Corel Introduces Corel Painter X

PRESS RELEASE

Ottawa, Canada, February 6, 2007 – Corel Corporation (NASDAQ:CREL; TSX:CRE) today announced that Corel® Painter™ X, the world’s most pow­er­ful paint­ing and illus­tra­tion soft­ware, is now avail­able for pre-order from www​.corel​.com/​p​a​interx. The lat­est ver­sion of Corel Painter con­tin­ues its focus on giv­ing pro­fes­sion­al artists, design­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers a nat­ur­al paint­ing and illus­tra­tion expe­ri­ence that is unmatched by any oth­er software. 

Delivering the next-generation art stu­dio, Corel Painter X blurs the line between tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal art like nev­er before. Working close­ly with pro­fes­sion­als includ­ing enter­tain­ment artists, com­mer­cial design­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers, the Corel Painter team explored the rela­tion­ship between the artist’s hand and the can­vas. As a result, Corel Painter X sets the stan­dard with the intro­duc­tion of unpar­al­leled per­for­mance, new com­po­si­tion tools and the rev­o­lu­tion­ary RealBristle™ Painting System that pro­vides an organ­ic paint­ing and illus­tra­tion expe­ri­ence – right down to the indi­vid­ual bris­tles on the brush.

“Throughout the devel­op­ment of Corel Painter X, we turned to our cus­tomers – includ­ing some of the indus­try’s top artists, design­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers – to ensure that we were deliv­er­ing the ulti­mate art stu­dio for cre­at­ing their mas­ter­pieces. We asked them to give us their per­spec­tives on the essence of Corel Painter and what it meant to them and their work. ‘Art and Passion’ was the resound­ing response. These inspi­ra­tional themes guid­ed us through­out our devel­op­ment and set the tone for the entire appli­ca­tion. As a result, Corel Painter X is the most nat­ur­al, organ­ic and pow­er­ful ver­sion yet,” said Rick Champagne, Product Manager for Corel Painter. 

Industry Leading Professionals Praise Corel Painter X

“Corel Painter X is by far the most advanced and intu­itive paint­ing pro­gram in exis­tence today. The new Divine Proportion Composition tool puts the com­po­si­tion­al secrets of the mas­ters in the palm of your hand,” said Andrew Jones, Corel Painter Master, respect­ed game indus­try con­cept artist and co-founder of ConceptArt​.org, a lead­ing concept-art online com­mu­ni­ty. “To put it sim­ply, Corel Painter con­tin­ues to evolve and push the lim­its, allow­ing me to real­ize my imag­i­na­tion’s manifestations.”

“Just when I thought that Painter was the best ever, here comes Corel Painter X with more amaz­ing sur­pris­es! The new RealBristle brush­es take Corel Painter to a whole new lev­el, deliv­er­ing an expe­ri­ence that is more nat­ur­al than I ever thought pos­si­ble. Moreover, as an instruc­tor, the pow­er­ful Customize Workspace fea­ture is a dream come true, allow­ing me to share pos­si­bil­i­ties with my stu­dents that weren’t avail­able until now,” said Fay Sirkis, Corel Painter Master, Canon Print Master, and renowned instruc­tor and artist who spe­cial­izes in Photo-Painted Portraiture (www​.faysart​stu​dio​.com). “Anyone who wants to take their pho­tographs to the next lev­el must have Corel Painter X.”

“Corel Painter is huge part of my every­day work­flow as a con­cept artist and illus­tra­tor, enabling me to put any­thing I can dream up on my canvas,” said Philip Straub, Corel Painter Master and Art Director for EA Games. “Trained as a tra­di­tion­al artist, I love how authen­tic the new RealBristle tech­nol­o­gy feels. With an amaz­ing col­lec­tion of pow­er­ful new fea­tures, Corel Painter X con­tin­ues to give the dig­i­tal art com­mu­ni­ty the most com­pre­hen­sive tool set on the planet!”

New Features in Corel Painter X Redefine the Standard for Natural-Media®!

Creativity

• New! RealBristle Painting System – The RealBristle Painting System height­ens the respon­sive­ness of the brush for the artist and rep­re­sents a major mile­stone in dig­i­tal paint­ing. RealBristle brush­es faith­ful­ly repli­cate tra­di­tion­al art media with indi­vid­ual bris­tles that blend and splay, as in the tra­di­tion­al world. Artists can expe­ri­ence the sen­sa­tion of the inter­ac­tion between the paint, can­vas and brush like nev­er before.

• New! Composition Tools – Corel Painter X adds new Composition Tools to the tool box, enabling artists, design­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers to quick­ly and eas­i­ly com­pose their images. The new Divine Proportion com­po­si­tion tool pro­vides guide­lines that fol­low the Divine Proportion (also known as the Golden Ratio) to enable artists to com­pose their images like the Masters. The new Layout Grid com­po­si­tion tool pro­vides guide­lines that fol­low pho­tog­ra­phy’s Rule of Thirds, but can be cus­tomized to oth­er desired grid patterns.

• Enhanced! Photo-Painting System – It’s now eas­i­er than ever for pho­tog­ra­phers to cre­ate beau­ti­ful paint­ings from pho­tos! Building on the strength of the Photo-Painting Palettes in Corel Painter IX.5, sig­nif­i­cant new enhance­ments pro­vide users with more con­trol and intel­li­gence through­out the photo-painting process. Additions to the Underpainting Palette include col­or schemes based on var­i­ous media styles, such as Impressionist, Classical, Modern, Watercolor, Sketchbook and Chalk Drawing. Users can now also choose a col­or scheme that match­es the col­ors of any open image. The Auto-Painting palette has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly updat­ed with the intro­duc­tion of the new Smart Stroke Painting option which applies brush strokes that fol­low the forms of the orig­i­nal pho­to. Smart Stroke Painting changes brush size, stroke length and pres­sure based on the detail and focal areas of the orig­i­nal image. 

• New! Match Palette effect – Artists can now eas­i­ly match the col­or and inten­si­ty between two images. Open an image that fea­tures a desired col­or scheme and use the Match Palette effect to apply it to anoth­er image. The Match Palette effect includes con­trols for col­or, col­or vari­a­tion, bright­ness, bright­ness vari­a­tion and inten­si­ty. This effect can be accessed on its own or found as part of the enhanced Photo-Painting Palettes.

• New! Universal Mixer palette – Artists now have greater con­trol over col­or selec­tion when using any bris­tle brush. For mul­ti­col­or selec­tion, the new Universal Mixer palette gives artists bet­ter con­trol over col­or blend­ing between the Mixer palette and the canvas.

Performance and Productivity

• Enhanced! Speed – Corel Painter X deliv­ers speed improve­ments in areas includ­ing brush per­for­mance, open­ing and sav­ing RIFF files, and ren­der­ing effects. The most dra­mat­ic speed improve­ments will be expe­ri­enced by cus­tomers run­ning Intel®-based Macintosh® com­put­ers, although all cus­tomers will expe­ri­ence speed enhance­ments in var­i­ous aspects of the application.

• New! Universal bina­ry for Macintosh – With sup­port for Universal bina­ry spec­i­fi­ca­tions, Corel Painter X is opti­mized for Intel-based Macintosh computers.

• New! Workspace Manager – Now it’s easy to back­up, share or switch between cus­tomized work­spaces. For exam­ple, artists can cre­ate eas­i­ly acces­si­ble, cus­tomized envi­ron­ments for activ­i­ties like sketch­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy and paint­ing. The Workspace Manager is also use­ful for edu­ca­tors who want to stream­line Corel Painter X to suit cur­ricu­lum and quick­ly add a cus­tomized work­space on every stu­den­t’s com­put­er. In addi­tion, cus­tom brush­es can now be quick­ly export­ed and shared with oth­ers in the community.

• New! Dodge and Burn tools – Dodge and burn capa­bil­i­ties have been improved with the addi­tion of two new image enhance­ment tools to the tool­box. The Dodge tool enables artists to light­en spe­cif­ic areas of an image, while the Burn tool can be used to dark­en spe­cif­ic areas of an image. Dodging and burn­ing are often used to pre­pare a pho­to­graph for painting. 

• Enhanced! Color Management – The enhanced Color Management System ensures accu­rate col­or repro­duc­tion between devices and print jobs. Now, users only have to set up their Color Management options once and Corel Painter X retains those set­tings until fur­ther adjust­ments are made. With sup­port for indus­try stan­dard ICC4.0 col­or pro­files, Corel Painter X enables artists to focus specif­i­cal­ly on their work.

Compatibility

• New! Windows Vista™ sup­port – Corel Painter X is designed to run on Windows Vista.

• Enhanced! Mac OS® X sup­port – Corel Painter X sup­ports the lat­est oper­at­ing sys­tem from Apple.

