Corel Painter Essentials is digital painting software for Windows. It supports drawing on a blank canvas and turning existing photographs into paintings, with manual brushes, automatic photo painting and layers for assembling the artwork.
Drawing with brushes and colors
A new canvas has a chosen size and orientation. The Brush Library groups variants by media, including pencils, oils, acrylics and digital watercolor. Selecting a variant sets the brush used for strokes on the canvas or active layer.
Size controls the stroke width, opacity changes how strongly paint appears, and grain adjusts interaction with the paper texture. A compatible stylus supplies pressure, tilt and bearing input. Undo, Eraser and Reset Tool handle changes to strokes or settings.
Color selection and mixing
The color wheel combines a hue ring with a triangle for saturation and brightness. The Dropper takes a color from an existing image. The Mixer blends colors on a palette before they are used in the painting.
Color harmonies produce related swatches from the selected color. Corel Painter Essentials includes complementary, light monochromatic and dark monochromatic choices. The edition also includes four supplied color sets.
Blending and symmetrical strokes
Some Blender brushes work on colors already present rather than adding paint. Because they need existing image content, applying them to an empty part of the canvas has no effect.
Choosing Mirror Painting applies symmetry to the brushstrokes you draw. In Kaleidoscope mode, those manually drawn strokes become repeated symmetrical patterns on the canvas. Optional Essentials brush packs add further variants to the supplied collection.
Painting and tracing photographs
The Photo Painting panel takes an opened photo, including JPG images, as its source. Selecting an Auto-Paint preset determines the painting style. Starting the operation creates the painting automatically; it stops on completion or when Stop is used.
AI-based presets also work from the selected photograph. After the automatic pass, hand-applied strokes can alter the result. Touch-up brushes such as Soft In bring source detail back into chosen areas where the painting has become blurred.
Manual photo painting and tracing
Manual photo painting uses the source image differently. With Clone color from source image enabled, brushstrokes take their colors from the photograph. Disabling that option makes the brush use the selected painting color instead.
Tracing paper displays a faded reference over the canvas while you draw outlines by hand. Its opacity slider changes how clearly the source appears. A pencil or sketch brush can follow the reference while using an independently chosen color.
The tracing reference is a viewing overlay, rather than an editable layer. Turning it off reveals the painting without the faded source image. This makes it possible to inspect the marks you have drawn separately from the reference.
Layers and image composition
Layers separate parts of the painting so each can be modified or removed independently. Transparent areas reveal the content underneath. The Layers panel creates, arranges and groups layers, while compositing controls determine how their content combines.
The Layer Adjuster selects and positions layer content, and locking a layer protects it during other work. Rectangle, oval and freehand lasso selections isolate parts of the image. Transform operates on a selected area rather than the entire composition.
The Text tool adds text shapes with a chosen font and point size. Artwork can also move between Corel Painter Essentials and Photoshop while preserving colors and layers. Essentials is sold with a perpetual licence, with a trial available.
