COREL PAINTER’S AUTO-PAINTING RESULTS – NOT BAD!

I just had to retry the auto-painting aspect of Corel Painter just to remember what it really does. Most digital painting artists would not even consider using this part of the program, but it was fun to experiment with it this week. The yellow gerbera daisy was partially auto-painted and partially hand-painted. By following a short 6 part video series by Corel Painter’s Michelle Chinn called Easy Auto-painting, the above was achieved pretty easily and quickly. She demonstrated how to stop and start the auto-painting process so brushes can be changed and their individual settings adjusted. Two Elliptical Marquee Selections were used, one for the flower and one for the center, to contain the auto-painting to just those areas. (The selections can be inverted to auto-paint on the outside area by going to Select -> Invert.) Give this a try if you are interested in getting some nice quick painting effects or want to lay down a nice foundation for hand-painting follow-up. Since auto-painting is not limited to the clone brushes, one of my regular brushes was used to auto-paint in the background and a smaller one for more detail in the selections. Afterward a blender brush and the same small detail brush were used to actually paint on the image, just do not go to the Restoration Panel if you want to hand-paint in the image. I still love to hand-paint and will probably redo this flower just to see what the difference will be.

This image followed the instructions in Auto-Painting Magic with Painter Master Marilyn Sholin, a wonderful webinar from a while back. This was so much fun! The technique is similar to the one in the videos above, but with her own twist on it. Not sure this is exactly my painting style, but I totally enjoyed trying out her workflow. Basically I followed all her steps pretty closely using my image of a nice little sandwich bar/delicatessen called Harpers on Southwark Street in London. (Apparently it is now Costa Coffee and the building architecture has been totally redone and not near as interesting-see above link.) In Painter Marilyn’s MS_MUSHV_Cloner from her Free Cloner Brushes set was used to do the auto-painting and some clean up. Back in Photoshop more clean up was done with the Mixer Brushes for both blending and adding in some details. A Levels Adjustment Layer was created to increase the contrast. Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 was opened and instead of using the Tonal Contrast, like Marilyn suggested, the Darken/Lighten Center with the lighten centered on the people at the table was applied to pull them out a little. Also the Detail Extractor was set to fine and the Opacity to 57%. The actual Layer Opacity in Photoshop was set to 84%. The last step used John Derry’s Varnish Gloss Light Layer Style from John’s Impasto for Photoshop set where the Shading Highlight Mode was reduced to 41%. Give this webinar a try if you have Corel Painter XII, X3 or 2015 – Marilyn did a very good job with it – easy to understand and some great tips in it.
Loved this image of a Native American boy in costume taken at the Native American Festival earlier this year. Just wanted to try one more Painter auto-painting image – this time the child was selected out of the original image in Photoshop and saved before taking into Painter. Just did the same basic steps – ran auto-painter with the larger brushes, then did more individual painting with the smaller detail brush. Afterwards brought the image back into Photoshop and did more clean up with my Chalk 60 brush set to 19% Angle Jitter. 2 Lil’ Owls (see sidebar at my Tidbits Blog for website link) Cosmos 11 texture was applied and set to Linear Light. In the layer style, the Blend If This Layer white tab was split (ALT+click on tab) and set to 116/189 – it brought out the feathers better. To add the gold painted texture, just used a brush I created (see my How to Paint with a Texture Brush from Your Image blog) from French Kiss texture called Atelier Georgia – it makes a really nice textured brush set and was set to a low layer opacity. (See sidebar at my Tidbits Blog for website link.) Used a layer mask to remove the paint off the child. Added a Curves Adjustment Layer to add contrast to finish the image.

As you can see, there are lots of variations you can get – pretty much the same as if you painted the image. The related blogs below both contain other examples of the auto-painting feature. I still like painting the image myself, but I do believe auto-painting is not a bad way to go if you do not have a lot of time to create a painting, or just want to get the first blocked-in step done quickly. It might also be handy to try out different brushes to see if you like the results when using in painting. Also, anytime I can combine Painter and Photoshop I am having a blast! So go out and experiment. I believe the referenced videos will work on at least the last 3 versions of Painter. Have a nice week!…..Digital Lady Syd

Digital Lady Related Blogs:
Some Pros and Cons of Corel Painter (And Why I still Love Photoshop)
Topaz Restyle with Corel Painter & Nik Analog Efex Pro