The goal of Painter is to simulate natural media on your computer and it does exactly what it says. Best of all though, is the simulation of oil colour, everything from dirty brushes, and the impasto texture - and every feature of the brushes is subject to your control. All that control looks a little daunting at first, but as a newcomer to Painter, I've found most of it quite intuitive to pick up and the manual contains nine tutorials that take you through some of the functions. I've also been suprised by how intuitive the actual brushes are to use, it starts to feel very natural very quickly. Don't think that this is only for traditional art images though. There are vector layers and the liquid ink in particular lends toward some impressive graphic images that would make Illustrator users drool.

There is a good chance that you will want to use this with either photographic material or images created in a 3D program such as Poser. (I use Poser 6 as an ideal partner) If this is the case, then you will find it remarkably fast to create natural media versions of you images. Of course, you can use Photoshop plug-ins to achieve this to some extent but this method always looks like a filter effect. The advantage of using Painter, is that you are making those brush strokes yourself and this input from you is what makes it all work. When you create a clone image, you set up your brushes to sample their colour, not from the colour pallet but from the picture you are cloning, it then places a sheet of virtual tracing paper over this image as a guide to your paining - all you have to worry about is your choice of brush and brush strokes.

If that sounds like a super quick solution, I'm afraid it isn't. There is no 'make art' button, you do have to do some work. What this is, is the best tool for the job. Nothing else comes close.