Fractal Design Painter is one product that always seems to bring a smile to designers’ faces. Few programs approach its level of sophistication and utility, and fewer still go about their tasks so competently.
Painter is packed with customizable tools that interact realistically with textured surfaces to produce authentic-looking painting effects: pencil marks build up as you apply them, watercolors are diluted with (digital) water, and oil brushes can carry more than one color.
Streamlined Interface
Continuing the interface-streamlining trend that began with version 3, Painter is down to six redesigned palettes. The general Tools menu has been replaced by palette-based menus that consolidate related functions. Menus also adorn the Objects and Art Materials palettes, making color-, texture-, and object-management functions more accessible.
The result of all these changes is a more logical, comprehensible painting environment. Still, I miss the tear-off brushes of Painter 2; although they were too big and cluttered up the workspace, I liked being able to use several brush variants simultaneously.
Floating Objects and Tiled Mosaics
Among Painter 4’s new features are shapes — vector-based objects you can integrate with Painters bitmapped images — and a mosaic brush that builds images using individually generated tiles.
The Shapes feature, derived from Fractal Design’s Color Studio, lets you layer PostScript-based, Bézier-curved objects with Painter’s bitmapped floating objects. Shapes reside in an object layer above the paint layer. You can import PostScript objects from illustration packages or build and edit shapes with Painters drawing tools. You can also use Shape tools to specify bitmapped selections and build masks.
Shapes give Painter much of the functionality of illustration programs, but with Painter you can do things that are impossible with such packages. You can make shape objects transparent, for example, or seamlessly composite a shape with the underlying image. In addition, you can convert shapes into bitmapped floating objects and edit them with the program's painting tools and filters.
A new feature. Mosaic, lets you build images that simulate tile and stained-glass compositions. You specify the tiles’ size and color and the amount of grout separating them, then simply paint as you would with any other brush. As you lay the tiles, they automatically size themselves according to their neighbors’ positions. You can re-render images saved in Painter’s native file format at any time.
When you exit Mosaic mode, you can paint over, or apply effects to, the tiles. You can’t build or edit mosaics as floating objects, but you can copy and float flnished mosaics and composite them with standard images. Painter 4 also lees you build tesselated mosaics from odd-shaped pieces. Complex tesselations require lots of memory and can take some time to render, even on Power Macs, but the results can be spectacular.
Painter 3 let you record painting instructions as Sessions, which you could then save and play back as movies showing how the image was created. Essentially, Painter built a short program — a script—that re-created the image. Painter 4 expands this capability. You use VCR-like controls to access scripts from the Objects palette: hit Record and every program instruction is saved. You can edit the scripts, step through them one instruction at a time, and record frequently used operations as painting macros using Painter’s no-programming-required script-recording feature.
More Goodies
I don’t have room here to discuss all of Painter 4’s new and expanded features, so I’ll limit myself to some of its more interesting, useful aspects. Net Painter lets artists collaborate on an image over a network. New rulers and guides with snapto options help you position image elements. The Mask Edit mode now' lets you apply paint and imaging effects to masks. A color-correction dialog box lets you adjust color values by manipulating curves on a graph. The Apply Surface Texture effect now provides a reflection-mapping option. You can deflne floating objects as clickable image maps and give them URLs for Web-page links. The Painter CD also comes with a large collection of goodies, including stock photos and custom brushes.
Painter isn’t hard to use, but it has a long learning curve. Mastering it takes time and patience. Fortunately, Painter 4 includes built-in help, a new tutorial booklet with a dozen useful examples, and a well-organized, comprehensive 400-page manual that’s spiralbound, so it lies flat for easy reference.
The Last Word
Painter 4 is a wonderful program. Unsurpassed as a tool for natural-media painting, it’s also a very competent image processor. The new Bézier shapes give you added flexibility and make Painter an even better partner for other graphics programs. Painter 4 deserves a place on the hard drive of any graphic-arts professional.
Martinez, Carlos Domingo. (March 1996). Painter 4. Macworld. (pg. 58).
Fractal Design Corporation
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2014-08-03 / 
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Painter4_Ger.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
