Learning Corel Painter

Today, we were introduced to the painting program, Corel Painter. Having used Photoshop’s various iterations for many tasks over the years, using Corel Painter instead feels like coming back to something having been away for a long time – you remember some important things, but a lot of it has changed. Some features worked similarly in Photoshop, whereas some seemed archaic in nature. For example, it puzzled me that the ‘Clear’ command wasn’t, by default, set to the ‘delete’ key, forcing me to go into the menu to clear my canvas. There also were no apparent ways to merge layers, though I suppose that this should not be an issue if I get into the most efficient method of working as layer merging is not easily reversible. Even so, it wasn’t terribly difficult to get into some working flow by the end of the session, but there were still some hiccups that would be expected upon the first use of a program.

It wasn’t just adapting to the new software that I posed a little problem in. Having worked on solely PCs, I had never used a Mac before, or at least the keyboard of a Mac when used within Windows. Being used to having the alt key on the left side of the spacebar meant that, more often than not I was opening up the start menu rather than doing the commands I wanted, using the eyedropper being one of them.

Even with the hitches today, this is just the beginning of a new learning experience. Even though I understand a little about Corel Painter, I am aware that I will be introduced to software that I will have had no prior similar experiences in. Even though in the past I have tried to learn some of these programs (Such as Maya), I am wondering how easy it will be to understand when there is an actual person showing me, in contrast to reading tutorials and figuring it out myself. Either way, only time will tell.