Corel has announced a free update to Painter 12 that introduces some new features and enhances others. Corel Painter 12.1 has had its feature set boosted to make it more user-friendly, more able to integrate into your digital art workflow and most importantly, more creative than ever.

“Artists are always looking for ways to make their work stand out and to spark an emotional response in their audience. We are inspired by what Painter users create and our focus is to provide them with new tools and workflow options that enable them to push their creative curiosity even further,” said Andy Church, senior product manager, Corel Painter. “Artists want to focus on what they are creating, not on the software they’re using. With this in mind, Corel Painter 12.1 was designed to give our Painter community free access to more artistic and workflow options so that it is now even easier for them to experiment with new techniques, collaborate with other artists and share their work.”

New features include Brush Sharing and Management which makes it much easier to share and use custom brushes. You can now share and swap your custom brushes via email, post them online or share them on a memory stick and install them easily and more intuitively. This is a great resource for Painter users – I’m excited at the prospect of seeing more custom painter brushes in the wild. Why not give it a whirl and share links to your favourite custom brushes in the Comments below?

To build on that, it’s now much easier to move and copy brush variants by simply dropping them into the category you’d prefer they’d lived in. This is great for people like me who’ll take something like a Sumi-e Thick Blossom as a starting point and transform it into something completely different – I can now store it in its own category by just dragging and dropping.

Workspaces have also been improved to give you complete control over their look and feel. Whether you’re painting, photomanipulating or producing a concept illustration you can now set up your workspace exactly how you’d like it.

And that’s not all. Photoshop plug-ins are now supported on 32-bit Mac machines and 64-bit Windows ones. Oh, the possibilities…

To see all of the new features, and the enhanced ones that we simply don’t have room to show you, head over to Corel’s website. The 12.1 update is a free download for those who have purchased Painter 12. If you haven’t yet, you’ll find a fully featured 30-day trial on the site too.

Corel has announced the release of the latest version of its PaintShop Pro software, PaintShop Pro X4. On sale now from Corel’s website, the program comes in two editions, Standard and Ultimate. Both have a huge range of new features, including HDR tools, Photo Blend options, exposure adjusting tools such as Fill Light and Clarity, a Selective Focus tool for tilt-shift effects and Vignette tools, as well as enhancements to performance speeds, workspaces, the program interface and built-in social media sharing. The Standard edition packs all of these in at a price of £59.99 (£44.99 if you’re upgrading) while the premium Ultimate edition also includes a range of filters and layer styles from Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0, a choice of royalty-free stock photos from Fotolia and a range of Picture Tubes – all for £79.99 or £59.99 as an upgrade from a previous version of PaintShop Pro.

This issue, we’ve teamed up with Corel to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Painter – the world’s leading digital painting program – and the release of the latest version, Painter 12. We’ve got five copies of the standard edition (worth £274.80) to give away – all you have to do is answer the simple question inside issue 22 of the mag and you could be in with a chance of winning. But that’s not all – we’re also offering you the chance to win one of five copies of the 20th anniversary limited edition of Corel Painter 12 (Complete with a Wacom pen and worth £298.80), and for that, we’d like you to get your creative juices flowing. We’re challenging you to create a piece of artwork in any program or media on the theme of ’20′. You can find more details in issue 22 of Digital Artist, or check out the terms and conditions below.

Issue 22 of Digital Artist is on sale now from all good newsagents or www.imagineshop.co.uk.

How to enter:

Standard edition of Corel Painter 12 – please see the details in issue 22 of the magazine

20th anniversary limited edition of Corel Painter – The theme of this competition is ’20′. You can use any software, media or combination thereof. Art competition entries should be sent as low-res jpegs via email, or posted to us on CD. Winners will be asked to provide high-res PSDs or TIFFs (minimum size 160mm along the smallest edge at 300dpi). Please send your entries to digitalartist@imagine-publishing.co.uk or to Corel Painter 12 Competition, Digital Artist, Imagine Publishing, Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, Dorset BH2 6EZ, UK. Imagine Publishing cannot accept any responsibility for material lost or damaged in the post. We cannot return any originals or CDs. Imagine Publishing and its partners have the right to substitute the prize for a similar item or items of equal or higher value. Employees of Imagine Publishing, Corel, their relativesor any agents are not eligible to enter (But you are able to enter if you’ve done freelance work for us, don’t worry!). The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash. From time to time, Imagine Publishing or its agents may send you related material or special offers. If you do not want to receive this, please state so clearly on your competition entry. All entrants agree to participate in any promotion to do with this competition. The closing date for all entries is 23.59 UK time on 31st October 2011.

It’s finally here – issue 22 of Digital Artist has hit the shelves in the UK and in our online store. If you’re a subscriber, your copy should be with you very soon too.

