Corel Painter Essentials 7 | Digital Art Suite | Amazon Exclusive Includes Free PhotoMirage Express Valued at $49 [PC/Mac Disc] [Old Version]

Corel painter essentials is the more simplified version of the full Corel Painter program. There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to using painter, but there are plenty of online instruction manuals and video tutorials. I am more of a visual learner when it comes to these types of programs, so its nice to be able to see someone using this specific program to create their art.

I think this is a fine entry-level program for the non-artist or the artist new to digital painting. I am not an artist but play with simple graphics for my own amusement. I had tried at least one previous iteration of Painter and was quickly overwhelmed with the options. This version gets around that by limiting the options and permitted user variations. The most noticeable of that being that users cannot tweak the settings to create their own brushes and then save that brush for later use. A professional artist might find that a limitation but for a casual user like me that is really not an issue, given the huge--HUGE--number of preprogrammed brushes. For those who dont anticipate creating original art but do want to enhance or just plain play with existing images, there is Auto-Paint, which lets you take any picture and convert it into styles suggestive of classical techniques: from Smooth Acrylic to Pastel to French Impressionist to Van Gogh. The program supports Layers, a Tracing function, a Text tool and, of course, painting from scratch. Overall, Painter Essentials is a non-intimidating introduction to painting software for the novice and, compared to expensive fully-featured packages, a fair value.

I bought this Corel Painter Essentials 7 particularly because it also was sold as coming with the bonus package of PhotoMirage. The product description states, Get PhotoMirage Express with this Amazon Exclusive. Transform any image or art into an animation in minutes, and, Corel Painter Essentials 7 | Digital Art Suite | Amazon Exclusive Includes Free PhotoMirage Express Valued at $49. Therefore, I did not get what I paid for.

This is my first time trying editing software and WOW...really overwhelming how much you can do. My head is still spinning and I’m sure I’ll be discovering new features and ways to create art almost endlessly. I would have given it 5 stars but it’s a little complicated for me, maybe just because I’ve never used anything like this before....fortunately there are a ton of tutorials online to help navigate it

What a joy to have this at my fingertips.

Painter Essentials installed effortlessly on my six year old desktop running the latest Windows 10 software. I knew nothing about the program but it comes with a number of tutorials that are quite good. The tutorials give general overviews but also more in-depth specific activities. Painter Essentials 7 lives up to what the Amazon website says and deserves 5 stars.

I have created a video that shows some of the basic features. If you click in the upper right corner of he video it will expand to full screen which makes it a lot easier to see what I am doing.

While I have a license of the full Painter software on my desktop - Im running Painter Essentials on my laptop. Started doing that with PE5 and have upgraded each time a new version has come out. PE7 is the latest. It has pretty much every thing that PE6 has - but seems to run just a tad better. I also make use of the PaintShop Pro Ultimate package on my laptop instead of paying for another license of Photoshop. For on the go use - both of these two Corel graphics packages cant be beat for the cost. Highly recommend both.

This is the first digital painting software Ive ever attempted to use. As a novice, I can say that Corel makes a good product thats relatively easy to pick up on. Yes, theres a learning curve, but its not nearly as severe as something like Photoshop.

This is an excellent cost-effective option for anyone who doesnt need the entire functionality of the much more expensive full Painter software. For less than a tenth of the cost (at the time of this review), I feel this has the features that most amateurs and even some avid amateurs need in this type of software.