Nuggets: Pretend you're a real artist with MetaCreations

Da Vinci would have loved this

For all you computer design fanatics who think of yourselves as artists and believe you should be creating masterpieces with real paintbrushes, the latest version of Painter has been announced by MetaCreations

Painter 6 recreates the effects of traditional artists materials like oils and acrylics, airbrushes, coloured pencils, chalk, charcoals, crayons and felt pens, along with a wide range of papers, patterns and textures. For this version MetaCreations has introduced next-generation brush engine technology, which it claims gives more depth and control and offers more options per tool than previous versions.

New features include the ability to paint in depth with impasto brushes, giving 3D painted surfaces, run text along a curve, and layer vector and bitmap image in one file for high-quality output for print and the Internet. Also added is a new responsive palette knife that interacts with each brush stroke, bearing and pressure. An Image Hose lets you spray images in real time onto your virtual canvas, with interactive rotation and scaling based on the bearing, pressure and tilt of your hand.

And, of course, it claims that this version has a much more intuitive user interface.

No definite release date as yet, but it should be in the shops before Christmas, so get it down on your list for Santa now.

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See the IT Week CorelDraw 9 Review