Why Corel Painter pisses me off
Spoiler Alert: I like it, but I don't. It's complicated.
- even 2018 is slow and stuttery on my machine, which runs #ClipStudioPaint and #AdobePhotoshop just fine
- Even just doing simple UI things take a long time
- Jitters and UI stutters drive me insane
- Various layer blending problems
- white edges around some transparent layers
- Why have “Default” and “normal” both? whyyyyyy
- Other blend modes seem redundant as well, Shadow Map vs Multiply?
- Very little support community. More people seem to be talking about #ClipStudioPaint than #CorelPainter, and it's a port of a Japanese product.
- Searching for help topics for corel painter routinely includes other corel apps instead of painter
- no options for color depth like in AdobePhotoshop
- Not as familiar with the brush system (100% my fault)
- Various missing simple features
- Can't duplicate or convert canvas to normal layer
- can't move the canvas layer using the normal move tool
- Tab closes the navigator as well (same with PS and CSP, but they have a work around, see next)
- Can't duplicate the view of a single file to use it like the navigator
- Nag screen to buy the next product, when I already paid my money
- Pressure sensitivity lacks finesse
- the pressure curve is global to the program, not local to an individual brush, like it is in ClipStudioPaint
- Less smoothing options than ClipStudioPaint, but more than AdobePhotoshop at least
- Differences in navigator view and canvas view interpolation make the textures look very different in each. No idea what the image actually looks like.
- magic wand selects regions along the image border when it should stop at the image border.
- poorly socialized. Does not play well with others, like Photoshop. CSP isn't spectacular at this, but it's at least plausible.
Why it bothers me
I wouldn't normally just bash on a product I don't like just because I don't like it. But here's the thing, it's a love/hate relationship. I can get some amazing output from the tools in painter, but at what cost? Even my wife comes and tells me to stop using it when I get too frustrated at it. But you can directly compare the brush quality of this image made in Painter:
with this one, made in Clip, attempting to emulate the same sort of brushwork:
I've been working on trying to translate some of those features, but so far it's been a pretty tough battle, and I'm not really winning it.
I should try again though, I've got a lot of CSP brushes I want to make. Just need a list and some time.
file under #art #painting #process #software #rant
I'm Joe Bush and I design games as Voidspiral Entertainment. Did you like the article? Hit me up on tabletop.social or twitter.