When you’re happy with the effect onscreen, click on the Quick Clone command. Using the drop-downs at the top of the palette, you can adjust your photo’s contrast, brightness and saturation, apply a vignette-style effect and some blurring. First is the Underpainting palette, which lets you set up your original image ready for cloning. The biggest change is the introduction of three new dedicated Photo Painting palettes. The new Sketch Effect is particularly handy, helping you to pull out the outlines of your photo either to stand on their own as a pencil sketch or as the framework for further work. In Essentials, the whole process has been reworked. Although this is an obvious use for art software, such cloning has always been complex. This dedicated Cloner tool is the first sign of Essentials’ focus on helping to convert existing photography into artwork. In fact, even if you’re using an older tablet or a tablet PC, all Essentials’ brushes feel more responsive, with Corel claiming that most now work twice as fast and some ten times faster.Įssentials also adds some useful new tools: the Rotate Page tool lets you temporarily rotate the canvas to make it more natural to draw angled strokes the Eraser tool makes it simpler to remove paint and reveal the underlying paper and the Rubber Stamp tool works like its Photoshop namesake, letting you pick up paint from one area of the image and apply it elsewhere.Ĭlicking on the new Cloner tool will automatically select the most recently used Cloner brush variant. By comparison, the new Digital Watercolour brushes stay wet even between sessions, while the new range of Art Pens let you create fluid calligraphic effects, reacting to every movement of the stylus if you’re using one of the latest Art Pen 6 or Wacom Intuos 3 tablets.

With the new range of Artist’s Oils, for example, the thick, bristly brushes smear on finite amounts of oil paint – as you drag, the paint runs dry revealing more of the underlying paper grain. Crucially, though, you can still achieve impressive end results.

Compared to Painter, the creative power on offer is limited.

Corel painter 6