Painter and Photoshop have many similarities, such as layered editing. For instance, the airbrush tool in Painter responds to pressure as well as tilt, velocity and rotation. Many of these emulated media types work with the advanced features of Wacom tablets. Painter emulates the visual characteristics of traditional media, such as oil paint, pastel sticks, air brush, charcoal, felt pens, and other traditional artists' materials on various textured surfaces. There are also a few non-traditional items, such as the Image Hose, pattern pens, F/X, Distortion and Artist tools for allowing artists to apply less conventional elements on an image.

With the aid of a graphics tablet or computer mouse, the user is able to reproduce the effect of physical painting and drawing media such as watercolor, oil, chalk, charcoal and color pencil. The application offers a wide range of traditional artists' materials and tools. It is intended to be used in real-time by professional digital artists as a functional creative tool.

Corel Painter is a raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking.

Painter essentials