Throughout its long and chequered career – first under MetaCreations, then Procreate and now Corel – Painter has always stood out as the artistic and creative computer application bar none. The reason is simple: Painter's unique range of natural media brushes.

A simplified interface, strong photo-to-art Focus and the low price make painter essentials a great buy.

New realism for bristled brushes and automatic painting that approaches manual quality give Painter X an edge.

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Painter 7 is a digital painting application that simulates the realistic subtleties of an artist's style using natural media, such as water colours, inks, oil paints, coloured pencils, felt pens, chalks, pastels, and more.

Surprise, but not regret: I dont have any doubt about the relative importance of what Im doing compared to what I was doing as a painter, even as a successful painter. Back in the 1960s I was one of a

David Fearon introduces 3D models and rendering

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Then the heavens fell in. In 1995, Bill Gates decided that the Internet was going to be huge. Everything had to take on an HTML nature and the battle was on with Netscape. One of the fir

New graphics tablets provide exquisite sensitivity and scope for every type of artist, at every budget

Improved handling of templates, tracing, text and layers along with new table support, but ultimately X4 disappoints

Piranesi gets the major overhaul of interface and tools that its extraordinary creative power deserves

Piranesi gets the major overhaul of interface and tools that its extraordinary creative power deserves

This is Wacoms second foray into the consumer market for digitising tablets, and although I was fairly unimpressed with its first attempt at selling me a cheap tablet, I am happier with the Graphire2.

TrueSpace has always led the pack in terms of features as far as Windows 3D animation packages under $2,000 are concerned. Recently, however, the market has become rather crowded, with a powerful upgrade to Ray Dream (reviewed issue 9, p100) and the cut-down version of LightWave 3D (Inspire 3D) both challenging it on features and price.

In 1973, Ed Feigenbaum, who ran the prestigious AI laboratory at Stanford University, invited Cohen to spend some time there. That year, in Stanford, Aaron was born. The name, he explains, was chosen

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