"Corel ships Painter 2016"

[Hirazi Blue]

Corel ships Painter 2016

Corel has released Painter 2016, the latest update to its digital painting package,
adding a range of new physics-based brush options, a reworked blending system,
and the option to import Photoshop brushes.

(...)
Top of the feature list is the new Special Media Brushes, which build on the particle brush system introduced in Painter 2015,
combining physics-based brush effects with the properties of natural media.

Painter 2015 is available now for 64-bit Windows and Mac OS X, price $429.

[luis7654]

$429 sounds a little expensive... considering that even now photoshop is like $10 bucks per month, sketchbook pro is like $3 per month and there is krita for free.
Plus there are plenty of other options out there, but I have never used painter to be honest... perhaps is really great, and is really worth it.

[Hirazi Blue]

I fully agree that it sounds a bit expensive, but from my experience (years ago)
it's a venerable and respectable package that works.
;)

[Rork]

Maybe Krita is something for you?

[Hirazi Blue]

Yeah, I'm fully aware of Krita (and some of its pitfalls as to stability)
I haven't tried Painter in a while, so I can't compare them 1:1,
but I enjoyed Painter very much when I used to use it years ago,
so I have a "soft-spot" for it...
;)

[Daniel Brassard]

Painter has become a beast of a program. I still have the Paint Can it use to come with although I upgraded several time since (2015).

The particle brush is quite fun to use. I did a logo of a running horse lately and the blur effect was done with the particle brush.

Other than Photoshop, Painter has been my digital tool creation for years. ArtRage and Sketchbook pro are not bad but I find myself back to Photoshop/Painter for heavy duty work most of the time.

On the free side GIMP and Krita are also fun to use. inkscape, a vector painting program, is also a good open source program to try.

https://inkscape.org/en/