Wednesday, January 18th, 2017 Posted by Jim Thacker

Corel updates ParticleShop


Corel has updated ParticleShop, its particle painting plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom.

The update, which doesn’t have an official version number, although it’s listed as 1.5 in the patch notes, adds new speckle and image-distortion brushes, along with a set of new commercial add-on brush packs.

Based on the same particle painting technology as Corel Painter
First released in 2015, ParticleShop is based on same particle brush technology used in Corel Painter, the company’s flagship 2D painting application,

The technology, originally introduced in Painter 2015, enables users to create a range of effects including light trails, sparks and smoke, with the results resembling those of standalone tools like Flame Painter.

New dynamic speckle and image-distortion systems
To that, the update adds the dynamic speckle system introduced in Painter 2016, which does what the name suggests, creating strokes made up of discrete spots of colour for “luscious smears and pointilist looks”.

There is also a new F-X Effects system: a set of image-deformation brushes that “bulge, diffuse, push, pull, pinch [and] twirl” an underlying image.

In addition, ParticleShop’s set of core brushes has been extended, giving 11 in total; and there are six new commercial add-on packs, each containing a further 15 brushes.

Pricing and availability
ParticleShop is available now for Photoshop and Lightroom CS5 and above, Photoshop Elements 13 and 14, and a number of Corel’s own tools, running on Windows 7 and above or Mac OS X 10.9 and above.

The core software costs $49.99; the add-on packs cost $29.99 each.

Read a full list of new features in ParticleShop on the product website