Corel has released Painter X3, a major update of its Mac and Windows illustration software. X3 focuses mainly on tool improvements, for instance adding Jitter brushes, used to make strokes appear less rigid. 25 special Jitter brushes are included, but the effect can be applied to other brushes as well.
“Smart” brush controls should make it easier to adjust properties, and only settings that can be changed for a given brush will be displayed. Along the same lines, a Brush Search function should make it easier to locate brushes according to keywords. Other new drawing aids include perspective guides, a dedicated reference image panel, and multi-layer transformations.
A feature called Flow Maps will direct “wet” media across a canvas such that there’s less saturation at the peaks of the canvas texture and more at the base. Finally, a crosshair cloning option lets people pick precise points from a source image during the cloning process.
Painter X3 is $429 new, or $229 as an upgrade for Painter 11 or 12 users.
