Kaleidoscope Mirror Templates for Corel Painter
The Mirror 700/ 1000 Templates are rif template documents for Corel Painter, which I created to facilitate painting and simultaneous mirroring using Painter’s Kaleidoscope plugin. As it is currently only possible to paint in a specific region for mirroring to occur in these documents, a guide has been incorporated to indicate the paintable area. Anything drawn/ painted in the top left triangular region will be automatically mirrored by the incorporated Kaleidoscope plugin in the remaining segments.
In Corel Painter versions prior to IX, a drawback with using template documents was that unless we remembered to always work from a copy of the original template, it was possible to overwrite them upon saving the artwork, although you can store a template or copy anywhere on your hard drive and open it in the normal way using File menu > Open, Painter IX and above have a special Templates folder. The contents of this folder can be accessed from the Help menu > Welcome (Book) > Document Templates drop-down (or from the above Welcome Book when Painter initially starts/launches). Accessing the templates in this way means that they are always readily available to use, and cannot be accidentally overwritten.
Disclaimer
Although tested, neither David Gell nor jitterbrush.com accept responsibility for any loss of data or performance issues relating to your computer as a result of downloading or using these templates.
Terms of Use
You are permitted to modify the templates for your own use, but not to sell or redistribute the originals without my prior consent.
Downloading and Installing the Templates
In Corel Painter versions IX and above, after unzipping, open each rif document in Painter, and without Painting in, or changing the document layers in any way, choose Save As from the File menu, and save each document to one of the following folder locations (using the same file names, in uncompressed rif format);
Mac:
Applications/Corel Painter IX/Templates
Applications/Corel Painter X/Support Files/Templates
Applications/Corel Painter 11/Support Files/Templates
Windows:
C [or residing Drive name]/Program Files/Corel/Corel Painter IX/Templates
C [or residing Drive name]/Program Files/Corel/Corel Painter X/Support Files/Templates
C [or residing Drive name]/Program Files/Corel/Corel Painter 11/Support Files/Templates
After installing the Mirror Template files in the Templates folder, quit Painter and relaunch the application, then choose either Mirror 700 Template or Mirror 1000 Template from the Help menu > Welcome > Document Templates drop-down. Note that in Painter 11, the template documents can also be accessed via. File menu> Open Template.
For supported Painter versions 8 and below, the original Mirror 700 Template.rif and Mirror 1000 Template.rif files can be stored anywhere on your computer, just remember to work from a copy of these files in Painter to avoid overwriting.
The following zipped download folder contains two rif template documents, the only difference between them is that one is 700 pixels square, whilst the other is 1000 pixels square (the current maximum size possible for the Kaleidoscope mirroring).
Download mirror_templates.zip (48 KB)
Using the Mirror Templates
After opening one of the Mirror templates, ensure that the Paint Layer is selected in the Layers palette, then proceed to draw/ paint in the white triangular region, top left in the document. It is also possible to select the Canvas in the Layers palette, and fill with a background colour of your choice.
The Disposable Guide may be hidden/ toggled on and off by clicking on the respective eye icon in the Layers palette, and it is also possible to alter the opacity of the Disposable Guide Layer (30 percent is the current default value). To do this, first select the Disposable Guide Layer in the Layers palette, then adjust the Opacity slider, again in the same palette.
Once you are happy with the results, select the Disposable Guide Layer in the Layers palette, click on the padlock icon for that layer to unlock it, then click on the trash can icon, bottom right in the Layers palette to delete the Disposable Guide Layer.
Prior to saving the image, select the Kaleidoscope 1 layer in the Layers palette, click the Kaleidoscope 1 padlock icon to unlock the layer, then choose Drop All from the Layers palette menu.
Known Issues
• The Kaleidoscope plugin can give rise to slow rendering brush strokes. If this occurs, try saving the document, then closing and relaunching Painter.
• Due to a bug in Painter, when the Mirror templates are used in combination with impasto variants, the impasto depth effect is only mirrored in some sectors.
Please check out John Derry’s Kaleidocolors Version too.
John Derry has created his own unique version of the Kaleidoscope template and technique, which he has called Kaleidocolors. John was also kind enough to give a free webinar last year, in which he introduced and demonstrated his template. A zipped recording of the webinar, also containing the Kaleidocolors template and a pdf instructional chart can be downloaded from this link.
Non-default Artwork in the Welcome Book
In case anyone was wondering how I got my own custom artwork and links to display in the Welcome Book (first screenshot), this is probably not a Corel supported feature, but on the Mac at least, with Painter closed, it was possible to do this by first right clicking (Ctrl + Click) on the Painter 11 application icon, and choosing Show Package Contents from the contextual menu.
I then created an empty ‘frame layer’ template rif document for the custom artwork to be added to the gallery> images folder from a copy of the following source file for convenience;
image_160.jpg
Contents/Resources/English.Iproj/HTML/Welcome/include/gallery/images/image_160.jpg
I named my new jpg gallery image, image_480.jpg and added this to the above images folder in the Package Contents, then updated the gallery.js file accordingly, linking the image_480.jpg document and my name and website link.
gallery.js
Contents/Resources/English.Iproj/HTML/Welcome/include/gallery/js/gallery.js
Custom line added in gallery.js document;
image_list[number++] = [ "<img src='images/image_480.jpg' border='0'>", "David Gell", "<a href='http://www.jitterbrush.com/' class='link' target='_blank'>jitterbrush.com</a>"];
Other than point you in the general direction, I’m not prepared to give a fully detailed and illustrated tutorial on this particular subject. Any user modification to the Painter Package Contents files is neither supported nor recommended, and will be entirely at your own risk. You may even be forced to do a full re-install of Painter if anything goes wrong, so be warned! Having said that, it is rather cool to see your own artwork displayed in the Welcome Book, and I’m a big fan of customisation 
I love this website the Mirror Pad was great and The Mirror 700/ 1000 Templates look great too.
Thanks for the feedback Chris. I hope you enjoy the resources
Hi –
Thank you for linking to my blog! I’ve added a linkback to your site, on my Resources page. Also, I’ve told readers in the latest post about your cool Kaleidoscope mirror tool for Painter. I used it and it works great.
Thanks for all your contributions to the Painter community!
-Bob