If you are a fan of digital art, you likely know of two giants in the software world – Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. The latter does a remarkable job stimulating painting with everything from watercolours and oils to special effects and 2.5D texture brushes. Now, the latest version of the software has been released, with a bevy of new features and considerable more of an overhaul than was seen in Painter 2018.

The new version includes 36 new brushes – that is on top of the included 900 – along with performance enhancements across the board, colour workflows, a new interface, as well as a number of improvements being made to existing brushes, some of which debuted in Painter 2018.

It’s not cheap though. Buying Painter 2019 from scratch will cost you R4 800, while buying an upgrade is currently selling for R2 600. That being said, if you own a previous version of the software, it does pop up a special discount for the upgrade, at a far more reachable R1 400. We don’t know though how long the latter will be in effect for.

The good news is that you can take the full software for a 30 day test run to see if it warrants a purchase or upgrade for you before you commit.Additionally, you don’t subscribe to the use of the software, once you buy it once, you have it forever.