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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Painter

    Score9.9 out of 10
    N/APainter is a digital art and painting application, from Corel Corporation.N/A

    Inkscape

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AInkscape is a free and open source vector drawing app for Windows, MacOS & Linux, available for download free under the GPLv3+ license. The tools aims to support illustrators, designers, web designers or anyone wanting to create vector graphics.N/A
    Pricing
    PainterInkscape
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    PainterInkscape
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    PainterInkscape
    Considered Both Products
    Corel Corporation
    No answer on this topic
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    PainterInkscape
    Small Businesses
    GIMP
    Score8 out of 10
    GIMP
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Adobe Illustrator
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Adobe Illustrator
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Adobe PhotoShop
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Adobe PhotoShop
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    PainterInkscape
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.6
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    PainterInkscape
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Corel Corporation
    Corel Painter does have a lot of great brushes, and they do emulate real art supplies very well. Especially the thick paint is well done. But unfortunately there are so many functional and UX bugs that overall it is just horrible to work with. When contacting customer support about it, they really seem clueless about the seriousness of the situation, and clueless about what proper UX is in general. They have tried to make it work a bit like Photoshop, which is a good move but then some things are absolutely not intuitive at all and they are definitely missing the mark horribly with so many issues. I would highly recommend using Photoshop instead, though you'll have to download them separately; it also offers a lot of great brushes nowadays and works much much smoother without all those aggravating bugs of Painter. The price of Corel Painter is just not at all worth all these horrible bugs.
    Read full review
    Open Source
    I would 100% recommend Inkscape to anyone starting out with graphic design or illustration, as it isn't that difficult to get the hang of on the first day of using it. I am not recommending Inkscape for beginners alone, even experts in the field can use Inkscape professionally as it cuts of the expense of needing to buy a paid graphic design software which provides almost the same features. Inkscape is also great for beginners because it can be treated like a stepping stone to move onto a paid graphic designing software like Adobe Illustrator, so Inkscape can be used to test the waters before making the leap. Inkscape and Illustrator are almost the same so there wont be any difficulty in switching later on.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Corel Corporation
    • Watercolor Compatible
    • Multiple variety of Brushes and shapes
    • Captured Dab Library
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • Creating mockups using all kinds of graphic elements together.
    • Creating Video thumbnails and thumbnail templates.
    • Online 'how to' resources help a great deal.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Corel Corporation
    • Way too many functional bugs, makes it hard to work with
    • Bad UX and usability, too much unintuitive behavior, makes it particularly hard to work with
    • Overall looks and behaves as if it was coded in the '90s, it really needs a complete UX overhaul
    • Did I mention the many bugs yet? Yeah? I'll mention it again because it's bad
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • Can be tricky to get the hang of at first
    • UI is not always naturally intuitive but generally it is good
    • May require reading documentation and watching tutorials to skill up before using it efficiently
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Corel Corporation
    If it wasn't quite clear yet, I'll state it again: the usability of Corel Painter is, simply put, horrid. And I am not talking about rendering, lagging, etc., it is not even all that bad there. I am talking about the weird issues like being unable to move a brush into a custom brush palette when you work on a second screen, like being unable to move the software onto the second screen in the first place unless you separate all the palettes and the windows (and if nobody tells you upfront there is no way of knowing because the manual doesn't state this at all), and then having to drag all your separate windows and palettes over one by one every time your computer wakes up again, and they won't really want to move to the other screen but only through a tiny corner of your screen, and the fact that you have to scroll through lists and lists of fonts but can't search and when you apply this font, add another piece of text the font jumps back to the default font of all the text already applied even when you haven't selected any of the text. Just to name a very small few.
    Read full review
    Open Source
    It is very good in general, but there are steps that I wish could be eliminated as they seem to be "duplicative".
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Corel Corporation
    It was really hard to get them to understand what I was having problems with. It was hard to get the message through that Painter has an unacceptable amount of functional and UX bugs. When I finally talked to someone who was easier to communicate with, he was very stoic about the situation, like they didn't really care about the awful amount of bugs.
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Corel Corporation
    Corel Painter has support to multiple OS and across all the devices. Coloring and multi layer imaging works very well. The new enhanced brush settings and the redesigned brush libraries.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    It is free. Easy to install Easy and simple to use and master. I find it as the best solution to do simple things without spending much time loading the API and trying to find the menu necessary to do the job. It produces vector graphics which is very well suited to illustrate research papers.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Corel Corporation
    • Customer support could be improved in my opinion.
    • Multiple bugs while working with layered designing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • fast, efficient illustrations
    • inexpensive (donation based) enough for a tiny business
    • now can make custom labels for test products using our in-house printer
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots