Words by Keoni Littlemouse
July 2005

I’m not sure that there’s room enough in this article for all the things I have to say about Corel’s Painter IX, so before I go any further, let me just sum up how I feel in one word.

Love.

Now you can go on and read the rest of this article, or you can read the rest of this magazine without reading the rest of this article; at least I’ve said what I had to say.
Painter IX, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways (and what the heck, let’s just choose nine of them):

1. Everything is faster. I don’t know how they did it, but it’s true. Gone are the days of waiting for your onscreen stroke to catch up with your real-world movement; it’s pretty much real-time brush strokes now… and I’m using a five year old 500 Mhz G4.
2. Quick Cloning is simple. I’ve always been intimidated by this feature because there were so many steps involved in the using of it. Painter IX makes this as simple as clicking one little icon at the right upper corner of your document window.
3. You can make true curves. Unless you’ve used previous versions of Painter, this might not make much sense to you. It used to be that drawing a simple curve would result in a line composed of straight segments that approximated a curve, but was fairly unconvincing. This has been fixed, and now you, sir or madam, may arc away happily into the wee hours.
4. Stroke a vector path. Adobe Illustrator aficionados, rejoice! Painter IX now lets you import your Illustrator files directly into Painter, where you can stroke those vector-based lines with any brush you want. Give your old logo new life!
5. Open Photoshop files with layers intact. Speaking of Adobe, Painter now offers improved Photoshop support. When working with Photoshop files, any and all layers, layers sets, and layer masks are imported in with your file. For anyone who’s ever had to do the painful going back and forth between two programs, saving here, opening there, this is a breath of fresh air (rhyme unintentional).
6. Customizable keyboard shortcuts. That’s right, you read correctly. You may now fully customize your keyboard shortcuts. If you’ve gotten used to that weird three-fingered “Save As…” shortcut, well, now you can do it here too.
7. Artist Oils rock. I don’t want to hear you telling anyone otherwise. Because I have to be brief, I’ll entice you with a few concepts: Brushes that run out of paint like real-world brushes. Paints that realistically interact with each other. Painting with multiple colors on one brush. “Dirty paint” that picks up the color of the paint that you work your brush over. Don’t let the fact that I used the word ‘paint’ far too many times in this paragraph to stop your mind from fantasizing about all the new freedoms your artwork can enjoy.
8. Brush controls now come in one palette. Admittedly, it’s a pretty large palette, but there they all are, ready for tweaking at a moment’s notice. You can also group them in any configuration your little heart desires; remove some, keep others, whatever you want.
9. Bend the laws of physics with the new Digital Watercolor brush. How sweet is this? Now, not only can you dynamically control the amount and spread of watercolor fringing, but you can keep the canvas wet between sessions. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to hand it to Painter for this one: this is better than playing with real watercolors.
That, I think, is at the heart of the Painter IX experience: play. You can follow all the tutorials and read the manual, but if you really want to unlock your (and Painter’s) hidden potential, you have to be able to play with the tools. Painter makes this easier than ever before with improved ease of navigation, intelligent grouping of features, and marvelous new brushes.

So there you have it, my 9-part ode to Painter IX. And these are only the items I chose to talk about. I haven’t even mentioned the great new Welcome screen, which lets you choose recent documents as well as any saved templates you may have added. You also get to see samples of some accomplished Painter expert artists, along with live links to their websites.

Additionally, Painter IX comes with a handbook that features tutorials from those very same Painter masters, and some great free training from Lynda.com, one of the premier training companies on the Internet.

Painter IX is the program I always wished I had when I was just starting out: Elegant, intuitive, deep, and above all, fun.

Name: Painter IX
Website: www.corel.com/painterix/home/index.html
Price: $429 box version; $399 download version
Pros: Tools are many times faster than Painter 8
N ew artist brushes
Quick clone much simpler to use
New vector path stroking
Cons: Nothing appreciable
Summary: The latest version of Painter has become the natural media graphics powerhouse we always knew it could be.