Basic Photo Editing in Corel Painter XI

Many times I am complimented on my photography, and just as often I am asked, “How do you get pictures to turn out so beautifully?" I am going to let you in on the secret: I have Corel Painter. I would consider myself an amateur in digital photography. I understand basic principles and how to use the features of my cameras, but my photography very rarely comes out in professional quality. I have just mastered basic photo correction, or photo editing in Corel. Here are some tips to help you do the same.

Select Your Picture

Go to File-->Open to select the picture you’d like to edit. You should already have it loaded onto your computer, and hopefully you remember where you put it. When you find the photo, double-click to open it.

Apply Underpainting Options

Go to Window-->Underpainting to open the Underpainting menu box. This box contains a lot of features you can use, but for basic photo editing, you normally only need to use Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation, Value, and Smart Blur. Corel Painter uses slider bars for these options to easily navigate, and you can see what the change will do your photo instantly.

Brightness and Contrast helps give your picture better lighting and mood, and can either mellow a photo or up the dramatic effects of the photo.

So for my particular picture, I want to beef up the contrast just a little, and lower the brightness slightly. I play with the sliders for these two options until I decide I am happy. I settled for 12% more contrast, and -6% brightness, and added a very slight blur of 7%. I like lighting in my photos to be a little bit dramatic, so I always lean to that side when I am editing. This picture doesn’t need a whole lot of that feeling, though, so I will try to go easy on it.