{"id":15670,"date":"2015-12-29T09:59:42","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T14:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=15670"},"modified":"2015-12-29T09:59:42","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T14:59:42","slug":"pe5-corels-wrong-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/pe5-corels-wrong-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"PE5: Corel&#8217;s Wrong Direction"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n<p id=\"pvc_stats_15670\" class=\"pvc_stats all  \" data-element-id=\"15670\" style=\"\"><i class=\"pvc-stats-icon medium\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" version=\"1.0\" viewBox=\"0 0 502 315\" preserveAspectRatio=\"xMidYMid meet\"><g transform=\"translate(0,332) scale(0.1,-0.1)\" fill=\"\" stroke=\"none\"><path d=\"M2394 3279 l-29 -30 -3 -207 c-2 -182 0 -211 15 -242 39 -76 157 -76 196 0 15 31 17 60 15 243 l-3 209 -33 29 c-26 23 -41 29 -80 29 -41 0 -53 -5 -78 -31z\"\/><path d=\"M3085 3251 c-45 -19 -58 -50 -96 -229 -47 -217 -49 -260 -13 -295 52 -53 146 -42 177 20 16 31 87 366 87 410 0 70 -86 122 -155 94z\"\/><path d=\"M1751 3234 c-13 -9 -29 -31 -37 -50 -12 -29 -10 -49 21 -204 19 -94 39 -189 45 -210 14 -50 54 -80 110 -80 34 0 48 6 76 34 21 21 34 44 34 59 0 14 -18 113 -40 219 -37 178 -43 195 -70 221 -36 32 -101 37 -139 11z\"\/><path d=\"M1163 3073 c-36 -7 -73 -59 -73 -102 0 -56 133 -378 171 -413 34 -32 83 -37 129 -13 70 36 67 87 -16 290 -86 209 -89 214 -129 231 -35 14 -42 15 -82 7z\"\/><path d=\"M3689 3066 c-15 -9 -33 -30 -42 -48 -48 -103 -147 -355 -147 -375 0 -98 131 -148 192 -74 13 15 57 108 97 206 80 196 84 226 37 273 -30 30 -99 39 -137 18z\"\/><path d=\"M583 2784 c-38 -19 -67 -74 -58 -113 9 -42 211 -354 242 -373 16 -10 45 -18 66 -18 51 0 107 52 107 100 0 39 -1 41 -124 234 -80 126 -108 162 -133 173 -41 17 -61 16 -100 -3z\"\/><path d=\"M4250 2784 c-14 -9 -74 -91 -133 -183 -95 -150 -107 -173 -107 -213 0 -55 33 -94 87 -104 67 -13 90 8 211 198 130 202 137 225 78 284 -27 27 -42 34 -72 34 -22 0 -50 -8 -64 -16z\"\/><path d=\"M2275 2693 c-553 -48 -1095 -270 -1585 -649 -135 -104 -459 -423 -483 -476 -23 -49 -22 -139 2 -186 73 -142 361 -457 571 -626 285 -228 642 -407 990 -497 242 -63 336 -73 660 -74 310 0 370 5 595 52 535 111 1045 392 1455 803 122 121 250 273 275 326 19 41 19 137 0 174 -41 79 -309 363 -465 492 -447 370 -946 591 -1479 653 -113 14 -422 18 -536 8z m395 -428 c171 -34 330 -124 456 -258 112 -119 167 -219 211 -378 27 -96 24 -300 -5 -401 -72 -255 -236 -447 -474 -557 -132 -62 -201 -76 -368 -76 -167 0 -236 14 -368 76 -213 98 -373 271 -451 485 -162 444 86 934 547 1084 153 49 292 57 452 25z m909 -232 c222 -123 408 -262 593 -441 76 -74 138 -139 138 -144 0 -16 -233 -242 -330 -319 -155 -123 -309 -223 -461 -299 l-81 -41 32 46 c18 26 49 83 70 128 143 306 141 649 -6 957 -25 52 -61 116 -79 142 l-34 47 45 -20 c26 -10 76 -36 113 -56z m-2057 25 c-40 -58 -105 -190 -130 -263 -110 -324 -59 -707 132 -981 25 -35 42 -64 37 -64 -19 0 -241 119 -326 174 -188 122 -406 314 -532 468 l-58 71 108 103 c185 178 428 349 672 473 66 33 121 60 123 61 2 0 -10 -19 -26 -42z\"\/><path d=\"M2375 1950 c-198 -44 -350 -190 -395 -379 -18 -76 -8 -221 19 -290 114 -284 457 -406 731 -260 98 52 188 154 231 260 27 69 37 214 19 290 -38 163 -166 304 -326 360 -67 23 -215 33 -279 19z\"\/><\/g><\/svg><\/i> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading\" src=\"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/page-views-count\/ajax-loader-2x.gif\" border=0 \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Introducing Corel Painter Essentials 5\" width=\"805\" height=\"453\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1A3VucsKCIA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Way back in 1990, a program called Fractal Painter was published by Fractal Design.