Deciding between Artrage and Corel Essentials

[Stephen Lo Piano]

I been trying both programs. Both are quite good. When I'm in Painter it seems like some of the brushes smear though. I can't lay down a thick bold stroke of paint with an oil brush. I have to use an Acrylic brush to get a thick strong stroke of color.

With Artrage it appears that they have done a better job of providing brushes that lay down thick bold color. Plus they have the oil tube approach which lays down as thick as you can possibly get color.

Got to say though that I never really like the Artrage interface as much as I like the Painter interface. The Artrage interface has these semi-circles on the lower left and lower right of the screen which I don't like all that much. I wish the developers would have chosen to do more like a Painter interface and just set the brush size by moving a slider or entering a number at the top of the screen.

Can you think of other reasons why Artrage might be a better choice? I only do oil and I like to paint thick and bold. I like impasto too.

I have tried Corel Essentials only due to the situation at home using graphic arts software on a computer with a situation where I do not have any internet connection, using Windows 7 Professional. Essentials is possible to activate without an internet connection, Corel Painter and Draw are not. I like the full Painter program yet do not like Essentials, the brushes I worked with in Painter are not included in Essentials. The latest version of Painter has pushed my favorite brushes into the archive menu of past versions, the new brushes they are adding are not very useful for my personal work.

I believe Art Rage 5 is a much better program than Corel Essentials. Not sure if you will be able to use any newer versions of Art Rage past 5 on an older Windows 7 operating system without an internet connection, yet did find a work around provided here to install Art Rage 4 on a Windows XP machine and Art Rage 5 on a Windows 7 Professional machine without any internet connection. Art Rage works through the Wine application on Linux operating systems. I am able to use my installed version of Art Rage 5 on a machine that also has Fedora Design Suite 27, Art Rage works well in this operating system. Also have AV Linux 2016 on the same machine, Art Rage 5 works well on this operating system also. Art Rage also works in Linux on my older machine with Windows XP and Art Rage 4 through the Wine application on Linux.

So far as the future is concerned a program to watch is the GIMP latest version 2.10. They have included many brushes from the MyPaint software program, the MyPaint software program seems to be finished, haven't seen any recent updates. Combining the features of brushes from MyPaint into the latest version of GIMP 2.10 is a definite positive improvement and upgrade. MyPaint never had any editing features and I have always managed to export a file out of MyPaint that needed some editing features into the GIMP to get the job done.