Motivation: Painter 8 takes a novel approach to color adjustments
Software: Corel Painter 8

The before image	The after image

One of the attractions of Corel Painter 8 its its virtuouso natural painting capabilities. But the nagging question prevails - how will Painter stand up in the rough and tumble touch up business of color photo editing- and specifically color adjustments. Well as it turn out Painter has all the basic tools for color corrections and adjustments - Brightness/Contrast, HSV-Hue/Saturation/Value and Equalize. But as we discovered - some like Brightness Contrast shouls be tossed out, and others refined; however on the whole Corel painter has some very useful color correction options.

| Control command as shown to the left. And we adjust the Value setting way up to the maximum. And as can be seen from the thumbnail, there is still room for a slighter lighter image - but we shall first correct for the overall bluish tinge. However, check out and compare the standard command dialog preview features in PaintShop Pro. We find the Painter dialogs sparse in comparison and simpler than even Corel's own PhotoPaint. But unlike HSL tools in PhotoShop or PhotoPaint where the Lightness setting is too flat (its applied as a Uniform Color), the Value setting really works in Corel Painter 8.

1. Uniform Color - delivers the same lightness change uniformly across the image. This matches fairly closely the way Photoshop and PhotoPaint HSL dialogs work;
2. Image Luminance - uses the current image luminance to adjust certain areas more than others
3. Original Luminance - uses the original starting luminance to make non-linear adjustments;
4. Paper - uses the underlying paper assigned by Painter to apply non-linear adjustments;
5. Selected Channel or Layer Mask - to apply non-linear HSV adjustments(black no adjustment; white complete adjustment; grey equals shaded adjustment).

So in the next step the we need to remove the light bluish tinge to the image. And using the Effects | Tonal Control | Color Correction command the correction is easily done. In fact this is like the Curves tool in Photoshop and PaintShop Pro but with 3 more modes of operation: 1)simple brightness/contrast changes; 2)dragout curves; 3)freehand draw; and 4)advanced mode. More importantly all of the above modes work with individual R/G/B colors or with all three colors at once. The results is that it is trivial to correct for too much blue. Using the Freehand mode of the Colors Correction command, the image is restored to a warmer overall color tone with a little trial and error work. Visually it is easy to follow. Going below the diagonal line subtracts Blue and add its compliment, yellow to the image. The lower left represents the darker shades of blue (or its compliment a deepl yellow gold) where as the top right is the lightest or most pastel shades of blue(lowest hue saturation) . as you make the corrections they are reflected on the image. Thus trial and error work is easy to do. So the next task is to add a little

As always with the automated corrections, the best guess of Painter's Equalize command is a bit strident. By backing of a bit - moving the Black point at the left to include bit more of the histogram and the same for the White Point (move a bit more to the right), the color adjustment is softened and more pleasing. Because color adjustments are so hard to do - expect more of these automated, "best-guess" tools to be appearing more often in graphic editors. PaintShop Pro already has nearly a half-dozen. I like the approach that Painter has taken - make the tools simple - and the amending corrections

obvious to the user. Otherwise, as in the PaintShop Pro's Histoigram Adjustment, the user can quickly get lost in a complex of color correction controls. But we stop our color corrections to this image as we have achieved our overall goal of removing an under exposure while adding a little color pickup. But it is useful to that Painter 8 has the usual Posterize, Negative Image, and Brightness Contrast command. But there is greater richness to be found in the Effects | Surface Control set of menu commands.

For example, the Dye Concentration command works with Saturation and Value settings simultaneouly and is a good alternative to the HSV correction just used above. Likewise the Color Overlay works along the Hue and Saturation dimensions. But the most interesting command is Apply Lighting. here Painter has taken the external lighting bull by the horns and provides about two dozen lighting presets such as Splashy color, Drama, Side lighting to get users started on the often time consuming task of getting the exact lighting right on a subject or image.

However, graphics editors using Painter 8 must remmember every image they work with has two additional "automatic layers" attached to it - a paper or surface and a pattern or texture. The trick is to realize that these auto-layers can play a role not just in how brush strokes appear but also how general color corrections are applied. This allows for a richness of expression but also a complexity of control. And this makes Painter's choice of a few basic color correction tools but with a broad set of basic controls more compelling for the environ that Painter provides. the bottom line is that Painter's color corrections tools are again different and compelling enough to bring this graphics editor back time and again to make color corrections that can't be done as quickly and effectively anywhere else.

Jacques Surveyer has also written a full review of Painter 8 here.