Corel keeps the paint wet for new Painter 11

It's the dream of graphic artists to be able to use a program that emulates -- not just simulates -- the texture, the behavior, the luminance of pigment...while at the same time preserving all the conveniences of digital editing, such as layering and selective blending and the ability to "undo."

The latest Corel Painter 11, whose availability for download begins today, adds a little more of that much-desired flexibility between the two universes. For example, once you've blended a paint on one layer with a paint on another layer (imagine those paints being wet, if you will), what happens to those intermediate colors created during the blending process? In a demonstration video on Corel's Web site today, you can see how the latest incarnation of the Magic Wand tool enables separation of blended pigments between layers. So you can move a layer around and thus effectively "re-blend," a process not unlike ciphoning off wet paint from a fresh canvas.

It's one of many incremental, but welcome changes being advertised for Painter 11, which sells for $399 to US customers ($199 for the upgrade).