Corel Painter Vs Painter Essentials

Corel Painter Essentials 6
vs

Corel Painter 2018

A basic comparison of the differences between Corel Painter Essentials 6 vs Corel Painter 2018 - with a setup as similar as possible. I have already reviewed Painter 2018, but I see no need for a individual review for Painter Essentials 6 (beyond this difference comparison).

Sure one obvious differences is the purchase price for Essentials 6 is $49.99, while Painter 2018 is $199.99. It is though after all a lite version (essential, aka essence) of their Painter software stripped down to the most significant elements.

I can say the largest difference is the absolute removal of all option menus, controls, and customization available to the few brushes leftover in Essentials 6. At 25% the cost of Painter, buyers of Essential have far less than 25% of the Painter program.

Looking at grouped areas here is a side-by-side comparison...

Toolbar - In the image above I put together Painter Essentials 6 toolbar on the left, and Painter 2018 on the right, with all collapsed tools shown.

Essentials 6 shares 21 tools with Painter. One tool, the Zoom tool, they split into Zoom in and Zoom out. Essentials is also missing 18 tools shown in blue that are found in Painter 2018.

The missing tools are Interactive Gradient, Polygonal Selection, Selection Brush, Pen, Quick Curve, Rectangular Shape, Oval Shape, Shape Selection, Scissors, Add Point, Remove Point, Convert Point, Cloner, Perspective Guides, Divine Proportions, Layout Grid, Single Document View, and Presentation Mode.

That means all vector drawing tools, shapes, gradients, and proportion aids have been completely removed in Painter Essentials 6.

Main Menu - From just the menu group titles the menus Brushes, Shapes, and Movie are removed from Essentials 6 (Menu name Purchase is part of the trial).

If you look at individual menus it becomes clear how much Essentials is gutted compared to Painter 2018. In my 2nd image above is a peek at the Window menu, on the left is Essentials, and the right is Painter 2018.

It may be hard to tell but the Painter 2018 menu (on the right) scrolls off the screen (the down arrow at the bottom) and several individual menu items have additional menus of 3 to 12 items in them. The largest is the Brush Control Panels menu item, that is nearly the same size as the Painter Window menu itself - which is completely removed from Essentials, see below.

Brush Options - The first place to look for brush options is along the top near the main menu (image 1). On top is Essentials 6 and the bottom one is from Painter 2018 (in Essentials they added a shortcut Save image, Undo, and Redo button group).

The Brush options begin with the Reset tool option, and is the brush icon with the arrow facing left in Painter. The Quick Curve and Perspective-Guided Strokes (On/Off) are the first removed options in Essentials. Size control has also been removed (and it's 15 options), also Opacity control (and 5 options) is gone too. The other removed

simple

brush options are Paper textures (and options), Resat amount (amount of color replenished in a stroke), and Bleed (how much it smears underlying colors).

Those are just the simple brush options. The real brush options (2nd image above) have completely been removed from Essentials 6 in their entirety. Those are General brush controls and Advanced brush controls windows.

Included Brushes - In Painter 2018 there are 112 brush presets in the new Natural Media Brushes, 646 brush presets in Painter 12/X3 Brushes - and I'm not going to count the remaining Painter 2015 Brushes, Painter 2016 Brushes, Painter 2017 Brushes, Painter 2018 Brushes, or Painter X11 Brushes all included in the Painter 2018 Brush Library by default.

A estimation is over 3000 brushes total, not counting importing new brushes, or making your own as well.

In Painter Essentials 6 there are 106 brush presets total and that is it... less than 3.5% of the brushes found in Painter 2018. Also there is no Brush Library, no way to import new brushes, and it's not possible to make your own brushes either with Essentials.

Final Thoughts - Continuing this is really a moot point, and little more than beating a dead horse. Painter Essentials 6 has few brushes with nearly no options, can not create or import brushes, palettes, mixers, and other settings are locked in their current state - compared to Painter 2018.

If money is why you are considering Essentials - then save your money, do more commissioned projects, pick-up extra hours at work, or whatever else to buy Painter 2018 instead. Otherwise consider one of the other programs I have reviewed that are around the same price, or one of the many free programs as well.

Of course if you did a trial and find Essentials will work for you, and especially if you get it on sale, then enjoy it for what it is. 😊