In Corel® Painter™ IX, you can use the Auto Clone feature to automatically apply brush strokes to your image. Unlike most other effects, the Auto Clone feature has no dialog box; instead, it uses the current brush settings.

You can use the Auto Clone feature to easily produce a Natural-Media® version of an image. To do this, you begin by setting a clone source. Next, you choose a brush that produces artistic strokes. Variants of the Cloners brush category automatically pick up color from the cloned image; the Driving Rain variant of the Cloner brush, for example, works well for generating a hand-drawn look. For variants of a brush category other than Cloners, you can choose to pick up the color from the cloned image.

After you have chosen your brush variant and (if required) color settings, you are ready to initiate the Auto Clone process. You can choose to apply the Auto Clone effect to either your entire image or a selected portion of it.

After you have initiated the Auto Clone process, you can stop it at any point by clicking anywhere in the image; however, to fill the selected area completely, you must let the Auto Clone process continue.

In this example, the Auto Clone feature was used three times to apply effects (Melt Cloner, Impressionist Cloner, and Chalk Cloner) to various selections of the image.

1. Open the image file that you want to use as a clone source.
   
   
2. Choose File menu > Clone Source, and then choose the image file you opened in step 1.
   
   
3. Select the brush and variant you want to use to add strokes.
   When you use the Auto Clone feature with tools that turn black as you repeat strokes (such as the Felt Pen Cloner), areas darken rapidly. In these cases, you may want to adjust your image before you initiate the Auto Clone process, to slow down the color buildup.
   
   
4. If you've chosen a variant from a brush category other than Cloners, you can make it pick up color from the cloned image by pressing the Clone Color button on the Colors palette. For more color variety in the strokes Corel Painter applies, set the H, S, and V sliders on the Color Variability palette to 15% each.
   If you've chosen a variant from the Cloners brush category, the color is automatically picked up from the cloned image.
   
   
5. Make a selection if you want to apply the effect to a portion of your image.
   If nothing is selected, the entire image is affected.
   
   
6. Start the Auto Clone process by choosing Effects menu > Esoterica > Auto Clone or by pressing Command + Shift + Z (Mac OS®) or Ctrl + Shift + Z (Windows®).
   Brush strokes are automatically applied to the selected area. If you apply the Auto Clone effect to a large area, the strokes may fill in sparsely.
   
   
7. At any time, click anywhere in the image to stop the Auto Clone process.