There is an accent / active colour for on states of icons, sliders and like. On the Dark theme, this is orange – which is fine but I'm not sure why the advanced controls need to be highlighted in that orange as well.Īnother welcome change to the UI is the addition of a grey background to the Colour Sets and Layers palettes. I prefer the Medium grey, which strikes a good balance.

At such small sizes, this be a bit tough on the eyes. For the Dark theme, that text is now white (Snow White or off white). One of Painter's issues – and always has been – is that there are a lot of settings (so many settings) for each brush, and the UI text is pretty small to accommodate that. The default UI is now Dark, with two additional grey versions, Medium and Light. It really brings Painter inline with other software such as Adobe Creative Cloud, making it less jarring going from one to another. You have a choice of UIs: Light (aka old Painter), Medium and Dark.Ī dark UI means you're able to concentrate on your painting a lot more readily, selecting colours becomes easier – especially when it comes to small shifts in saturation or value. You wouldn't necessarily think this would make a big difference to your work – I have to admit to being a bit indifferent to hear this was coming – and yes, it is coming a little late compared to other applications – but getting away from light grey makes for a much more pleasant working experience. So as you may have guessed, a more modern UI is a big change for Painter which has stuck with the same light grey for as long as I can remember. Personally I would much rather my software worked smoothly and responsive than keep introducing more features I may never use in my day-to day-work. I will start by saying that Painter 2019 does feel a little light in new features compared to previous releases – but that is mainly due to the majority of work going into improving the software in general (which is long overdue).

This year, with the release of Painter 2019, Corel has made a big difference to my favourite digital painting software, along with new features such as an updated Dark UI and visual improvements, new brushes and patterns, with the biggest changes being made to the artists workflow and software performance. Artist Tom Bagshaw reviews the new Corel Painter and discovers that the software is much improved in ways that really matter to artists.Ģ017's release of Corel Painter 2018 brought with it the wonderful Thick Paint feature, improved grain and selection tools and some additional tweaks under the hood.

Painter 2019 download