Artrage vs Corel Painter?

[kenmo]

Well, here I go....I paid for Painter 2019, and it worked very well. Then, I tried the trial version of 2020. At the end of the 30 day trial period I discovered that my already-paid-for 2019 had been deactivated and cannot be used. Corel Corp has gotten their last dime from me. I will never use Painter again, which is a pity. I will now start the learning curve for Art Rage.

I have both Corel Painter 2017 and Corel Painter 2019 installed on my computer. As well as Corel Essentials 4 and Essentials 5. I installed a trial version of Painter 2020. After the trial period it deactivated. All my registered Corel Products still worked. Later I installed a demo of Corel Essentials 7. After the trial period Essentials 7 deactivated and ALL my Corel Products were still working fine.

I would contact Corel about this. As your experience seems to be the exception.

[kenmo]

On the discussions here of Corel vs ArtRage.

A couple of my points.

ArtRage is a pure joy to use. Better performance and a very friendly user interface. Corel's performance at times can be quite laggy and it's interface is cluttered and confusing. I tried Painter 2020 and despite Corel's claims of a vast performance improvement, I thought not enough to warrant upgrading despite the offer of $134 Canadian (about $99 USA).

However that said, lately ArtRage has been gathering dust as I am using Corel Painter 2019 and Essentials 5 a lot more.

Why? Because I now find my self doing a lot more photography and 3D modeling/3D rendering and less freehand sketching, drawing & painting.
Corel's photo cloning ability is perfect for my photos and 3D renders, giving them a more paintery look. If I could obtain the same results I would use ArtRage.
If only ArtRage had photo cloning brushes.

A couple of years ago I asked this question here. How to make a photo look paintery with ArtRage.
I was told I could place a layer beneath my photo and the brush strokes on the layer below would appear in the photo.
I tried this and it did not give me the type of results I was looking for.
The response kind of soured me for a bit on ArtRage.

I did download the trial of ArtRage 6. I was quite turned off my the lack of a chalk brush. And there were not enough changes or improvements to warrant upgrading. However my opinion my change as I do admire ArtRage and it's friendly community.

That's another point. Despite it's wider audience, Corel's user community is nowhere as active (PainterFactory.com) as ArtRage's. Nor are they as friendly and helpful. Corel's support is one of the worst.

I'm now retired and I have a lot of registered apps (Photoshop, Lightroom, TopazLabs, Corel, ArtRage, e-onsoftware's Vue, Silo3D, 3D Coat, Curvy 3D, etc) and I have to pick and choice which apps to upgrade.

ArtRage is still one of my favorite apps. I would rather give my money to a small development team like Ambient Design or the 3DCoat development team then to Corel.

[markw]

Hello kenmo,
That’s an impressive array of graphics app you have there!

I’m curious as to what you would like to see improved or changed in AR’s current Pastel/Wax/Chalk tool?
For me it would be having a choice of square or round head like some of the other tools have.

[kenmo]

Hello kenmo,
That’s an impressive array of graphics app you have there!

I’m curious as to what you would like to see improved or changed in AR’s current Pastel/Wax/Chalk tool?
For me it would be having a choice of square or round head like some of the other tools have.

I would like to have chalk brushes that are more like Painters. Yes a square head would be nice as the fat chalk is one of my favorite Painter brushes.

Also I should have mentioned my complete dislike of ArtRage's blender tools. Again this is one area where Painter is better (just add water, bristle blender, pointy blender).

ArtRage is by far the better product. I just would like to see these features added (chalk brushes, better blender tools, cloning brushes). And until they do, I see no need for me to upgrade.