New Brushes Make You a Better Painter

Jon Pepper

Fractal Design's Painter has always been a favorite among artists for its brushes that closely simulate natural media. Version 5's new brushes, filters, and other features should broaden its appeal to new audiences without diminishing its status among artists.

One of the most appealing additions is "photo brushes" that you use to touch up scanned photos. These photo brushes let you eliminate scratches or recolor and tint photos. Painter 5 has other new brushes, too. The cloning brushes do more than stamp out images cookie-cutter style; they can also make a photo seem like a painting. The layer brushes are akin to painting on glass overlays. And the gooey brushes do exactly that -- turn images into liquid pools that you can pull, push, and pinch.

Some of the cooler and more useful floaters, which are filters that can dynamically apply special effects to a given layer in your image, include liquid metal, which gives the effect of dripping, metallic paint, and glass distortion and kaleidoscope lenses that alter the look of the layer underneath, much as viewing an image under glass would.

Other additions include an improved interface with tear-off tool palettes, the ability to create eye-catching Internet effects fairly easily, and Kodak's Color Management, for consistency in production. Also worth noting are some excellent masking features and the ability to easily share files between Photoshop 4 and Painter (Painter can read and write Photoshop files). Given all these changes, Painter 5 remains a prime paint tool and has evolved into a program that graphic designers and business users involved with professional image editing should consider for their software shelf.

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Where to Find

Painter 5 (Mac/Win 95)..................$449

MetaCreations Corp.
Carpinteria, CA
Phone:    800-846-0111
Phone:    408-430-4100
Fax:      408-438-9670
Internet: 
http://www.metacreations.com

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A Brush with Greatness

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