In this issue, we take a look at the Japanese woodblock style and subject matter that formed the beginnings of manga, explore how to conceptualise a post-apocalyptic environment, get to grips with some of Painter 12′s new brushes, focus on detailing in illustration, texturise vectors, design a tote bag print and get the look of watercolour in Photoshop. Our feature examines the evolution of wildlife illustration – a leopard can change its spots, after all – and we’ve got news, views, reviews and interviews with some of the most interesting people in the creative community.

We’re really proud of this issue of the mag – it features fabulous work by some really excellent artists, designers and illustrators including Andy Hau, Joe Cummings, Abi Daker, Matthew Ellero, Mary Winkler and Schin Loong – and to celebrate, we’re giving you the opportunity to win loads of lovely stuff!

First off we’ve got some fun with our feature. Illustrator Sarah A King has hidden the names of ten creatures in her beautiful woodcut style image. Can you find them all? Come say hi on Twitter (@DA_April), tweet me the names of all ten of them with the hashtag #gowild and you could win a grab-bag of wildlife-related resources.

Or how about a copy of the standard edition of Corel Painter 12? We’ve got five to give away – all you have to do is answer the simple question inside the mag and you could be in with a chance of winning. But that’s not all – we’re also offering you the chance to win one of five copies of the 20th anniversary limited edition of Corel Painter 12 (Complete with a Wacom pen and worth £298.80), and for that, we’d like you to get your creative juices flowing. We’re challenging you to create a piece of artwork in any program or media on the theme of ’20′. See the Ts and Cs below for more info. Good luck!

How to enter:

Standard edition of Corel Painter 12 – please see the details in issue 22 of the magazine

20th anniversary limited edition of Corel Painter – The theme of this competition is ’20′. You can use any software, media or combination thereof. Art competition entries should be sent as low-res jpegs via email, or posted to us on CD. Winners will be asked to provide high-res PSDs or TIFFs (minimum size 160mm along the smallest edge at 300dpi). Please send your entries to digitalartist@imagine-publishing.co.uk or to Corel Painter 12 Competition, Digital Artist, Imagine Publishing, Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, Dorset BH2 6EZ, UK. Imagine Publishing cannot accept any responsibility for material lost or damaged in the post. We cannot return any originals or CDs. Imagine Publishing and its partners have the right to substitute the prize for a similar item or items of equal or higher value. Employees of Imagine Publishing, Corel, their relativesor any agents are not eligible to enter (But you are able to enter if you’ve done freelance work for us, don’t worry!). The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash. From time to time, Imagine Publishing or its agents may send you related material or special offers. If you do not want to receive this, please state so clearly on your competition entry. All entrants agree to participate in any promotion to do with this competition. The closing date for all entries is 23.59 UK time on 31st October 2011.

Corel has launched an exciting international design competition for users of its CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT products. The second CorelDRAW International Design Contest opened today and closes on 30th June 2011. Over $75 000 worth of prizes are up for grabs, with submissions being accepted in six categories:

Advertising/Marketing: Examples of flyers, brochures, logos, and other designs related to advertising, marketing, or point of purchase (POP)
Signs/Awards/Personalisation: Designs used for sign making, engraving, awards, dye sublimation, and other related industries
Vehicle Wraps: Designs created for car, truck, boat, or other vehicle wraps
Textile/Fashion Design: Fashion, embroidery, and direct-to-garment printing designs
General Illustration/Fine Art: Artistic or creative designs
CorelDRAW Marketing Campaign: Design concepts to be featured in a CorelDRAW marketing campaign—entries can be of any style, and will be judged on creativity and overall theme

“With over $75,000 in prizes up for grabs, now is the perfect time to shine the spotlight on our CorelDRAW community as we celebrate the diversity and talent of our CorelDRAW users around the globe,” said John Falsetto, Senior Product Manager, CorelDRAW at Corel. “Our previous International Design Contest produced amazing results with submissions from over 60 countries. Our CorelDRAW community inspires us daily with their creativity, ingenuity and skill. We’re looking forward to seeing the unique and exciting ways CorelDRAW is used as we celebrate the enormous talent and versatility of our CorelDRAW community.”

Three winners in each category plus the top student entry from each category—totalling 24 potential winners—will receive a fantastic prize package including selected products from Roland®, Wilcom®, Euro-Systems®, Digital Designware, Apple®, Digital Art Solutions, Wacom®, Canon®, HP, Seagate® and Corel®. The grand prize winner will receive a Roland® VersaCAMM™ SP-300i printer/cutter (valued at approx. $13,495 USD). “We are excited that Corel has selected VersaCAMM as the contest grand prize,” said Andrew Oransky, Director of Marketing and Product Management for Roland. “The market for wide-format inkjet printing continues to grow, and our VersaCAMM is the most versatile production tool for Corel professionals looking to expand their capabilities.”