<\/strong> It offered a &#8220;natural media&#8221; approach to digital art:\u00a0mimicking\u00a0real world art tools and media in the digital environment. You could \u00a0&#8211; if you had more artistic skills than I &#8211; make an image onscreen that looked like it was a photo of a real-media image. Images had texture, oils had highlights. You could mix colours like you do in real life.<\/p>\n<p>It was brilliant, exciting and ground-breaking stuff.<\/p>\n<p>In 1997, after gobbling up several other products (including Poser 3D), the company became <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/MetaCreations\" target=\"_blank\">Metacreations<\/a>, but it and extended itself a little too far, and split into fragments that were individually acquired by Microsoft and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Corel\" target=\"_blank\">Corel<\/a>.<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">*<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Corel continued to publish &#8211; and enhance &#8211; Painter. It turned Painter into the foremost &#8220;natural media&#8221; digital art program on the market. Its latest incarnation is Painter 2016, a remarkable and powerful art program that sells for $500.<\/p>\n<p>The price, however, deterred many users who wanted a simple art program for non-commercial uses or to just\u00a0make art-like variations of their digital photographs. So Corel developed <em>Painter Essentials<\/em>, \u00a0at a modest (under $50) price. PE was, essentially, Painter-light, offering a stripped-down subset of Painter tools.<\/p>\n<p>The big draw in Painter Essentials (PE) was its auto-paint feature. It automated the brush and pen strokes. With a few clicks, users could turn a digital image (a photograph, for example) into an art-like rendition. Oil, charcoal, pencil, watercolour, impressionist, modern, pen-and-ink&#8230; just a few easy clicks to create an art-like image. Even watching the process work was mesmerizing.<\/p>\n<p>Want a photo to look like a charcoal sketch? A watercolour? A Cezanne or Van Gogh painting? PE 4 had those options. But better yet, it had options to control the brush size, colours, canvas, stroke frequency and so on in each category. That meant users could personalize images in many ways previously unavailable except at much higher cost.<\/p>\n<p>People loved PE. It filled a need for creating beautiful art without the effort, time or cost of Painter, but without the talent required to use all those tools. It offered\u00a0enough control to make each resulting image unique and give users a feeling they had accomplished something other than just clicking.<\/p>\n<p>It had many powerful\u00a0tools and features &#8211; Painter&#8217;s brushes &#8211; to make it more than a toy.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>PE continue to develop over the years, to add features with each version, and to strengthen the auto-paint tool\u00a0until PE 4 in 2007. PE 4 was a remarkable, robust program that\u00a0offered unprecedented user-control over auto-paint features and functions.<\/p>\n<p>Then it all gang aft agley, as Robert Browning might say.<\/p>\n<p>PE spun off &#8220;Paint-It&#8221; in 2010 which might be described as Painter-light-light. It reduced the feature set and palette of PE to idiotic simplicity. And that seems to have been the guiding light for Corel&#8217;s future development of the product line. Paint-It was a watered\/dumbed-down version of PE.