all over the country, you can bet it is going to be good!

As part of a marathon of workshops in the beginning of October, the evening before the blogging workshop (October 2 – 6-9pm), Alyson B. Stanfield, the Art Biz Coach, and author of I’d Rather Be in the Studio! will be giving a one night only workshop designed to “give you inspiration and motivation, along with ideas that you can use to promote yourself and sell more art.” For more information, go have a look at Alyson’s introduction to the program. ONLY 2 SEATS LEFT!

Directly after the Blogging Workshop (October 5 – 7), Marilyn has scheduled a Beginner’s workshop for Corel Painter – the Fall Painter Blast. This one is going to be a lot of fun (and is already sold out).

Registration for both open events is available in the Digital Painting Shop – limited spots left, so run over and make your reservation before the seats run out!

• Preparing a sketch for painting in Corel Painter X.
• Creating a simple round brush along with a custom brush category.
• Combining two separate photos to create a single painting.
• Creating and adding texture to paintings using layers.

Since these are taken directly from the class, this is the closest thing to being there outside of, well, being there! I’ve also packaged them all up into a 4-pack if you’d like to grab all of them at once – at a discount over purchasing them separately!

In the future, more tutorials will be added as sessions of the course come to a close, with each set coming a few weeks after the course end.

Just like in the class, I encourage all of you to not worry so much with following everything to the letter, but instead apply the steps to you own workflow to create your own unique creations.

This Fall, Chris of Studio|chris will team up with Marilyn Sholin at the ASTA workshop to give a very special workshop on blogging in beautiful Asheville, NC! Come experience the fall colors, fresh autumn air and learn from two passionate speakers on the subject of blogging and promoting yourself through online channels.

The workshop will be open to 14 students and will cover all aspects of blogging, from start to finish, using the WordPress blogging platform. We’ll also cover how to integrate your blog with your current website (or link to your new blog from your website), if you have one, and how to get a website if you don’t have one already. By the end of the workshop, all attending will have an awesome blog to use for marketing, online journaling, and keeping the world up to date on your art! Take advantage of this fabulous marketing platform.

Workshop Basics:

• Dates
  • October 3 & 4, 2008
• Pricing
  • $299
  • Includes the workshop, one-on-one time with Chris, breakfast & lunch on both workshop days and light refreshments.
• Suggested Prerequisites
  • A web hosting plan that supports PHP & MySQL (capable of running the WordPress software). If you’re unsure if your current web hosting provider offers this, contact Chris with the name and web address of your host. Those without hosting plans may participate in the workshop as well – there are options!

Registration open now at the Digital Painting Shop.

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Painter Lab is the only “built as we go” class at Digital Art Academy where the course develops as a direct result of what students are creating and what the students want to learn about. We start with a set of resources and create! Along the way, tutorials and videos are created based totally on what is happening organically in the classroom.

Along with the normal classroom stuff, we have weekly challenges where students are given a specific task to perform. So far, we’ve drawn and painted sketches in the challenges this session. All of the created pieces from the challenges are added into the pool of resources to create even more!

The apple painting above started as a sketch from a student. Using different resources, and while creating a tutorial for the class on using photographic texture, the painting sprang from the canvas!

What else is being produced in the lab?

Here is a selection of images from students currently enrolled in the lab:

Artwork used with students’ permission.

How do I get in on the fun?

Digital Art Academy registration for Session 5, the Fall Session opened today! Join DAA and enroll in the next session of Painter Lab. The next class begins on August 30th.

How do I sign up for a course?

1. First register at DAA to create your general user account. Your information is private and will not be sold or shared with anyone. DAA takes your privacy very seriously.
2. After you have registered, sign in and find the class you are interested in joining.
3. If the class is open for registration you will see a PayPal icon located towards the bottom of the page. Simply click on it to enroll into that class.

General Information:

Take some time to read the Student Fact sheet located on the front page. It will get you off to a great start at DAA. You may also register and enroll in more than one class at a time. DAA’s website will keep track of all of your class information for you!

Marilyn opened a new group on Flikr a couple of months ago to accompany her upcoming book. In the discussions for the group, Marilyn posted a question about using software aside from Corel Painter X to “paint.” In my answer to the question, I added After Effects CS3 into the mix of everyone else’s suggestions because I actually have used it in still paintings before!

Those of you who know what After Effects is may be a little confused, but I’ll get into the “why” in a minute. For those who may not know, After Effects is a motion graphics and video creation/editing/compositing application produced by Adobe. Chances are, if you watch movies and TV, you’ve seen the power of After Effects for film effects.

How does it apply to still images and painting?

Well, what is video? Still frames played together in succession. To “paint” with After Effects, all you have to do is create a composition with any desired effects and render a single still frame that matches the “vision” of the final piece.

Back to Marilyn’s group, coincidentally, I posted an image to my Flikr account (same image as above) where I used After Effects for part of the post-processing, and it is the one image Marilyn commented on! The light rays were created in After Effects using a combination of effects from both standard features and a couple of plugins, composited on top of my original, full resolution painting.

Here it is in animated (and exaggerated) form.

Have any of you ever used an application that wasn’t meant specifically for creating still-images to help in creating you own digital art?