Painter Essentials 8
Just Released
The world's most expressive painting software for beginners, on Mac and Windows, featuring industry-acclaimed brushes, illustration tools and photo art
Learn more about Painter Essentials 8
Distinctive Artificial Intelligence based photo painting
Produce incredible photo art with ease by converting your favorite photos into paintings using neural networking and the strength of Painter's brush engine! Choose from an impressive range of AI styles for photo painting, including Bold Watercolor, Colored Pencil, Colorful Dabs, Impressionist, Smooth Acrylic, Van Gogh, Watercolor Portrait, and Charcoal Drawing.
Flexible photo painting tools
Open your image and the painting choice is yours. Auto-Paint, in one click, with AI, or SmartStroke technology that rapidly produces stunning results. Clone paint by dipping any brush you like directly into the photo, or trace by turning on tracing paper and selecting a brush and color while using the image as your guide.
Experiment with blank canvas painting
Immerse yourself in an intriguing collection of realistic brushes and canvas textures that respond to your every move when using a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet. Dry, wet, springy, speckled, spattered, glowing, gooey, patterned media is at the ready, allowing you to bring your wildest ideas to life.
Industry-acclaimed brushes
Create with artist-trusted brushes. Every brush in Essentials was custom selected for new digital artists from our professional Painter art studio so that you can comfortably ease into your digital art experience.
Painter Essentials 7 Key Features
Brushes
Learn more about the media that makes Essentials stand apart from other painting software.
- Dab Stencils
- Imagine knocking out areas of a brush so that the chosen texture takes center stage. That is exactly how you can paint with these one-of-a-kind brushes.
- Dynamic Speckles
- Paint with dynamic brushes whose multicolored speckles generate as you stroke! These brushes are unique to Painter and loved by artists.
- Glazing
- Blend colors like a master with these subtle brushes that allow opacity to build up smoothly along your brushstrokes.
- Digital Watercolor
- See how these brush variants produce controllable watercolor effects that are highly reactive with canvas texture. Now set diffusion, adjust wet fringe and dry paint.
- Image Hose
- Choose from a full library of Image Hose Nozzles so you can spray compelling imagery onto your canvas with the Image Hose variants included in the F-X category.
- Artists
- Mimic the Masters by adding multicolored Impressionist dabs, Sargent swirly flair , and Van Gogh chunky paint to your masterpiece.
- Blenders
- Use these standout Painter brushes to perfectly blend painted strokes and artfully finish your work.
- F-X
- Obtain an array of creative results by either playfully impacting existing canvas content or by adding memorable strokes to a blank canvas.
- Particles
- Experience an infinite number of creative possibilities with these physics-inspired brushes that spring, flow, glow and gravitate onto the canvas.
Beginner-friendly UI
A painting environment that puts the focus on you
- Application icons
- Essentials now features redesigned icons to make things easier on the eyes, simple to understand, and more efficient to use.
- Dark UI
- A meticulously transformed user interface reveals a darker theme with tool highlighting that allows the interface to melt away and painting to take center stage.
- Scrubby Zoom
- Overall document manipulation is now smoothly exhilarating. Take advantage of the ability to click and drag so you can zoom in and out of your document with ease.
- Brush previews
- View enhanced dab and stroke previews at-a-glance, saving you tons of time. With improved visuals, we've eliminated the need to hover in order to find the perfect brush.
- Color Selector
- See how the universal color selection process throughout Essentials is now a breeze. The updated Color Wheel includes new circular grabbers and a split color and clone painting preview.
- Layers
- Enjoy unlimited layers, blending with composite methods, adjusting opacity and many workflow enhancements that make for an effortless experience.
- Property Bar
- Streamlined Property bars include modern sliders, simple brush controls, media flyouts, and paper rotation so you can make adjustments in no time.
- Performance
- Essentials can easily manage memory-intensive operations, such as working on large canvases, scrubby zooming, rotating the canvas, working with layers and brushing, all at top speed.
Tools
Top tools ensure you are empowered to paint
- Artificial Intelligence
- Choose from an impressive range of AI-based styles that convert your favorite photos into paintings using Neural Networking and the strength of Painter's brush engine.
- Flow Map Textures
- Now select from a library of Flow Maps and Paper Textures to ensure interesting canvas expression in your paintings.
- Brush Tracking
- The pressure of your stylus on a tablet determines the density and width of your strokes. Each artist uses a different pressure level and you can adjust Essentials to match with Brush Tracking!
- Custom Brush Palette
- Shift and drag your favorite brush variants into a custom brush palette for easy access and modify the preview to display as small or large icons.
- Effects
- Make color and canvas adjustments using this exciting menu of effects including options to apply lighting & texture, warp, woodcut, sketch and more.
- Mirror and Kaleidoscope
- Paint in perfect symmetry with Mirror painting and create beautiful Mandalas using the Kaleidoscope tool.
Painter Essentials 7 System Requirements
Windows
- Mouse or tablet
- DVD drive (required for box installation)
- 2 GB RAM, 8 GB RAM or higher (recommended)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or higher, with the latest updates
- Windows 10* (64-Bit) or Windows 7 (64-Bit), with the latest updates
- 2.8 GB hard disk space for application files**, Solid-state drive (recommended)
- To activate your product, you must connect to the Internet and register it first
- 1280 x 800 @ 100% (or higher) screen resolution, 1920 x 1200 @ 150% (or higher) (recommended)
- Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, 4 physical cores/8 logical cores or higher, AVX2 instruction set support (recommended)
Mac
- Mouse or tablet
- DVD drive (required for box installation)
- 2 GB RAM, 8 GB RAM or higher (recommended)
- macOS 10.15, 10.14 or 10.13, with the latest revision
- Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 physical cores/8 logical cores or higher (recommended)
- To activate your product, you must connect to the Internet and register it first
- 1280 x 800 @ 100% (or higher) screen resolution, 1920 x 1200 @ 150% (or higher) (recommended)
- 1.6 GB hard disk space for application files, Solid-state drive (recommended), Case-sensitive file systems are not supported
*Versions 1803, 1809 and 1903 of Windows 10 are supported as well as versions that will be released during the life cycle of Painter Essentials 7.
**Additional space may be required for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.