Using the Brush Drawer

One of the joys of using Corel®  Painter™ Essentials 4 is exploring the media in the Brush Drawer. When you find a medium that you like, you can customize it and save it as a favorite brush. By saving the brush in this way, you can find it quickly when you want to reuse it.

The Brush Drawer

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to do the following:

•    choose a brush from the Brush Drawer
•    customize a brush
•    add a brush to the Favorites area
•    remove a brush from the Favorites area

 

Step 1: Choose a brush from the Brush Drawer

1.    Start Corel Painter Essentials 4, and create a new painting (File menu > New). Choose any page size and resolution you want.
2.    On the left side of the application window, click the Brush Drawer arrow . The Brush Drawer opens.
3.    Click a brush category tab along the top of the brush drawer. To view the names of the categories before you click, hover over the brush category tabs.
  
 
4.    From the list of brushes, click a brush stroke.

Step 2: Customize a brush

1.    Choose a brush from the Brush Drawer.
2.    On the property bar, adjust the settings: Brush Size, Opacity, and Grain.

  Note: The Grain control is available only for brushes that react to the paper grain.

 

Step 3: Save a favorite brush

1.    Choose the brush that you want to save.
2.    Click the Add Favorites button at the bottom of the Brush Drawer.
 
    An icon for the brush that you are currently using is added to the Favorites area of the Brush Drawer. You can click the brush icon whenever you want to access the brush.

    Note: Whenever you use a brush, the icon for the brush is automatically added to the top of the Recently Used area (above the Favorites area). If you forget to add a brush to the Favorites area, you can look for the brush in the Recently Used area.

 

Step 4: Remove a brush from the Favorites area

1.    Open the Brush Drawer. (You cannot remove a brush from the Favorites area if the Brush Drawer is closed.)
2.    In the Favorites area, locate the brush icon for the brush that you want to remove, and drag the icon out of the Favorites area.

   
    The plus sign changes to a minus sign, which indicates that you are removing a brush.

Tips

•    You can view the name of the brush that you are currently using by hovering over the Brush Tool icon in the toolbox.
  

 

•    You can clear all brushes from the Recently Used area and the Favorites area of the Brush Drawer by restoring the factory default settings. To do this, hold down the Shift key when you start the application. In the dialog box that appears, click Yes to confirm that you want to restore the factory default settings.

A great way to share the unique and personal artwork that you create in Corel Painter Essentials is by ordering prints. Printing services offer a variety of options; you can print to canvas, art paper, or to a variety of other media, such as mugs or clothing.

You can print and frame your artwork (left). Printing to art paper or canvas gives your artwork a natural texture (detail view, right).

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to...

• save your work to the JPEG file format
• connect to an online printing service

What you’ll need

• Corel Painter Essentials 4
• an image that you want to send to an online printing service

Tip

• Before you begin this tutorial, click Save to create a copy of your work in the RIF file format. This format is the native file format for Corel Painter Essentials, so your work retains maximum quality and remains editable.

Step 1: Preparing your image

Most online printing services let you load JPEG files, so in this step, you’ll save a copy of your image to the JPEG file format.

1. In Corel Painter Essentials 4, click File > Save As.
2. In the Save (Mac) or Save Image As (Windows) dialog box, navigate to the folder where you want to save the file and type a name in the Save As (Mac) or File Name (Windows) box.
3. From the Format (Mac) or Save As Type (Windows) pop-up menu, choose JPEG Files
   
       
   
   
4. Click the Save button. A dialog box appears to inform you that all layers will be merged. Click OK to proceed.
5. In the JPEG Encoding Quality dialog box, enable the Excellent option.  It is not necessary to adjust the other JPEG options.
6. Click OK.
   
       

 

Step 2: Connecting to an online print service

If you have an Internet connection, you can connect directly to an online printing service from within Corel Painter Essentials.

1. In Corel Painter Essentials 4, click File > Online Print Services.
2. Follow the instructions on the Web site.
   

Tip

• For a list of things to consider when you order prints, see the professional printing tutorial on page 77 of the Guidebook (Help > Guidebook) and take a look at the Getting Professional Prints video tutorial (Help > Video Tutorials).

You can create unique and personal greeting cards with paintings that you create in Corel® Painter^TM Essentials 4.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to...

• create a watercolor painting from a photo
• add space around the edges of the painting
• soften the edges of the painting
• add text

What you’ll need

• Corel Painter Essentials 4
• Sample image

Create a watercolor painting from a photo

1. In Corel Painter Essentials 4, open snowpath.jpg.
2. Click the Photo Painting tab.
   
   
   
3. In the Source Image palette, click Use Open Image.
4. In the Auto-Painting palette, choose Detailed Watercolor.
   
   
   
5. In the Auto-Painting palette, click Start. The Detailed Watercolor style is applied. You can wait until the auto-painting feature finishes painting or you can click Stop when you are satisfied with the results.
   

Add space around the edges

1. From the Canvas menu, choose Canvas Size.
2. In the Adjust Size area, add 100 pixels to the top, left, and right borders. Add 300 pixels to the bottom border so you have space to add text.
   

Soften the edges

1. In the toolbox, choose the Eraser tool.
   
   
   
2. On the property bar, set the Brush Size to 100 and the Opacity to 50.
3. Using short strokes, soften the edges of the image with the Eraser tool. You can also use the Eraser tool to create extra space for the text at the bottom of the page.
   

Add text

1. From the toolbox, choose the Text tool
   
   
   
2. Click in the center of the white area at the bottom of your image. A text cursor appears.
   
   
   
3. Type a message, for example, "Season’s Greetings".
4. On the property bar, choose the settings you want. The text in the tutorial image uses the following settings:

   • Font – Tiger Rag LETRegular
   • Font Point Size – 315
   • Color – blue swatch
     

Text tips

• Text is created on a layer. To view the text layer, click the Drawing & Painting tab, and click the Layers palette.
  
• You can move the text to a new position by clicking the Layer Adjuster tool in the toolbox, and dragging the text.

Next steps

Now you’re ready to print to a card. For information about printing, see the Corel Painter Essentials 4 Help (Help > Painter Essentials Help) or see the printing tutorial on page 73 of the Guidebook (Help > Guidebook).

If you'd like to share your own card with other Essentials Cafe visitors, you can post your card in the Show Your Creations discussion forum.

What is the Essentials Cafe?

We've heard from people using Painter Essentials that they wanted an online place to learn more, and share with other people using "Essentials".

So, here you are!

Okay, I have to admit that as with most things, it wasn't quite that simple to go from the dream to reality. But we're very happy to now be unveiling the Essentials Cafe.


Who am I?

My name is Brian Pirie, and I work at Corel as a "User Experience Designer" on Painter Essentials.

What does that mean? As I explain over in the discussion section, I essentially spend a lot of time talking with and learning about the people who use our software: what's important to you, what you want to accomplish with Painter Essentials, what problems you encounter with it, and so on. I then work with other people here at Corel to plan what improvements we will make for the next release, and to design the details of just how everything looks and functions.


What can I find here?

General Discussion Forum - Get help, share tips & tricks, or just hat with other folks using Painter Essentials
Show Your Creations - Post your drawings and paintings for others to see
Suggestion Box - Post your suggestions for future release of Painter Essentials
This Blog - Where you can keep up with the the latest ideas, tips, and other random musings usually but not always related to Painter Essentials.