--- title: Painter Reviews meta_title: 'Painter Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 60 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Painter works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.1 review_count: 60 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-12' parent_category: name: Graphic Design url: https://www.g2.com/categories/graphic-design --- # Painter Reviews **Vendor:** Corel Corporation **Category:** [Drawing Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/drawing) **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 60 ## About Painter Corel Painter is a premier digital art application designed to emulate the look and feel of traditional painting and drawing mediums. It offers artists a vast array of tools and features that replicate real-world materials, enabling the creation of authentic and expressive digital artwork. Key Features and Functionality: - Extensive Brush Library: Painter provides hundreds of realistic, artist-created brushes that mimic traditional media such as oils, watercolors, pencils, and acrylics. - Natural-Media Emulation: The software offers the largest selection of Natural-Media brushes and canvas textures on the market, with wet, thick, and dry media that looks and feels just like the real thing. - Artificial Intelligence Integration: Stylize any image using artificial intelligence and easily transform photos into paintings with powerful auto-painting and cloning tools. - Customizable Workspace: Users can tailor the interface to their preferences, create custom brushes and palettes, or import content from other artists to exponentially speed up artistic workflow. Primary Value and User Solutions: Corel Painter stands out by providing artists with a digital platform that closely mirrors traditional art techniques, allowing for a seamless transition from physical to digital mediums. Its comprehensive toolset and realistic brush behavior enable artists to produce high-quality, expressive artwork without the limitations of physical materials. By integrating advanced features like AI-driven photo transformation and extensive customization options, Painter addresses the diverse needs of digital artists, illustrators, and designers, enhancing their creative workflow and expanding their artistic possibilities. ## Painter Reviews ### 1. Digital Painting **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nacho T. | Freelance, Government Administration, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** Clear, easy, professional and artistic way to digital paint. It has a lot of paintings tool, brushes, etc., with great tutorials. Of course, the auto painting tool is perfect. **What do you dislike about Painter?** Nothing, I'm in love with it. I cannot consider anything that I dislike about it. As much time I use it, much time I need to expend painting. **Recommendations to others considering Painter:** Corel Painter is a great tool to "paint", to create digital paintings as excellent artists do. ### 2. It's fantastic! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael A. | Graphic Design | Illustrations | Brand Identity, Graphic Design, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** I love the flexibility of the brushes and the workspaces. **What do you dislike about Painter?** I wish it was a little more compatible with other design programs. I'm always importing and exporting and then having to adjust any special effects that I've applied in other programs. **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it a lot for initial sketching with a client or plotting out ideas when I'm not feeling like drawing on paper. ### 3. Lots of new brushes but hard to blend in **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Loïc L. | Manager VM Tools & Guidelines, Luxury Goods & Jewelry, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 21, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** I liked the variety of brushes and the use of the color panel. **What do you dislike about Painter?** I've found it hard to blend the colors together. **Recommendations to others considering Painter:** I need to go further in the software to master it as much as Photoshop and recommend it. **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** I usually use Photoshop to create portraits but I wanted to use a specific painter software. Someone recommended me Corel Painter so I tried but it wasn't easy for my first try. I wanted to use this software to acquire new specific technics and feel more like a real painting. ### 4. Good for people making the switch to digital **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** - Natural feeling brushes and paint mixing tools - Highly customizable **What do you dislike about Painter?** Compared to Photoshop, the options to add effects to the whole image are more limited. **Recommendations to others considering Painter:** Painter is a respected industry software, so if you know it, it will be helpful in picking up other software as well. If you want your art to look very natural, this is the program you will want to use. But if you are looking to take advantage of digital tools and 3D art, it's not going to have all the features you'd see in Clip Studio. **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** For people who are used to working with traditional media, this is a good way to get into digital art. Particularly in the way you are able to mix colors. ### 5. Corel painter **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adel S. | Senior Artist, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 21, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** It's the closest and stable approach to traditional media on digital environment **What do you dislike about Painter?** Image editing features aren't still very mush developed in therms of usability. **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's easier and fast to create on digital media, but the biggest problem comes when you have a more traditional media approach for art, it's hard to emulate chalks, watercolors, acrylics and such kind of tools. Using Corel Painter i keep working with the feel of traditional media, while i enjoy the smoothness of the digital environment. ### 6. The ideal mixed media digital translator. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Graphic Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** The brush engine is very smooth and optimized for low cpu usage. I personally find the pastel and oil brushes to be the best. I also you somega 3rd party brushes quite often. (Mike T) **What do you dislike about Painter?** The lack of ruler tools and group transforming without merging. **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm am artist for a multimillion apparel decorating company and have used it for ourban advanced art side of things. It's really my go to before photoshop if it's drawing from an app. ### 7. Use program to make art **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gary G. | Owner, Photography, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** The ability to use so many different styles of brushes (such as watercolor, charcoal, oil) and blend them with layers. **What do you dislike about Painter?** The version I use (12) can some times be clunky. An example is when I use big brushes for washes the program can not keep up with stylist. **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** The program allows me to create digital art using my photographs. It has given me a niche and separated my art from other photographers. ### 8. Real Digital Art **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Arts and Crafts | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** Real 'traditional'-look artist tools in a digital format. **What do you dislike about Painter?** Cannot stand on its own and needs to be used alongside another program, ie Photoshop. **Recommendations to others considering Painter:** A good mid-level price range product (with great upgrade discounts) for those needing to replicate traditional artist mediums. **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm able to use traditional artists' methods with less mess, and the magical 'undo' button -- because sometimes randomness cannot be left to chance. ;) ### 9. I love Corel **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Graphic Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** I like how the brushes respond to your Wacom pen perfectly. They behave just like traditional brushes. The tool knows it's for painting and doesn't try to do everything else art related like photoshop. **What do you dislike about Painter?** Customer service is hard to get a hold of, but once you get someone they ate helpful. The cost is such that I only but once every 3 or for versions. **Recommendations to others considering Painter:** Do it **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** It paints way better than photoshop so I get my work done rather quickly when compared with photoshop. ### 10. Amazing **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 16, 2016 **What do you like best about Painter?** the emulation of traditional media is amazing in Painter **What do you dislike about Painter?** well, sometimes the performance is pretty bad, thats why my main tool is other :P **What problems is Painter solving and how is that benefiting you?** Well, is an amazing software to paint and create textures, ## Painter Discussions - [Interior Designer](https://www.g2.com/discussions/27090-interior-designer) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Is Corel Painter 2020 free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-corel-painter-2020-free) - 1 comment - [View Painter pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/painter/reviews?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-16+09%3A52%3A57+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=5a64fcfe-e4bd-488e-a426-8f5671c5eef2&secure%5Btoken%5D=72a5b12732db1419a70d601bcef2d67c3c49be2eab7bcfb7205ec10f475cd007&format=llm_user) ## Top Painter Alternatives - [Sketchbook](https://www.g2.com/products/sketchbook/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (173 reviews) - [Rebelle](https://www.g2.com/products/rebelle/reviews) - 4.8/5.0 (79 reviews) - [ArtRage](https://www.g2.com/products/artrage/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (73 reviews)