Corel intros Painter 2020 for Mac with speed & interface upgrades

Corel on Tuesday launched Painter 2020 for macOS and Windows, concentrating upgrades to the Photoshop-compatible illustration suite mostly on interface enhancements, including better brush performance.

A new "Brush Accelerator" automatically optimizes settings with GPU acceleration, which Corel claims can "significantly" boost speed and responsiveness. To go with these Corel has added two new "Fast" brush categories — with 26 brushes in all — plus five new Expressive brushes in Watercolor and Digital Watercolor.

The interface as a whole has been redesigned to put important controls closer at hand, and save desktop space by way of consolidated Library panels. Other changes include faster access to previous brushes, a new Temporal Color Wheel, six new Color Harmonies, and minimized lag on dodge, burn, clone, and eraser tools.

Layer workflows have been streamlined in both contextual and high-level menus, particularly in respect to actions like locking, collapsing, selecting, and pasting.

Painter 2020 costs $429 new, or $229 as an upgrade from any previous version. People can also try out the software via a free 30-day trial. Mac users must be running macOS 10.13 or later.

In the past few months Corel has regained a more prominent place in the Mac sphere, mainly by updating CorelDRAW on the Mac for the first time in years, and in December buying out Parallels — well-known for its Mac virtualization software.

12 Comments

hodar 366 comments · 14 Years

About 5 years ago

Painter 2020 costs $429 new, or $229 as an upgrade from any previous version. Seems to me that many folks would chose Corel, if it was more practically priced. Decades ago, I worked for Motorola, and the company used Macs for practically everything. I used MacDraw II, and it was one of the best drawing programs I have come across. But, at $429; I don't see how the average user can justify that kind of cash outlay, for a program that won't be used full time. Pity, as Corel is one of the better software providers.

MacPro 19838 comments · 18 Years

About 5 years ago

As I have mentioned before I am sure, I have a soft spot for Corel as they bought out a software company I owned for the code specifically for Painter. Not that I have ever used the program.

urahara 733 comments · 13 Years

About 5 years ago

We haven’t crossed even the middle of 2019. And the Painter 2020 is here. I never could understand why the marketers do so (of course to sound more modern, but I mean I feel resentment to such naming).
Why not just call it even better - Painter 2025 or Painter 3000. /s

sflocal 6133 comments · 16 Years

About 5 years ago

hodar said:

Painter 2020 costs $429 new, or $229 as an upgrade from any previous version. Seems to me that many folks would chose Corel, if it was more practically priced. Decades ago, I worked for Motorola, and the company used Macs for practically everything. I used MacDraw II, and it was one of the best drawing programs I have come across. But, at $429; I don't see how the average user can justify that kind of cash outlay, for a program that won't be used full time. Pity, as Corel is one of the better software providers.

Which is why Adobe is killing it in the graphics suite. Many folks won't shell out $429 at once for a piece of software, but they can definitely swallow $10/month for Lightroom/Photoshop. It will take 3.5 years to pay the equivalent of $429 and three years later, one is on the most current release of Photoshop. By then, Corel Painter is the same 3.5 year old software and 3.5 years is an eternity.

dysamoria 3430 comments · 12 Years

About 5 years ago

sflocal said:

hodar said:

Painter 2020 costs $429 new, or $229 as an upgrade from any previous version. Seems to me that many folks would chose Corel, if it was more practically priced. Decades ago, I worked for Motorola, and the company used Macs for practically everything. I used MacDraw II, and it was one of the best drawing programs I have come across. But, at $429; I don't see how the average user can justify that kind of cash outlay, for a program that won't be used full time. Pity, as Corel is one of the better software providers.

Which is why Adobe is killing it in the graphics suite. Many folks won't shell out $429 at once for a piece of software, but they can definitely swallow $10/month for Lightroom/Photoshop. It will take 3.5 years to pay the equivalent of $429 and three years later, one is on the most current release of Photoshop. By then, Corel Painter is the same 3.5 year old software and 3.5 years is an eternity.

Adobe is losing market share in the hobbyist and small business arena because people don’t want to (or cannot afford to) add to their monthly bills.

I personally still manage to save money for a few months at a time to buy useful tools that cost hundreds (Painter is a fantastic tool), and I’m in poverty. I will never subscribe to software, even if I somehow get out of poverty. Companies like Adobe are all too happy to abuse consumers with these market-gentrifying behaviors.

The math has been done. The software subscription model is entirely designed to squeeze more money out of saturated markets by forcing those who cannot go without to perpetually pay (and pay more) for their software. There is no savings to customers, but there is more money handed to companies, for less value returned.

As for the FOMO of “out of date” software... much of the software I use is “out of date” and works fine. Even better: it only cost me money one time per version. Paying on MY time scale matters far more to me than being “up-to-date”. If I don’t need what’s marketed in the “latest” version, I don’t want to throw money at it just to satisfy the greed of developers. Often, the value in “upgrades” is minimal and skipping versions makes an upgrade far more valuable later, for many users.