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A few months ago, Fractal Design, the company that gave us Painter, Expression, Poser and a number of other fantastic graphics programs acquired Ray Dream, the
folks behind the insanely popular Designer and Studio 3D applications. More recently, however, Fractal merged with MetaTools (known for Kai's Power Tools), and the company is now known as MetaCreations. Just
before the merger, Fractal released version 5 of their venerable natural-media simulator; Painter. It's been a couple of months since Painter 5 was released, and the verdict is in: Despite a few interface idiosyncrasies
and a steep learning curve, Painter 5 is a hit.
Interface Cleanups and General Improvements
Apparently giving up on defining Painter as a program unto itself with its own conventions, Fractal has aligned the
new feature sets and shortcuts more closely with that other pixel-based application, Adobe Photoshop. For example, marquee and lasso tools have replaced the confusing selection tools of Painter's past versions.
This is sure to please many graphic professionals who until now have viewed Painter as a less-than-serious program for image editing. Also like Photoshop, the floaters now behave a little bit more like layers. The magic
wand tool is easier to use, as well, requiring only a shift-click to add to a selection (imagine that).
Also to my delight, just as in Photoshop, you can now tear off individual palettes, and individual variations
within the same brush group can be saved in a palette together. If you have ever worked with Painter, you know this is a nice feature due to the large number of palettes that can sometimes crowd your image (see screen
shot). Although two monitors seem to be the ideal setup for Painter (palettes on one monitor, image on the other), this makes it possible for the casual or new user to enjoy Painter without having a screen cluttered
with unused palettes. Speaking of customization, it is now possible to add any of a brushes control features to the Control Palette, for quick access.
Like it has in so many other recent applications, the internet has
also made its way into this version of Painter. You can now launch your browser from within Painter to access MetaCreation's site for updates, help, etc. Another significant web- type feature found in Painter 5 is the
ability to make animated gifs from frames.
Really Cool New Stuff
A major addition to this version is the new Expandable Plug-in Brush architecture. MetaCreations is actively encouraging 3rd party
developers to develop new plug-in brushes, but at writing time, none had yet been produced. The brushes that Fractal shipped with Painter 5 more than suffice, and include real tools such as scratch remover and add
grain. Having said that, some of these new plug in brushes are just plain fun. Among the better ones for fun are fire, bulge, twirl and pinch brushes, which do exactly what they say.
Along the
same lines, and also new, are Dynamic Plug-In Floaters, which MetaCreations is also encouraging 3rd party software developers to create. Also like the brushes, though, none are currently available. Hopefully, in the
future, companies famous for Photoshop filters like AlienSkin, Extensis, and Xaos will step forward with some new plug-in floaters. For now, however, the ones that are included are cool enough: Burn, Tear, and Bevel
effects, as well as Glass Distortion and Liquid Metal are sure to delight many artists.
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