<\/p>\n<p>PE 5, the latest 64-bit version, took the program in the\u00a0direction  Paint-it had blazoned, but also, curiously, following Painter&#8217;s enhanced tools. PE5\u00a0simplified and reduced the popular auto-paint functions of PE4 to easy-for-idiots level, while\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.painterartist.com\/static\/product_content\/painteressentials\/5\/pe5-compare-versions-en.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">adding a lot of non-automatic functions and tools like brush styles<\/a> to compensate. It seems a curious trade-off, given the potential audience.<\/p>\n<p>In PE5, all those controls that made PE4&#8217;s auto-painting impressive were stripped away, and the number of auto-paint styles was reduced from 18 to 11. And whereas in PE4, you could &#8211; if you had a bit of tech savvy &#8211; change\u00a0the auto-paint styles by editing the XML files, in PE5 even that capability has been removed. In PE5 all you can do is choose a pre-set style and click start (and stop).<\/p>\n<p>PE5 became more like Painter-light in adding a more robust\u00a0toolset, but in doing so closed the door on those users who weren&#8217;t looking to get more technical control or brushes (now 126 of them); those who just wanted to make pretty pictures from their digital photos.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, PE5 sank from the auto-paint stack programs to one of the bottom\u00a0choices. Its target audience is likely those who are expected\u00a0to upgrade to Painter 2016 and who have more than casual artistic skills. Meanwhile, other, competing programs &#8211; Dynamic Autopainter\u00a0and\u00a0Snap Art among those at the top of the list &#8211; emerged as better and more comprehensive alternatives for auto-painting.<\/p>\n<p>That was an unfortunate choice for Corel. PE no longer fulfills the need for non-artists like me, who feel the urge to create digital art relatively easily. PE has a lot of features for those who want to spend the time to manually tweak\u00a0a digital photo. That&#8217;s both time-consuming and exacting work, especially if you&#8217;re using a mouse not a graphic drawing tablet. And it requires more artistic skills than the average user has.<\/p>\n<p>For most professional artists, PE5 makes little sense as a purchase: they might as well go all the way to Painter 2016 and get all the tools. For the rest of us: consider the competition if you&#8217;re looking for auto-painting.<\/p>\n<p>PE5 gets a 2 out of 5 in my rating, but if you find a copy, PE4 rates 4.5 out of 5 (and, yes, even though 32-bit, it works with Win 10).<\/p>\n<p><strong>~~~~~<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">*<\/span> I have been a loyal Corel user since the early 1990s. I&#8217;ve used Draw since version 3 (it&#8217;s now version 17, or X7) and still use it regularly. I have been using PaintShop Pro for at least a decade, and VideoStudio almost as long. I have had many other Corel products, too, and have upgraded to each new version for most programs (Painter only to version X). For the most part, I&#8217;ve been impressed with Corel&#8217;s product line. PE5 is an exception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n<p id=\"pvc_stats_15670\" class=\"pvc_stats all  \" data-element-id=\"15670\" style=\"\"><i class=\"pvc-stats-icon medium\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" version=\"1.0\" viewBox=\"0 0 502 315\" preserveAspectRatio=\"xMidYMid meet\"><g transform=\"translate(0,332) scale(0.1,-0.1)\" fill=\"\" stroke=\"none\"><path d=\"M2394 3279 l-29 -30 -3 -207 c-2 -182 0 -211 15 -242 39 -76 157 -76 196 0 15 31 17 60 15 243 l-3 209 -33 29 c-26 23 -41 29 -80 29 -41 0 -53 -5 -78 -31z\"\/><path d=\"M3085 3251 c-45 -19 -58 -50 -96 -229 -47 -217 -49 -260 -13 -295 52 -53 146 -42 177 20 16 31 87 366 