Painter is the leading natural-media painting application on the PC and since its acquisition from MetaCreations last year, it has become one of the three cornerstones of Corel's new Procreate brand. The other two are KnockOut and Kai Power Tools (KPT), both due for new versions soon.

Painter 7 comes on two CDs, the first containing the main application and many of the filters and specialist brushes it uses. The second CD adds extra filters, special effects and some sample images, though oddly we couldn't get these to preview in the application's own image browser.

Your introduction to Painter 7 starts off well with the manual, which offers a mass of hints and tips while explaining the program's hundreds of features. There's a good series of tutorials provided in pdf format, too, which are well illustrated and ease you into the program's new features.

Ideal for use with a graphics tablet, Painter 7 can be used with a mouse, too, although many graphic artists will find it difficult to create paint-like effects without a stylus. However, editing and retouching photos, another Painter strong-point, may well be easier with a mouse.

We noticed some lag using either device when working with more complex tools, such as the new watercolour brush, with a large brush tip. This was on an 800MHz Pentium III with 128MB of memory and suggests that the 200MHz PC recommended in the product's system requirements is seriously optimistic.

The working interface isn't that simple - it uses a series of menu blocks whose options expand to mini-dialogs when you select them. You will either find this neatly elegant or rather clumsy in its implementation, depending upon how attached you are to standard Windows conventions.

Watercolour is one of two new media available in Painter 7. Paint with the watercolour brush and it runs into the 'paper' in the same way physical paint does. Not only can you use this in the pictures you create, but you can also blend colours so that a swathe of yellow overrun with another of blue will give you green. You can also control the wetness of the paint and the amount that colours blend with each other.

The range of controls governing how paints are applied is very wide and includes drying rate, evaporation, diffusion, and even wind direction.

Liquid Ink, the other new medium in the program, is much more viscous and opens the way to simulating several related media, such as wax resist, scraperboard, enamels and woodcuts. The comprehensive nature of these natural media means anybody new to Painter will need a bit of practice.

The text tool has been rejigged in Painter 7, bringing all the text attributes together in one place. This makes creating text much easier and, as text is automatically added to a separate layer of your picture, you can return to it and keep re-editing until you combine the text with the canvas.

To help with the construction of landscapes, you can now introduce perspective grids to your painting. These don't print, and you can set their colour and spacing and control horizontal and vertical lines independently.

Corel has always recognised the importance of compatibility with the leaders in any market. WordPerfect offers strong compatibility with Office and here Painter's ability to exchange files with Adobe Photoshop has been improved. You can swap psd files between the two applications without losing layer information, and save files in either RGB or CMYK formats.

Colour management has been improved, with a redesigned interface echoing that offered in CorelDraw and PhotoPaint. There are plenty of standard profiles available and you can create your own. Corel claims there will be much less colour shift moving CMYK images between Painter and Photoshop than before.

There are plenty of other changes and enhancements to Painter 7 which make working with the program more intuitive. At £300 inc VAT, it's good value for any serious digital artist.

Contact
Corel: 0800 581 028 www.procreate.com