Digital photography has done many things for shutterbugs of every stripe including inducing many of them to become artists, or at least a facsimile of one. To do that, you need a painter program like Painter Essentials ($69), the fourth edition of which was released today by Ottawa-based Corel .

The application, which runs on both PC and Mac platforms, has a number of new features. Here are some of them.

• A bifurcated workspace-one for working on painting and drawing , another for painting photos.
• A new brush draw for making brush selection easier.
• Colors can be chosen from a palette with a single click and mixed on another palette just as artists do.
• An enhanced photo painting system allowing pics to be turned into pseudo paintings faster and easier.
• A new Smart Stroke Technology that paints with brush strokes that dynamically change brush size, stroke length and pressure, based on the detail and focal areas of a photo.
• A RealBristle painting system for improved brush responsiveness.
• A pencils and pen category that can be used for inking comics or doing calligraphy with the program.
• An expanded selection of paper textures.
• A guidebook with step-by-step tutorials, as well as video tutorials.
• Support for up to 32 undo levels.
• Ability to order from within the application hard copies of works created with the program on canvas, watercolor paper or other fine art materials.