Corel® Painter™ has long had an extraordinary and diverse set of brushes known as Cloners. These brushes can be used within an individual image to correct flaws. More often, Cloners are used either to paint a section of one image into another, or to take an existing image or photograph and turn it into something entirely different. In previous versions of Corel Painter, you needed to perform the following steps before using the Cloners to make an existing photograph or image look like a painting:

• Clone the image, using the Clone command in the File menu. The name of the new image, shown below, is the same as that of the original image with a prefix of "Clone of" added.
  
  
  
  
  
  Note that the new image has not yet been saved. Before going any further, you should save the new image, using the assigned name or any other that you choose.



• Select the entire cloned image.



• Delete the selected image.



• Turn on the tracing paper by pressing the tracing paper button in the upper-right corner of the image. A "ghost" image of the original appears in the clone and serves as your guide.
  
  
  

Although preparing an image for cloning has never been a difficult process, Corel Painter IX adds a neat, timesaving feature that artists and photographers are going to love. This new feature, called "Quick Clone," takes all of the steps in the process and combines them into one easy-to-find and very quick menu command. The screen capture below shows its location. Simply put, when you select this menu command, all of the previously described steps take place automatically.

Because this new feature is so simple to use, I'll show you a few of the looks you can create with different cloning brushes. Then, I'll demonstrate how to use the cloning features of Corel Painter IX to create a pencil-sketched look from a painted portrait. The process would be identical if I were using a photograph.

Corel Painter IX ships with an incredible variety of cloning brushes grouped within the Cloners brush category. Your choices are limitless, given that virtually any brush in Painter can be adjusted to behave like a cloning brush. The following images represent just a sampling of the default brushes.

The first example was painted with the Chalk Cloner variant.

As you can see, this cloning brush has duplicated the original portrait quite well, but in a rather soft and indistinct manner. Sometimes you can get more detail by simply decreasing the size of the brush. When you use the Chalk Cloner variant, you can make the cloned image appear more chalky by adding the "Apply Surface Texture" effect in the Effects/Surface Control menu. Using the Paper option, I reduced shine to 0%, reduced Amount to about 30%, and changed the direction of the light so that it comes from the upper right.

I used the Impasto Camel Cloner variant to create the next image. If you use long strokes with this brush, your image will be soft and undefined. To bring in some of the detail of the original image, use short strokes along the edges.

I created the next example by using the Furry Cloner. What can I say? This brush produces a very strange-looking image.

For the next example, I chose the Impressionist Cloner, which is one of the few Cloner brushes that you may not want to use with the Quick Clone option. The Impressionist Cloner picks up the underlying color when you paint with it, and if you start with the pure white canvas you get from Quick Clone, you will not be able to duplicate the feel of the original image. Instead of using the Quick Clone feature, simply create a Clone, and paint onto the cloned image with the Impressionist Cloner. This brush does not develop the details well. The results of the initial paint-over are shown below.

A slightly smaller brush was used on the same image. As you can see from the results below, the details are beginning to appear in the face area.

I find the Soft Cloner to be invaluable when used in conjunction with the other available cloning brushes. Many of the Cloners duplicate the source image, but they do so very loosely and indistinctly. Judicious use of the Soft Cloner restores the needed details from the original image.

Here you can see my use of the Soft Cloner to bring back in some of the lost details of the original image. You must take care not to destroy the character of the original cloning brush that you are using. In this image, you can see the details that I brought into the eyes, nose, mouth, and earrings.

I used the Fine Spray variant to clone the image below. Given enough time, this brush creates a duplicate of the original portrait.

In the next image, I used the Texture Spray Cloner. I used the Soft Cloner very lightly and sparingly only slightly, in the face area.

As you can see from the previous examples, a diverse range of creative Cloners are available to the Corel Painter IX user.

I'll switch gears now and show you how I would use Quick Clone on our original portrait to make an image that looks something like a pencil sketch.

First, I clone the original image. I do this because I'm going to make some fundamental changes to the image and do not want to risk destroying the original. Then, I close the original. Using the Adjust Colors menu item from the Effects/Tonal Control menu, I completely desaturate the image so that it appears in black and white. I also slightly increase the contrast of the image. See below for the result.

Next, I apply the Quick Clone menu command.

With one of the Colored Pencil variants, I click on the small Rubber Stamp icon on the Colors palette. Notice that the color picker grays slightly and that the selected brush picks its colors from the clone source. In this case, the clone source is our black-and-white portrait. The image below shows where this rubber stamp icon is located on the color selector. Using this method, you can turn practically any brush in Corel Painter IX into a cloning brush.

Using the pencil, I begin to draw in the new image. The tracing paper is turned on in the image below.

The next image shows the drawing at the same stage as in the previous image, but with the tracing paper turned off. It is helpful to turn off the tracing paper periodically to see your progress.

There are really no tricks to this process. I simply continue to draw in the cloned image, and soon I have a portrait that looks as if it was drawn with a pencil. The entire portrait is shown below. As you can see, it shows some detail, but not much.

Using the Soft Cloner, I bring in some detail from the original image. You can see where I have subtly enhanced the eyes, nose, and mouth.

The final step is to add some paper texture, just as I did in the earlier example. This adds a little something extra to the image to make it look like a pencil portrait.

In this tutorial, I've given you a glimpse of the cloning power in Corel Painter IX, including the new Quick Clone menu item - a nice addition and definite time-saver for both artists and photographers.