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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

    Microsoft Publisher

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application available with an Office 365 subscription, or as a standalone download.

    $139

    one time purchase

    Pricing
    PainterMicrosoft Publisher
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft Publisher
    $139
    one time purchase
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    PainterMicrosoft Publisher
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    PainterMicrosoft Publisher
    Considered Both Products
    Corel Corporation
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    10 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    80%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    4 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    83%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    PainterMicrosoft Publisher
    Small Businesses
    GIMP
    Score8 out of 10
    Adobe InDesign
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Adobe Illustrator
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Adobe InDesign
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Adobe PhotoShop
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Adobe InDesign
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    PainterMicrosoft Publisher
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.4
    (13 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.3
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    PainterMicrosoft Publisher
    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
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Publisher is well suited for almost any situation. It is something that I'm sure has far more advanced tools than I use or am aware of, but it is also very simple for entry-level users to create professional documents quickly. I have used it for very involved brochures in real estate scenarios and I have also used it for very simple "Construction Zone" signs at a job site under construction. There are so many uses for this program!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Corel Corporation
    • Watercolor Compatible
    • Multiple variety of Brushes and shapes
    • Captured Dab Library
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Design of my quarterly full color magazine: (usually 28-56 pages in length)
    • Design of the quarterly planning system used by me and others in the annual conference.
    • Design and layout of any document that requires graphics/photos.
    • Simple to use with ample flexibility and strength of features
    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
    Microsoft
    • Formatting in general. It's a pain to refine a layout in Publisher in my opinion.
    • Microsoft is so invested in their approach to software and making it look and feel like an Office 365 application that they inadvertantly cripple applications like Publisher.
    • Earlier versions of Publisher gave you a lot more latitude and creative freedom. They were also much easier to work with. Not everything has to look like it's part of Office 365. They did the same ... thing to Access.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Corel Corporation
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    We use this product 2-3 times a month and have not been able to find a comparable alternative.
    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
    Microsoft
    There are a few quirks with Microsoft Publisher that make some functions a little tricky for new users at first, but most of our employees are able to figure out the quirks and work around them to use the product for their job. It is relatively high on the scale of usability.
    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
    Microsoft
    While I have not directly used support for Microsoft Publisher, I have used their help files and found them to be useful. I have also found that most answers that I need can be found through simple web searches and chat platforms. In all though, there are very few times when the preloaded help files have not given me the answers that I need.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Publisher is more for beginners, or for basic needs, anyone with some familiarity with the Microsoft suite should be able to use it easily. If you’re looking to create something more graphic and advanced, you’d probably want to look into something like InDesign, which is not as user friendly if you’re not familiar with it at all. For basic needs the average employee should be able to use Microsoft Publisher with ease.
    Incentivized
    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
    Microsoft
    • we have invested on our Microsoft license for our team and that has made a very big productivity for making banners and holdings for our projects as making it from third party would cost much higher and the return is very well over the comparison with third-party vendors
    • Functionality is very easy, so we don’t have to train much to get it in production and use it efficiently so we don’t have to invest much on training and learning things and we can work on it directly with a very basic knowledge as well
    • It has functionality to get stored and share things directly to the OneDrive and using curated links, which is very secure and reliable to transfer files without losing picture and banners quality and share them in lossless quality.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots