Kind of like Corel Painter, but without the crashing

July 23, 2008 4:17 PM

Artweaveris a freeware "natural media" paint program, of the same type as Corel Painter. Natural media means it uses tools that are intended to simulate actual art tools, like oils, pastels, pencils and so forth. It's not as feature-rich as Painter, but it's getting better.

It also leaves out Painter's most aggravating attribute: it's tendency to get hosed periodically and require a reinstall.

posted by JHarris (22 comments total)

This requires Windows.
posted by majick at 4:38 PM on July 23, 2008

OMG MICROSOFT-ZONE!!!
posted by turgid dahlia at 4:48 PM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Looks like fun JHarris, thanks for bringing it to my attent-[BLUESCREEN]
posted by turgid dahlia at 4:49 PM on July 23, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Reminds me of ArtRage for Windows and OS X, posted previously. It's $25 for the full version, but even the starter edition is pretty awesome.
posted by teraflop at 4:52 PM on July 23, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

...but even the starter edition [of ArtRage] is pretty awesome.

I'll second that. And there's the whole OS X thing.
posted by tkolar at 5:03 PM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Sorry for forgetting to mention its OS, I thought about it right after I hit submit.

ArtRage does look interesting. Don't know how it stacks up to Painter. In case you haven't guessed, I'm a little frustrated with Painter at the moment, and it was casting about to look for a replacement that I found Artweaver. Painter has this problem, and it's apparently survived multiple major version numbers, that's referred to by some as the "Painter Poof," where it will crash in a particularly sudden way. It dies without a message box, without an error message, without making a sound, it just suddenly destroys all its windows, discards any open files, and thus unadorned folds up and flees the mortal coil. It looks very much like the window has minimized, but it won't be found on the taskbar or in Task Manager.

It's infuriating to lose work to, and because it leaves no traces of its demise a nightmare to track down the cause of. But there are rather few alternatives to Painter, outside Artweaver and ArtRage, to be found.
posted by JHarris at 5:30 PM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This kind of software requires a graphic table to be useful at all, right?
posted by Memo at 5:31 PM on July 23, 2008

Memo, it can be used with a mouse, but a tablet is very useful for it since it uses pressure information for manipulating the tools.
posted by JHarris at 5:37 PM on July 23, 2008

I was trying to install it, but it tries to make you sign off on some sort of punk-ass 'license agreement'! Homey don't play dat.
posted by Flashman at 5:45 PM on July 23, 2008

Just kidding, this is pretty awesome.
posted by Flashman at 5:46 PM on July 23, 2008

It dies without a message box, without an error message, without making a sound, it just suddenly destroys all its windows, discards any open files, and thus unadorned folds up and flees the mortal coil. It looks very much like the window has minimized, but it won't be found on the taskbar or in Task Manager.

That's almost....beautiful.

I've finally found the way I want to die.
posted by malocchio at 5:49 PM on July 23, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

This kind of software requires a graphic table to be useful at all, right?

Nah, only if you want to draw stuff.
posted by puke & cry at 5:50 PM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This thing is pretty good, thanks. If your technique is anything like mine though you'll want to go to Edit > Preferences first thing and jack the undo levels waaaaay up from the default of 8.
posted by moift at 5:58 PM on July 23, 2008

Looks awesome, thanks for pointing it out! I had the super underpowered Painter Classic a couple laptops ago and really liked it, except for the part where you couldn't actually save anything.
posted by version control at 6:02 PM on July 23, 2008

Thirding Artrage. I haven't tried this though -- looks more complicated, which could be a plus or minus.
posted by jhc at 6:21 PM on July 23, 2008

I'm still waiting for the chip that I can implant into my visual cortex that'll draw stuff for me. Because these hands, here? They're like flippers when it comes to drawing.

thanks, though! I'm sure I'll have fun messing around with it and my used wacom.
posted by not_on_display at 7:16 PM on July 23, 2008

Moift, seconded on the undo levels. Only 8?! Madness.

I also am not fond of how quickly-drawn strokes tend to pick up little tails, but Painter does that too.
posted by JHarris at 7:33 PM on July 23, 2008

I'm happy enough painting in Photoshop

Depending on the look you can get pretty painterly results with a hard round brush and a wacom pen

Artrage is nice, too.
posted by jfrancis at 2:06 AM on July 24, 2008

Oh, ArtRage is so sexy. I just sent payment to download. Thanks for this!
posted by Lou Stuells at 6:32 AM on July 24, 2008

Thanks for the post; it's favorited. I second the compliment on the poetry of your description of Corel's oft-repeated demise.

I'm always looking for natural brushes that really... satisfy. Hell, oddly enough, I can't even seem to find a totally simple spritzing kind of spray brush that gives you the feel of splattering real paint or ink evenly off a toothbrush with your thumb, heh. I guess I'd almost be happy with a PaintShop version of lowly old MS Paint's spray can, lol, but I can't seem to find or figure out how to make one that makes me happy. Maybe one of the programs in this thread will come thru.
posted by Shane at 8:24 AM on July 24, 2008

I just don't get those kind of programs. I've seen often better attempts at simulating traditional media by skilled photoshop users.
Anyone interested should really start from this link.
posted by darkripper at 4:25 AM on July 25, 2008

I still miss Fauve Matisse. That was a great piece of drawing/painting software.
posted by Outlawyr at 9:19 AM on July 25, 2008