Tools: Three Painting Programs Reviewed
January 9th, 2009 | Published in Featured, Reviews, Software Reviews
A digital painting created with GMX-Photopainter, from Gertrudis Graphics.
While Corel Painter remains the premiere digital painting application, it’s not the only game in town. Today we’ll take a quick look at three programs that are similar to, and in some areas superior to, Corel Painter. The first one is freeware, the second has a free version available, and the third is quite inexpensive (less than $100). All three are Windows-only, at least for now. Let’s get started!
Artweaver is a freeware application, and appears to be the work of a single developer in Germany. The software is still in its early beta stages, so be prepared for some roughness around the edges. You’ll notice right away how very similar Artweaver’s interface is to Painter’s. Artweaver may in fact be a better free alternative to Painter than another program we reviewed a few months ago, ArtRage. First of all, the free version of ArtRage is missing quite a bit of functionality (though the full version of ArtRage is only $25). Secondly, Artweaver is much more like Painter than ArtRage is. ArtRage has a very small selection of brushes, and Artweaver has quite a few. The brush “engine” in Artweaver is more like that in Photoshop, however, than Painter. The brush does not seem to interact with the colors on the paper, as Painter does. Instead, it merely lays down color in the shape of whatever brush you’re using, as Photoshop does. There are paper texture types, as in Painter. You can create and or modify brushes and papers. Artweaver will work with your graphics tablet. The developer seems to be actively improving Artweaver, so it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Next up is Pixarra Twisted Brush, which is currently at version 15.65. Twisted Brush Open Studio is a free version, and is just like the full version (Twisted Brush Pro Studio), except that it comes with only a few brushes, and you can’t edit brushes. The full version is $119, and comes with thousands of brushes. It supports layers (as does Artweaver), masks, cloning, filters, and has a 64-bit brush engine (Painter’s is only 24-bit). Actively supported by the developer.
The third program in the list seems to be the most promising, especially for photographers: GMX Photopainter from Argentinian developer Gertrudis Graphics. If you’ve tried the new “Smart Brushes” in Painter X, you know what they’re supposed to do: follow the contours of the subject in the image, so that the result looks truly hand-painted. Nice idea in theory, but Corel has a way to go, in my opinion. GMX, however, seems to focus on this functionality. It performs more like a filter than a painting application, which may be just what you’re looking for. I can see this product being very useful to photography studios looking to add digital paintings to their offerings, without adding hours and hours of computer time to their workload. It’s not good enough to replace the work of great digital artists, but it will certainly do a good job of quickly delivering hand-painted results that really do look hand-painted. Part of the reason for this is that you interact with the program, telling it where to focus the detail, and where to loosen up. This interaction is completely missing from Painter. GMX also has a lot more brush types than the handful of Smart Brushes currently in Painter. GMX Photopainter is $94.95. A Mac version is in development.
Screenshot from GMX, showing how well it maps the contours of an image for auto sketching.
