Corel® Painter™ IX.5 lets you create and share brushes quickly and easily. In addition, you can organize your brushes into brush libraries to boost your productivity.

In this tutorial, you'll learn about

• how brushes are organized
• adding new brush categories to the Painter Brushes library
• creating and loading brush libraries
• preserving your custom brushes and brush libraries
• sharing your brushes and brush libraries

How brushes are organized

All default brushes available in Corel Painter IX are stored in the default Painter Brushes library, which is located in the Brushes folder of the Corel Painter folder installed on your system. Brushes within the Painter Brushes library are organized into brush categories, such as Acrylics, Airbrushes, or Artists. Each brush category consists of two components:

• a folder containing XML files, as well as NIB and STK files, for the available brushes (known also as brush variants). Some brushes are associated with JPEG files, which contain the brush imprints.
  
  
• a JPEG file, which contains the icon representing the brush category on the Brush Selector bar.
  
  

The default Painter Brushes library is stored in the Brushes folder. The brushes are organized into brush categories, which are associated with JPEG files.

Each brush category contains XML, STK, and NIB files. Some brushes are also associated with JPEG files.

The Painter Brushes library is the default library that loads when you launch Corel Painter. The Painter Brushes library is stored in your installation folder. However, when you customize the default brushes or add new brush categories, the changes are saved in your user folder.

Changes made to the default brushes are saved in your user folder. In this example, I've customized the Auto Van Gogh and Impressionist brushes, so the customized brushes are stored in the folder of the Artists brush category.

Adding new brush categories to the Painter Brushes library

You can add new brush categories to your default Painter Brushes library and populate the new brush categories with custom brushes. To create a brush category, you start by creating the icon that will represent your new brush category. Next, you populate the new brush category with custom brushes. You can create your custom brushes based on the available default brushes.

The new brush categories you create appear as folders in the default Painter Brushes library. The icons representing the brush categories appear as JPEG files saved at the same folder level as the new category.

Caution! When you add brushes to a brush library, the need for RAM increases. If you are working close to the memory threshold, consider creating a custom brush library to store your new custom brushes. For information about how to create a brush library, see Creating and loading brush libraries.

To add a new brush category to the default Painter Brushes library

1. To create the icon for the brush category, start with a new image, or open the image you want to use.
   
   
2. If you are starting with a new image, add the element that you want to use for the icon.
   
   
3. Choose the Rectangular Selection tool from the toolbox, and drag to select an image area.
   
   
   
   
4. On the Brush Selector bar, click the selector menu arrow, and choose Capture Brush Category.
   
   
   
   
5. In the Capture Dab dialog box, type a name for your new brush category.
   
   
   
   
6. Click OK.
   A new brush category is created in your user folder. On the Mac OS, you'll find the folder in Library/Application Support/Painter IX/Brushes/Painter brushes. In Windows, the new brush category folder appears in Application Data/Corel/Painter IX/Brushes/Painter brushes.
   
   

You can now start adding brushes to your new brush category.

1. To add brushes to your new brush category, use any of the following methods:
   
   • Create custom brushes based on the first brush in your new category. First, select the original brush, and specify the settings you want on the property bar or the Brush Control palettes. When you are satisfied with the brush, click the selector menu arrow on the Brush Selector bar, and choose Save Variant. In the Save Variant dialog box, type the name of the new brush.
     
     
     
     
     
     In this example, I am saving a custom Image Hose brush based on the first Image Hose brush in my new brush category.
     
     Note that the properties of the first brush in your category will change. If you want to keep the first brush in your new brush category unchanged, save it with a new name.
     
     
2. Create custom brushes based on brushes from a different brush category. To do this, select the brush you want to use, and change any of the brush attributes. Click the selector menu arrow on the Brush Selector bar, and choose Copy Variant. In the Copy Variant dialog box, choose the new brush category from the Copy Variant To pop-up menu.
   
   
   
   
   In this example, I'm saving a custom brush based on a brush from the Watercolor brush category.
   
