November 10, 1995. Fractal Design Corporation today shipped Fractal Design Painter 4 for the Macintosh, a major upgrade to this award-winning Natural-Media paint and image-editing program. Painter 4 includes several new break-through technologies including Shapes, which permits seamless blending of raster and vector imagery, and Net Painter, which enables collaborative artwork creation over LANs and the Internet. Painter 4 also adds a new gotta-see-it-to-believe-it Mosaic feature, using the latest technology to produce artwork that looks centuries old. Other new features include improved interoperability with Photoshop, Illustrator and Freehand; a new Mask Edit mode; new Patterns and Nozzles palettes; and improved color correction capabilities. Fractal has also added new Web graphic creation features to enhance Painter's ability to create imagery for the World Wide Web.
"With Painter 4, we've increased both the creative depth of the program, and Painter's interoperability with other graphics programs," said Fractal President Mark Zimmer. "Not only can you seamlessly mix raster and vector artwork in a single composition, you can do it while working with another artist over the Internet."
New Features
Painter 4 includes Shapes, a set of PostScript drawing tools that work with Painter's bitmap editing tools, turning Painter 4 into a combination paint and draw program. Shapes creates vector objects which can be modified using familiar bezier editing tools that operate like those found in programs like Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand. Unlike traditional illustration programs, however, vector objects in Painter are anti-aliased, can be made semi-transparent, or given bitmap compositing methods like Difference, Multiply, and Dissolve. In addition, these objects can easily be converted to bitmap floaters and painted on. Shapes lets users combine raster and vector imagery in unique ways, resulting in object-oriented artwork that doesnOt look like it was created on a computer.
Painter reads and writes files in Photoshop 3.0 format, converting Photoshop layers into Painter's "floaters" and vice versa. Now Painter 4 users can also import art work created in Illustrator 5 format (written by both Freehand and Illustrator) and add texture and transparency using Shapes. For the first time, users can combine floating selections created in Photoshop and Painter with vector-based artwork created in Illustrator and Freehand, to develop rich designs never before possible.
Painter 4 is the first product to enable collaborative artwork creation. Using Painter 4's new networking feature, multiple users can log in to a single artwork session and take turns using any of Painter's brushes, tools or effects on the artwork. Net Painter can work over low bandwidth connections, allowing artwork collaboration over the Internet or any Local Area Network supporting TCP/IP. Not only can designs be created by multiple artists, but now artists and art directors can work interactively in ways that have never been possible.
Each new release of Painter brings new, one-of-a-kind features to the graphics world. First it was multiple floating selections, frame-by-frame animation, and the Image Hose. This time, it's the Mosaic tool. The new Mosaic brush lets users create realistic mosaics by "painting" with tiles on a blank canvas or over scanned photographs. Each tile is an independent object that "knows" about every other tile, and carves its shape so that it fits perfectly with existing tiles. Tiles and grouting can be erased and reshaped to create the perfect mosaic design.
Painter 3.1 gave users the ability to create Web graphics in GIF and JPEG formats with support for interleaved and transparent GIF images--a first for an image editor. Painter 4 expands these capabilities by letting users create Image Maps for use in Web page designs. Image Maps are collections of bitmapped graphics that contain links to other pages or objects. Clicking on an Image Map element in your Web browser brings you to that destination. Painter 4 lets you take any floating selection, tag it as an Image Map element and give it a Web URL. When you save the image as a GIF or JPEG image the floating selections are used to create the boundary of the Image Map elements.
A new Mask Edit mode lets Painter 4 users work directly on the mask layer to develop detailed selections which would be impossible to create any other way. Painter 4's Advanced Color Correction module gives users complete control over the tonal range in an image. The new Patterns Palette provides instant access to all self-tiling patterns, and the Nozzles Palette provides a storage area for frequently used Image Hose nozzles, including scaling controls.
Other helpful features in Painter 4 include new Rulers and Guides which provide visual cues for sizing and manipulating graphic images; a new alignment Effect for precisely placing both bitmap and PostScript artwork objects; a Quick Curve lasso tool for creating precise selections using beziers; and pull-down menus on the floating palettes.
Painter 4 ships on a CD-ROM which includes more than 200 new patterns, more than 60 Image Hose nozzles, more than 100 paper textures, dozens of selection paths, color sets, interface sets, and technical notes. The CD CENTRAL application gives an overview of Painter's new features, the art materials on the disk, as well as gallery presentations of inspiring artwork created in Fractal Design products.
System Requirements
Macintosh:
68040 Macintosh or Power Macintosh
6.5+ MB of application RAM (8+ MB for Power Macintosh)
System 7.0 or later
Color display (24-bit recommended)
Hard drive with 12 MB free
Floating point unit (FPU) or Power Macintosh required for some effects
Windows:
80486 or Pentium compatible PC with at least 8 MB of RAM (12 MB for Windows 95 systems)
Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 (both 16-bit and 32-bit native versions supplied)
Color display (24-bit recommended)
Hard drive with 12 MB free
Floating point unit (FPU) required for some effects
Pricing and Availability
Painter 4 is now available for the Macintosh and Power Macintosh on CD-ROM for a suggested retail price of $549. The Windows 3.1 and native Windows 95 versions will be available in December 1995. A diskette version of the application and default libraries is available on request for an additional $15. Customers who purchased Painter 3 after September 1, 1995 will be entitled to a free upgrade with proof of purchase, plus shipping and handling. Owners of any previous version of Painter or ColorStudio can upgrade for $129. Customers can call 1-800-297-COOL to order or for
more information.
About Fractal Design Corporation
Fractal Design Corporation is a major force in multiple-platform graphics software, creating and marketing next-generation paint and image-editing software for Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows computers. All Fractal Design products are written to support Power Macintosh computers and Microsoft Windows 95 operating systems.
Fractal Design develops and markets the award-winning Natural-Media paint and image-editing applications: Fractal Design Painter, Dabbler, Poser, ColorStudio & Shapes, and Fractal Design Sketcher. Fractal Design products are available through distributors including Douglas Stewart, Ingram, Merisel and Tech Data, as well as superstores, major resellers and mail order catalogs. The company is headquartered at 335 Spreckels Drive, P.O. Box 2380, Aptos, CA 95001-2380. Telephone: 408 688-5300 .
