Corel Painter is a raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking.

With the aid of a graphics tablet or computer mouse, the user is able to reproduce the effect of physical painting and drawing media such as watercolor, oil, chalk, charcoal and color pencil.

The two products have developed as contemporaries, introducing innovations that are now considered standard in bitmap image editing software.

[citation needed] Painter was initially published in 1991[2] for the Macintosh system by Mark Zimmer and Tom Hedges, founders of the Fractal Design Corporation.

Multimedia tutorials, a more intuitive workspace, additional automated tasks and emphasis on photo retouching are some of the features included to appeal to beginners.

It has 13 drawing tools compared to Painter's almost 900 brushes, and a simple user interface that supports quick capturing of creative ideas.

"[5] In 2015, PC Magazine called it "The best software for simulating painting and working with artistic media".