87 410 0 70 -86 122 -155 94z\"\/><path d=\"M1751 3234 c-13 -9 -29 -31 -37 -50 -12 -29 -10 -49 21 -204 19 -94 39 -189 45 -210 14 -50 54 -80 110 -80 34 0 48 6 76 34 21 21 34 44 34 59 0 14 -18 113 -40 219 -37 178 -43 195 -70 221 -36 32 -101 37 -139 11z\"\/><path d=\"M1163 3073 c-36 -7 -73 -59 -73 -102 0 -56 133 -378 171 -413 34 -32 83 -37 129 -13 70 36 67 87 -16 290 -86 209 -89 214 -129 231 -35 14 -42 15 -82 7z\"\/><path d=\"M3689 3066 c-15 -9 -33 -30 -42 -48 -48 -103 -147 -355 -147 -375 0 -98 131 -148 192 -74 13 15 57 108 97 206 80 196 84 226 37 273 -30 30 -99 39 -137 18z\"\/><path d=\"M583 2784 c-38 -19 -67 -74 -58 -113 9 -42 211 -354 242 -373 16 -10 45 -18 66 -18 51 0 107 52 107 100 0 39 -1 41 -124 234 -80 126 -108 162 -133 173 -41 17 -61 16 -100 -3z\"\/><path d=\"M4250 2784 c-14 -9 -74 -91 -133 -183 -95 -150 -107 -173 -107 -213 0 -55 33 -94 87 -104 67 -13 90 8 211 198 130 202 137 225 78 284 -27 27 -42 34 -72 34 -22 0 -50 -8 -64 -16z\"\/><path d=\"M2275 2693 c-553 -48 -1095 -270 -1585 -649 -135 -104 -459 -423 -483 -476 -23 -49 -22 -139 2 -186 73 -142 361 -457 571 -626 285 -228 642 -407 990 -497 242 -63 336 -73 660 -74 310 0 370 5 595 52 535 111 1045 392 1455 803 122 121 250 273 275 326 19 41 19 137 0 174 -41 79 -309 363 -465 492 -447 370 -946 591 -1479 653 -113 14 -422 18 -536 8z m395 -428 c171 -34 330 -124 456 -258 112 -119 167 -219 211 -378 27 -96 24 -300 -5 -401 -72 -255 -236 -447 -474 -557 -132 -62 -201 -76 -368 -76 -167 0 -236 14 -368 76 -213 98 -373 271 -451 485 -162 444 86 934 547 1084 153 49 292 57 452 25z m909 -232 c222 -123 408 -262 593 -441 76 -74 138 -139 138 -144 0 -16 -233 -242 -330 -319 -155 -123 -309 -223 -461 -299 l-81 -41 32 46 c18 26 49 83 70 128 143 306 141 649 -6 957 -25 52 -61 116 -79 142 l-34 47 45 -20 c26 -10 76 -36 113 -56z m-2057 25 c-40 -58 -105 -190 -130 -263 -110 -324 -59 -707 132 -981 25 -35 42 -64 37 -64 -19 0 -241 119 -326 174 -188 122 -406 314 -532 468 l-58 71 108 103 c185 178 428 349 672 473 66 33 121 60 123 61 2 0 -10 -19 -26 -42z\"\/><path d=\"M2375 1950 c-198 -44 -350 -190 -395 -379 -18 -76 -8 -221 19 -290 114 -284 457 -406 731 -260 98 52 188 154 231 260 27 69 37 214 19 290 -38 163 -166 304 -326 360 -67 23 -215 33 -279 19z\"\/><\/g><\/svg><\/i> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading\" src=\"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/page-views-count\/ajax-loader-2x.gif\" border=0 \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n<p>Way back in 1990, a program called Fractal Painter was published by Fractal Design. It offered a &#8220;natural media&#8221; approach to digital art:\u00a0mimicking\u00a0real world art tools and media in the digital environment. You could \u00a0&#8211; if you had more artistic skills than I &#8211; make an image onscreen that looked like it was a photo of a real-media image. Images had texture, oils had highlights. You could mix colours like you do in real life. It was brilliant, exciting and ground-breaking stuff. In 1997, after gobbling up several other products (including Poser 3D), the company became Metacreations, but it and \u2026&#8230;&#8230; click below for more \u2193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[393,657],"tags":[125,658,660,659],"class_list":["post-15670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-computing","category-software-reviews","tag-art","tag-corel","tag-painter-essentials","tag-software"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":4921,"today_views":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15670"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15769,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15670\/revisions\/15769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}