User Guide

Painting106
Where You Can Paint
You can paint on the Canvas or on a
layer above the Canvas. When a layer
is selected (highlighted on the Layers
palette), it is the target for your brush
strokes.
If you are using a Water Color brush,
you can paint only on a Water Color
layer. If you are using a Liquid Ink
brush, you can paint only on a Liquid
Ink layer. For more information, refer
to “The Water Color Layer” on
page 125 and “The Liquid Ink Layer”
on page 131.
If you try to paint on a shape, dynamic
layer, or reference layer, you must
commit it to a standard layer so that
your brush strokes are accepted.
Another possible destination for your
brush strokes is a channel or layer
mask. When a channel or layer mask
is selected, it is the target for your
brush strokes. For more information,
refer to “Editing Channels” on
page 225 or “Working with Layer
Masks” on page 255.
When you have an active selection,
painting is confined to the selection by
default. Refer to “Working with
Selections” on page 203 for more
information about selections.
In all cases, your brush strokes go to
the selected target, so make sure of the
destination before starting to paint.
Marking the Canvas
You mark the canvas by dragging in
the document window with a Brush
tool that applies media. Each time you
drag, you create a brush stroke.
When you use complex brushes, you
see a dotted line on the canvas before
the mark appears. For example, the
Gloopy variant of the Impasto brush
requires complex computations that
delay the stroke’s appearance on the
screen. When you experience a delay,
you can queue up strokes, without
losing any stroke data.
Freehand vs. Straight Line
Drawing
You can draw unconstrained lines,
called freehand, or you can draw
straight lines. Options on the property
bar
let you choose the drawing style.
With the Freehand drawing style, you
can drag with any motion or in any
direction. The stroke follows your
drag path.
Drag to create strokes using the Freehand
drawing style.
With the Straight Lines drawing style,
Corel Painter connects points with a
straight line.