Program: NaturePainter

[DannyRaphael]

Ran across a "painter" program today I'd not heard of before called NaturePainter. For more info click
HERE.

Opens/saves .bmp and .jpg files, but not Photoshop .psd. From what I could tell from the Web site, it has no built-in "filters" either, so no automated "photo-art."

Functionally it does not have nearly the depth and breadth of capabilities that Deep Paint or Corel Painter 8 have. It might be worth a look as a low-cost alternative for those who have traditional artistic skills or who want to develop those skills using a digital medium.

According to a customer support person (as of 5/22/03) an upgraded version 1.2 "with a few bug fixes and functional enhancements should be shipping soon" .

~Danny~

[Andrew B.]

I test drove NaturePainter a few month ago. It is pretty limited in most ways, such as not being able to rotate brushes, few brushes, and no media variation that I can remember. Also, no standard bitmap tools. And despite the fact that they recommend a Wacom, when I emailed to ask I was told the program is not pressure-sensitive.

On the positive side, when NaturePainter overlaps paint strokes it does a pretty good job of dragging the paint that was already there. Better than Painter 7. And if it can do this with imported images, it might be excellent for stroking a photo. But the demo version would not let me import, so I could not test this.

Then we come to the price. It is very reasonable compared to Painter or Deep Paint. But Dogwaffle is pretty reasonable too, and even has a free version.

There is one other area though, where NaturePainter shines. It is incredibly easy to use. And as such it is probably the best program for an artist (or budding artist) who is not strong in computer experience but wants to jump into digital painting. I also liked the "inspiration" feature, which might seem simplistic to people who are web-savvy, but it makes it very easy bring up some pictures to get the juices flowing.