Natural-Media® that replicates reality

Immerse yourself in an enormous selection of professional Natural-Media brushes. Craft your masterpiece with stunning reality using authentic dry media like chalks, pencils and pastels, or realistic wet media tools including thick paint, acrylics, palette knives, pens, watercolors, and so much more.

Exclusive media types

Create unforgettable art with Painter’s proprietary media, including Particles that spring, flow and glow along with Image Hoses that spray the object of your imagination. Make an unforgettable mark with Visionary Pattern Pens that command attention and Thick Texture brushes that extrude your selected texture, and bring that extraordinary look to your art.

Intelligent photo painting

Transform favorite photos into breathtaking paintings using the powerful cloning and photo-painting tools in Painter® 2021. Clone your images by dipping your brush directly into the photo or use AI Styles and the Auto-Painting palette to rapidly paint a masterpiece for you. Produce incredible photo art with ease using the powerful SmartStroke™ brush technology that follows lines and contours from within your picture.

Incomparable composition tools

Paint in perfect symmetry with Mirror painting and create beautiful Mandalas using the Kaleidoscope tool. Set a flawless scene with 1-, 2- and 3-point Perspective Guides, and craft the perfect composition using the rule of thirds. Even if you aspire to paint like Da Vinci, the Divine Proportion tools will ensure your final composition is both stimulating and dynamic.

Versatile fill and color

Cover your canvas with beautiful, interactive gradients that can be express painted, or add amazing textures that bring an artistic flair to your compositions. Craft the perfect color palette using the Color Wheel, color harmonies, artists’ Mixer Palette and color sets.

All-inclusive canvas control

Rotate your canvas on the fly to achieve that perfect painting angle or turn your favorite papers, flow maps and textures in any direction, at any time. When painting with a drawing tablet, many of Painter’s brushes allow for tilt, rotation, bearing, and pressure sensitive control. Plus, multi-touch support makes navigating your canvas a breeze.

Intuitive workspace to match your workflow

Enjoy instant access and immediate interaction with the tools you need most. Use the brush search to find the perfect brush or the built-in Workspace Layouts that highlight tools for specific workflows. Choose UI color theme, import additional content from fellow artists, or customize your own tools and organize them in Palette Drawers to eliminate desktop clutter.

Built-in learning resources

Get all the support you need! The moment you launch the Painter application, the Welcome Book will greet you with helpful new tutorials, plus guide you to more learning videos and webinars. Open the in-app Visual Tooltips to see how adjusting Painter’s brush controls will visually impact your brush selection and access brush hints to help you understand the mechanics behind special media types and brush technology.

Extensive compatibility

Preserve colors and layers with ease when transferring files between Photoshop and Painter while working on either a Mac or PC. Painter can easily manage large brushes and memory-intensive operations at top speed. Enjoy Apple Pencil Tilt and Trackpad Pan/Zoom/Rotate plus Touch Bar, Core ML and Sidecar support that will greatly improve the Mac workflow.

Performance optimization

The Brush Accelerator™ in Painter 2021 is a multi-functional tool that scores your system and applies the optimal Painter performance settings automatically, which allows GPU acceleration plus CPU and AVX2 performance enhancements throughout.