   

Creating and loading brush libraries

You can create your own brush libraries. For example, you may want to create a brush library for your favorite brushes. Organizing your brushes into separate brush libraries has two important advantages:

• It makes memory usage in Corel Painter more efficient. Instead of loading a big library that contains numerous brushes and uses a lot of memory, the program loads only the brush set you need.
  
  
• You can find the brushes you need much more easily.
  
  

To create a brush library, you create a folder in the Brushes folder. Then, you create subfolders for all of the brush categories you want to include, and you populate the brush categories with brushes. Next, you copy or create the icons representing the separate brush categories.

To create a brush library

1. In the Corel/Painter IX/Brushes folder of your user folder, create a folder for the library.
   
   
   In this example, the new brush library is called Favorite Brushes.
   
   If you have administrator privileges, you can create a brush library in the installation folder of Corel Painter.
   
   
2. In the new folder, create a folder for each brush category that you want to add.
   
   
   
   The new brush library Favorite Brushes contains two brush categories: Artists and Digital Watercolor.
   
   
3. Locate and copy the XML files for the brushes that you want to include in the new library. If a brush is associated with a JPEG file, you need to copy the JPEG file as well. You do not need to copy the STK and NIB files associated with the brush.
   
   
4. In the brush category folders you created in step 2, paste the XML files as well as any JPEG files associated with the brushes.
   
   
   
   The Artists brush category in this example is populated with three brushes (XML files). Two of the brushes (Impressionist and Sargent Brush) are associated with brush imprints (JPEG) files.
   
   
5. Now, add icons for all brush categories in your new library by doing one of the following:
   • Copy the icons associated with the brush categories to the root of the new brush library. For example, for the Artists brush category, I copied the file Artists.jpg to the Favorite Brushes folder.
     
     
   • Create a custom icon for each brush category in the library. All icons must be 30 × 30-pixel JPEG images. Also, the icons need to be saved to the root of your new library and have the name of the brush category.
     
     

To access the brush library within Corel Painter, you must first load it. For instructions about how to load brush libraries, see the next procedure.

To load a brush library

1. In Corel Painter, click the selector menu arrow on the Brush Selector bar, and choose Load Brush Library.
   
   
   
   
2. In the Brush Libraries dialog box, select the brush library that you want to load, and click Load.
   
   
   
   You can now see the new set of brushes in the selector.
   
   
   
   When the Favorite Brushes library is loaded, the first brush category in the library is displayed on the Brush Selector bar. I used a simple brush stroke with the Impressionist brush for the brush category icon.
   
   

Note: In order to appear in the Brush Libraries dialog box, the brush library that you want to load must be in the Brushes folder.

Preserving your custom brushes and brush libraries

Caution! If you restore Corel Painter to its default settings by holding down Shift while starting the program, all changes you've made to your brushes and brush libraries are lost. Such changes would include any new brushes, brush categories, and brush libraries that you stored in your user folder. Be sure to back up your custom brushes and brush libraries before restoring the program to its default settings.

New brush libraries stored in the installation folder of Corel Painter are not deleted when you restore the program to its default settings.

Sharing your brushes and brush libraries

You can easily share any custom brushes or custom brush libraries you create.

To share a brush category with custom brushes, you need to provide others with the brush category folder and the JPEG icon that represents the brush category. They must copy the brush category folder and JPEG icon to their user folder in the following location:

• Library/Application Support/Painter IX/Brushes/Painter brushes (Mac OS)
  
  
• Application Data/Corel/ Painter IX/Brushes/Painter brushes (Windows)
  
  

To share a brush library, you need to provide others with the brush library folder so that they can copy the brush library to their user folder and load it after starting the program. The brush library must be copied to the following location:

• Library/Application Support/Painter IX/Brushes (Mac OS)
  
  
• Application Data/Corel/ Painter IX/Brushes folder (Windows)
  
  

I hope this tutorial will help you get started with creating and sharing your own custom brushes. For detailed information about creating custom brushes, consult "Customizing brushes" in the Corel Painter IX Help.