Get all the info, Ts&Cs and submission details by clicking here.

Everyone hates running out of storage space, but with high-res digital files, that’s easy to do – and that’s without even looking at all the other essentials on your computer (If I set my entire music library to playback, it’d be going for over a month without a repeat!). Fortunately, Corel has supplied the answer in the shape of a free Western Digital 2 terabyte hard drive (That’s just over 2000 gigabytes!) for all customers purchasing the CorelDRAW X5 Graphics Suite until 15th May 2011. Here’s some more from Corel:

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 includes an exceptional variety of features including vector illustration, page layout, photo editing, tracing, Web graphics and animation. The software offers a quick, intuitive workflow, high-value digital content, market-leading file compatibility and graphic design tools, a must-have for every aspiring and professional designer!

With the free Western Digital 2TB external USB 2.0 Hard Drive, CorelDRAW users can make the most of their creations:

·         Safely secure your projects: Thanks to Western Digital 2TB external USB 2.0 Hard Drive’s back-up functionality you can rest assured your creations are safely secured;
·         More free disk space: Free up disk space and work more efficiently by saving your files on your external Hard Drive.

To benefit from this promotion, customers simply purchase a full version of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5* either on the Corel eStore or from one of Corel’s authorised resellers. To claim the free Western Digital 2 TB external Hard Drive, just fill in the on-line application form and submit it together with the proof of purchase to Corel. Terms and Conditions apply and will be displayed on-line together with the application form.
eStore Customers please visit www.corel.co.uk/hddpromo .
Customers who wish to purchase from a Corel authorised reseller please visit www.corel.co.uk/2tb.

Countries included in the offer are: UK, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland.

*Conditions: One hard drive per customer. This promotion is exclusive to people who buy the full standard version of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5.
Purchasers of any license or upgrade versions of CorelDRAW Premium Suite X5, Small Business Edition or Home and Student are not eligible.

Well, it’s a real day for digital art launches! Corel has announced the release of its first-ever iPad app, Corel Paint It! Show. The app catalogues the photos on your iPad into a slideshow with a difference – they’re automatically put through a realistic painting filter similar to Painter’s Autopainting feature – and like Autopainting, the strokes are directionally-sensitive, creating a far more realistic painted look than common-or-garden filters. This is no Sketchbook Pro, Brushes or ArtRage (you don’t do the painting yourself) but it is a fantastic little trinket for those who are wary of iPad painting apps, and a great introduction to them.

“At Corel, we are continuously inspired by the question, ‘What else is possible?’ For 25 years, this question has motivated our teams around the world to come up with new and better ways to help our customers express their creativity and become even more productive,” said Nick Davies, senior vice president of corporate marketing at Corel. “With our first iPad app, we wanted to take the photo-viewing experience one step further. Corel Paint It! Show transforms your iPad into a portable art gallery by using a variety of painting effects to transform each photo, brushstroke-by-brushstroke, into a beautiful masterpiece. It’s a unique and eye-catching way to enjoy and show off your favorite photos and, having watched people play with Paint It! Show, I can tell you, it’s addictive!”

There are five painting styles in the app (My personal favourite is the suitably-sticky-looking Modern) and an easy, intuitive interface for saving, emailing or posting your pics to Facebook. It’s cheap as chips too at just 59p (UK) or 79¢ (That’s Euro cents, not US) from the Apple App Store so there’s really no reason not to pick it up and play. Me personally, I’m hoping that one day soon Corel Painter Sketchpad might make an iPad appearance…

Visit www.corel.com for more on Corel’s range of digital imaging products.

It’s that time of year again – certainly in the western hemisphere* the nights are drawing in, the leaves are turning, and children and students are going back to school and college. For schoolchildren and older students alike, a basic digital art suite is becoming as necessary as a new maths set and and bubblegum scented erasers (Yes, you can guess what my family were buying this weekend!). The cost of a new digital art package for your sprogs can often be prohibitive when you add it to new sports kits, uniforms and more, but there is a solution. Home-user and student versions of programs are a great way to get the functionality you need at a lower price, and now Corel has introduced a Home and Student Suite for CorelDraw X5, which retails for just £99.

Thanks to the extensive collection of content included in the Home & Student Suite, users can easily explore their creative ideas and turn them into amazing results. Included are 1,300 clipart images, 14 design templates and over 140 OpenType fonts. The new built-in content search tool Corel CONNECT allows users to find graphics, templates, fonts and images on their desktops and selected websites. Moreover, the suite incorporates new photo effects, such as Vibrance to boost colour intensity, and Photo Filter to simulate different camera filters. Last but not least, users can get web graphics right the first time with the new Pixel view mode and Export for Web dialogue box. The software includes a printed full-colour Getting Started Guide plus two hours of training videos to get started easily and fast.

