Corel Photo Paint X8 Basics Surface Pen Object Manager and illustration Part 1
Corel Photo-Paint X8 is included in the CorelDraw X8 Graphics Suite. The application has a complete set of photo editing and painting tools for illustration and graphics. This article gives an overview of using Corel Photo-Paint X8 with the Surface Pen to create a basic illustration using the available painting and drawing tools.
This article uses Corel Photo-Paint Home & Student X8, a Surface Pro 4 with a Core i5, 4 GB of RAM, and the original Surface Pen. The colored illustration is of Sam Keiths The Maxx (the Outback version) from the 90s comic book series from Image Comics. All drawings in this article are by the author.
Note: Sam Keith revised the appearance of the Maxx several times during the series, which is one of the reasons why the Maxx was so visually interesting. Im certainly not going to embarrass myself and imitate Keiths style, but will base the drawing from The Maxx #3, which featured the original design of Maxx in the Outback. The scan is from the authors own collection.
Surface Pen and Photo-Paint X8
For this article, the Surface Pen is used for creating the initial sketch and adding the colors to the illustration. As of this writing, using the Surface Pen with the SP4 on Corel Photo-Paint X8 has some obvious performance issues.
The palm-block feature, which is supposed to prevent contact from other objects from reacting the touch screen, doesnt work well with either CorelDraw or Photo-Paint. If youre an experienced drafter or artist, this wont be an issue as you probably lift your whole arm off your drawing area when you work, but others might occasionally find a smudge or mark made by their forearm, palm, or wrist when they draw.
Moreover, if you dont make full use of the screen with Photo-Paint X8 as you work, you might accidentally open the Windows menu or Action panel. You can have Photo-Paint X8 remove other Windows screen elements by pressing Backspace twice at any time.
Note: I actually accidentally launched Corel Capture X8, which was pinned to the Taskbar, while making my initial sketch. I also triggered the Action panel a few times when my Surface Pen brushed the edges of my drawing area.
There are other issues with using the Surface Pen with Photo-Paint as well. If you are holding the tablet and your finger is held down on any part of the screen, strokes from the Surface Pen wont register on Photo-Paint. If you werent within a Corel application, the 10-point touch system and the N-trig technology of the Surface Pen will prevent this from happening.
If you decide to use Corel Photo-Paint X8 with the Surface Pen on the Surface Pro 4, configure the Pen Settings before beginning to improve Surface Pen tracking:
To configure pen settings:
1. In Photo-Paint X8, click Tools > Options > Pen Settings.
2. Apply three strokes with the Surface Pen in the area provided.
3. Select either WinTab or Real-Time Stylus.
4. Click OK.
Ive tried both WinTab and the Real-Time Stylus settings when using the Surface Pen on Corel Photo-Paint X8. Although Corel advertised their Real-Time Stylus support when they released CorelDraw Graphics Suite X8, the older WinTab actually worked better as I drew this sample illustration. While using the Real-Time Stylus option, creating strokes with the Airbrush and Calligraphic Pen skipped more often than I wouldve liked.
Note: I actually work mostly in CorelDraw and vector images rather than bitmaps, which produce less artistic but cleaner illustrations. Moreover, I found out I work better with the CorelDraw Graphics Suite when I use my Intuos Draw or older Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch rather than the Surface Pen. Corel has reportedly improved Surface product support in CorelDraw Graphics Suite 2017, their latest release. I used the Surface Pen in this article to demonstrate how well it works and introduce concepts when drawing with Corel Photo-Paint X8.
As a final note, enable Auto-save, which may not be enabled by default on your Corel installation. You are actually more prone to errors when using an input device such as the Surface Pen than a Wacom tablet so setting a regular save interval helps quite a bit. Moreover, as your images get more complex, CorelDraw has a tendency to crash on 4 GB of RAM, and although I didnt experience any sudden application crashes while working on this simple, quick drawing in Photo-Paint, it pays to be prepared.
To configure Auto-save interval:
1. Click Tools > Options > Save.
2. Enable Auto-save and specify the interval value.
3. Select Save to file.
4. Click OK.
Continued in Corel Photo-Paint X8 Basics: Surface Pen, Object Manager, and basic painting Part 2
