Is Corel Painter, the same thing as PSP?

[jungleexplorer]

Corel seems to offer a wide variety of painting programs. Recently I have been getting hit with a lot of ads for Corel Painter. I am like, I already own a Corel Painting program, why do they have another painting program? And are several other painting programs like Corel Draw. It just seems like a lot of redundancy in painting programs. Why not just do one thing, and do it well?

Can someone clear up my confusion?

[LeviFiction]

You'll probably get better answers than this but here's my view on it.

Yes, there is overlap. But they are not the same thing. Simply being a "paint" program doesn't mean anything. Microsoft Paint is a paint program, as is Paint.Net but I wouldn't call them equivalents. Painter deals in real-paint media simulation. While CorelDraw Photo (the raster image editor in Corel Draw) and PSP are traditional digital paint programs with basic brushes and color manipulation for instance.

Here is my own personal breakdown.

Painter - Real Paint Media actual painting program. Tries to simulate actual oils, acrylics, charcoal, pencil, watercolor, etc. With a huge amount of professional features.

Corel Draw - Is an entire suite of tools. It's not just one program. Vector, designer, professional printing software with photo editing thrown in. Kind of like an Illustrator/Photoshop mix.

PaintShop Pro - Consumer-grade digital photo/paint program. A little like Photoshop. It includes vectors, photo editing, basic paint program, and some real media paint thrown in, but not on the same level or completeness of the other two programs.

[Ken Berry]

As a footnote, both Painter and CorelDRAW have separate forums of their own which you could check out if you are interested:

Painter: www.painterfactory.com
DRAW: www.community.coreldraw.com

[jungleexplorer]

You'll probably get better answers than this but here's my view on it.

Yes, there is overlap. But they are not the same thing. Simply being a "paint" program doesn't mean anything. Microsoft Paint is a paint program, as is Paint.Net but I wouldn't call them equivalents. Painter deals in real-paint media simulation. While CorelDraw Photo (the raster image editor in Corel Draw) and PSP are traditional digital paint programs with basic brushes and color manipulation for instance.

Here is my own personal breakdown.

Painter - Real Paint Media actual painting program. Tries to simulate actual oils, acrylics, charcoal, pencil, watercolor, etc. With a huge amount of professional features.

Corel Draw - Is an entire suite of tools. It's not just one program. Vector, designer, professional printing software with photo editing thrown in. Kind of like an Illustrator/Photoshop mix.

PaintShop Pro - Consumer-grade digital photo/paint program. A little like Photoshop. It includes vectors, photo editing, basic paint program, and some real media paint thrown in, but not on the same level or completeness of the other two programs.

Thanks. That helps clear up the confusion a bit. Personally, I only use PSP for photo editing and enhancement. I find the graphics editing part of the program to be very limited and basic. Not even sure why the word Paint is part of the name. Every time I try to do some form of graphics creation in PSP, I find that what I wan to do can only be accomplished through plugins and scripts. So, I have to revert back to using my 20 years version of Microsoft Photodraw, which as of yet, I have not found a single another program that can touch at any price. I keep looking for a new program, but all fail to measure up. I really wish someone would produce a modern version of a program like Photodraw.

[ehume]

. . . Not even sure why the word Paint is part of the name. Every time I try to do some form of graphics creation in PSP, I find that what I wan to do can only be accomplished through plugins and scripts. So, I have to revert back to using my 20 years version of Microsoft Photodraw, which as of yet, I have not found a single another program that can touch at any price. I keep looking for a new program, but all fail to measure up. I really wish someone would produce a modern version of a program like Photodraw.

The word "Paint" in PaintShop Pro hearkens back to the earliest days of the app. I first found it as PaintShop (no Pro yet) back in 1992 or 1993 or 1994. It was shareware, included on a set of 3.5" floppies (remember those?) and it had to do with Painting back then -- no photography yet.

Nowadays, for scalable vector work, I recommend Inkscape. I used to start all my Aeon icons in Inkscape for about 15 years from the early 2000's. It is even better now, a free open-source program. Still a fine app for SVG work, IMO.