• Enhanced! Adobe® Photoshop® sup­port – Layer behav­ior is very sim­i­lar to Adobe Photoshop, mak­ing it sim­ple to move files between the appli­ca­tions. Files saved to the Photoshop (PSD) file for­mat open in Corel Painter, with lay­er masks, alpha chan­nels and lay­er sets (groups) main­tained. Enhancements include eas­i­er lay­er group­ing and com­bin­ing, and improved sup­port for lay­er merge modes. Corel Painter X also sup­ports many Photoshop plug-ins for Mac OS X.

• Enhanced! Wacom sup­port – With Corel Painter X, artists can use the entire Wacom prod­uct line – includ­ing the Cintiq® 21 UX inter­ac­tive pen dis­play and the Intuos®3 pen tablet. In addi­tion, the new RealBristle Painting System and the Wacom 6D Art Pen work togeth­er to take dig­i­tal paint­ing to an unprece­dent­ed lev­el of realism.

Learning

• New! Printed User Guide – Including a Corel Painter artists’ gallery, the Corel Painter X User Guide is a beau­ti­ful, color-printed man­u­al that pro­vides help­ful infor­ma­tion and fast solu­tions for new and long-time users.

• New! Jeremy Sutton train­ing videos – For guid­ance and inspi­ra­tion, cus­tomers can access a new col­lec­tion of down­load­able step-by-step train­ing videos cre­at­ed by well-known Corel Painter Master Jeremy Sutton. Additional train­ing videos by Jeremy Sutton are avail­able for purchase.

• New! “Painter on the ‘Net” tab in the Welcome book – New “Painter on the ‘Net” tab pro­vides links to Painter com­mu­ni­ty resources online and month­ly Tips & Tricks. In addi­tion, the Welcome book pro­vides quick access to recent­ly used files, brush track­ing and col­or man­age­ment set­tings, while show­cas­ing art­work from renowned Corel Painter artists.

The Historic Painter Can Returns in a Special Limited Edition!

In addi­tion to offer­ing full, upgrade and edu­ca­tion ver­sions of Corel Painter X, Corel is hon­or­ing the Painter tra­di­tion with the release of the Corel Painter X Limited Edition Can. This Limited Edition release includes the full Corel Painter X soft­ware and User Guide, plus the com­plete “Learning Corel Painter X with Jeremy Sutton” DVD-ROM, the Corel Painter X col­lec­tors’ poster and the Corel Painter X Composition tool.

Pricing and Availability

The English ver­sion of Corel Painter X, offered in a full ver­sion, upgrade ver­sion, edu­ca­tion edi­tion and Limited Edition Painter Can, is avail­able for pre-order start­ing today through Corel and select part­ners. English ver­sion box prod­uct will be avail­able through Corel and reseller part­ners in late February 2007. Japanese, French, Italian and German ver­sions of Corel Painter X will be avail­able through­out the spring of 2007.
Suggested retail pric­ing for Corel Painter X in the US and Canada is $429 for full, $229 for upgrade and $99 for the edu­ca­tion edi­tion. The Limited Edition Painter Can is avail­able for $499.
For more infor­ma­tion about Corel Painter X, to pre-order or down­load the full-featured tri­al ver­sion (which can be pur­chased today as full prod­uct elec­tron­ic down­load), please vis­it www​.corel​.com/​p​a​interx.

About Corel

Corel is a lead­ing devel­op­er of graph­ics, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and dig­i­tal media soft­ware with more than 40 mil­lion users world­wide. The Company’s prod­uct port­fo­lio includes some of the world’s most pop­u­lar and wide­ly rec­og­nized soft­ware brands includ­ing CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite, Corel® Paint Shop® Pro, Corel® Painter™, Corel DESIGNER®, Corel® WordPerfect® Office, WinZip® and iGrafx®. In 2006, Corel acquired InterVideo, mak­ers of WinDVD®, and Ulead, a lead­ing devel­op­er of video, imag­ing and DVD author­ing soft­ware. Designed to help peo­ple become more pro­duc­tive and express their cre­ative poten­tial, Corel’s soft­ware strives to set a high­er stan­dard for val­ue with full-featured prod­ucts that are eas­i­er to learn and use. The indus­try has respond­ed with hun­dreds of awards rec­og­niz­ing Corel’s lead­er­ship in soft­ware inno­va­tion, design and value. 

Corel’s prod­ucts are sold in more than 75 coun­tries through a well-established net­work of inter­na­tion­al resellers, retail­ers, orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, online providers and Corel’s glob­al web­sites. The Company’s head­quar­ters are locat­ed in Ottawa, Canada with major offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China and Japan. Corel’s stock is trad­ed on the NASDAQ under the sym­bol CREL and on the TSX under the sym­bol CRE.