Corel Painter’s auto-painting tools streamline the process of creating a painting that is based on a digital image or scanned photo.
Previous experience with digital art is not required to use these tools.
To convert your image into a painting, go to:
Window > Auto-Painting Panels > Underpainting...
The auto-painting process involves three basic steps:
Underpainting - which prepares and clones a photo for painting
Auto-painting - which applies brushstrokes to the canvas
And finally, Restoration - which allows you to "fine-tune" your artwork by restoring some detail to the image.
An underpainting is a version of the photo in which you adjust the photo’s colors, tones, and sharpness.
The purpose of the underpainting is to prepare it for auto-painting.
For example, you can darken colors to simulate the colors used in an 18th-century painting,
or you can soften colors to simulate the colors found in watercolor paintings or reproduce the stronger colors and contrast of modern art.
Use the Photo Enhancement settings to make minor adjustments to your image if necessary.
You can also add a Smart Blur which will soften the image, making it more "graphical" and less photo-realistic.
After adjusting these elements, you must clone the underpainting to preserve it and to prepare for auto-painting.
Creating a clone allows Corel Painter to borrow colors from the photo in order to recreate it as a painting on a blank canvas.
You can toggle the visibility of the underlying image using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T.
Ctrl+T
The Auto-Painting panel lets you specify how paint strokes are applied to a photo.
You can choose from the following options:
Stroke lets you choose a brushstroke. You can also add custom brushstrokes to the list.
Randomness — introduces an "accidental" quality in color and stroke.
Randomness contributes to the appealing, unique look of artwork created with Corel Painter.
You can control the speed of auto-painting so that you can see how and where individual strokes are applied.
Click the Play button to start painting.
You can also stop the auto-painting process at any time and continue painting by hand.
You can also choose Smart Stroke Painting.
Smart Stroke Painting automatically applies paint strokes that follow forms in the photo.
Smart Settings changes the size, length, and pressure of brushstrokes in areas of greater detail.
This option can be used together with Smart Stroke painting to preserve detail from the source photo.
After using the Auto-Painting panel to create the painting,
you can use the Restoration panel to recover detail from the original photo, if necessary.
The Restoration panel is ideal for restoring some detail, for example, in the area of a subject’s eyes in a portrait.
The Restoration panel gives you access to two cloner brushes, which you can use in specific areas of your photo to restore detail.
You can adjust the settings for these brushes on the property bar.
Continue refining your painting using Blenders, FX or any of the amazing brushes Painter has to offer.