CorelDRAW Home & Student Suite X5 includes following main applications:

·         CorelDRAW® X5: an intuitive vector-illustration and page-layout application
·         Corel® PHOTO-PAINT™ X5: a professional image-editing application
·         Corel® PowerTRACE®: a utility to quickly and accurately convert bitmaps into editable vector graphics
·         Corel CAPTURE™: a one-click screen capture utility
·         Corel® CONNECT™: find graphics, templates, fonts and images instantly on your computer and selected websites with a built-in content search tool
·         PhotoZoom Pro 2: a plug-in that preserves photo quality when enlarging digital images in Corel® PHOTO-PAINT™ (registration required)

This is a great value home user and student solution for creating posters, infographics and much more. It’s available boxed from all good software retailers or online from www.corel.com.

*If you’re not in the western hemisphere and are enjoying glorious summer right now, send us some pics to cheer us up!

To celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary, Corel is running a worldwide digital art competition. Over to them to tell you the details:

“Corel’s Quest for the Best Creativity Challenge is looking to discover and showcase some of the extraordinary and inspiring work made in Corel software every day. Whether you’re someone who makes a living from your creations or you create art for the love of it, you’re invited to enter your best work created using Corel software! If you simply want to enjoy what others have created, just visit the site and vote on your favorites for a chance to win.

“‘With Corel’s Quest for the Best Creativity Challenge, we’re looking to discover and celebrate some of the extraordinary individuals who use Corel software in unique and inspiring ways,’ said Nick Davies, Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing at Corel. ‘As we celebrate our 25th birthday, it’s the perfect time to shine a spotlight on the talent and skills of our community as we thank them for their loyalty and longstanding support.’

“You are invited to participate in one of two ways:

“1) Design your creation in one of Corel’s products and upload your entry to www.corelquestforthebest.com to have a chance to win one of the great prizes being awarded for the top 25 entries.

“2) Visit www.corelquestforthebest.com to pick your favorite submissions. Just register and vote to enter the contest sweepstakes and have a chance to win one of 10 HP® Mini Netbooks drawn at random.

“Don’t delay! The contest is now open in the US, UK, Canada and Germany. Deadline for participation is 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time on August 31, 2010.

“Corel’s Quest for the Best prizes include: an HP® Pavilion Elite 390t desktop computer, Wacom® tablets, Nikon® D700™ Digital SLR camera and Nikkor® lens, Nikon® COOLPIX® cameras, Apple® iPad™, Flip UltraHD™ Camcorder, HP® Mini Netbooks and Corel software packages,including CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X5, Corel® Painter™ 11,
Corel® PaintShop Photo® Pro X3 and Corel® VideoStudio® Pro X3.

“To mark its 25th birthday and thank all of the customers who have supported it through the years, Corel will be launching a series of special promotions and activities through the remainder of 2010. Visit http://www.corel.com/25/uk for more details or follow them as @corelsoftware on Twitter.

“Contest participants can find free trial versions of the latest Corel creative products including CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X5, Corel® Painter™ 11 and Corel® PaintShop Photo® Pro X3 at  www.corel.com/freetrials.

For full contest details, please visit www.corelquestforthebest.com“

With only a few days left until the World Cup (Yes, I know many of our American readers are slightly baffled with how seriously the rest of the planet takes soccer, but surely you think it’s charming, right?) Corel’s UK website has decided to join in the footie fun with a World Cup competition offering prizes worth over £3800. Corel’s World Cup Prediction Game runs from 11th June to 11th July.

Prizes on offer include some of Corel’s latest award-winning digital media software and some of the newest must-have electronics including a flat screen 40” TV, HD camcorder, games consoles and much more.

To play the Corel World Cup Prediction Game and have a chance to win some amazing prizes, visit www.corel.co.uk/worldcup and register today. This competition is open to UK residents. Just enter your score predictions for each game and earn points depending upon how good your predictions prove to be.  Plus, answer the daily bonus question for a chance to win extra points and see your name soar up the rankings, hopefully just like your favourite team. At the end of the World Cup the highest scoring players will receive one of the following amazing top prizes:

Sony® BRAVIA 40″ Full HD 1080p LCD TV with Freeview and 100Hz Motionflow
JVC® GZ-HD300BEK High Definition Camcorder
NIKON COOLPIX P90 compact 12MP digital camera with 24x Optical Zoom
Sony® PlayStation® 3 Slim Console 120GB
Nintendo® Wii Console with Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort and Motion Plus Controller

Trust Corel to make the beautiful game even better!