Hi Charlotte,
I have Corel Painter IX, the free version is like a silmed down version to help you understand what is in store for the art side of you. Jeremy Sutton is a very good teacher of the type of work you can put out. Run a search for him. It is very good for portait art effects. I have been shooting pictures and learning that my camera skills need a lot of work so painter, even though next to photoshop is my favorite app. I have been neglecting it. I used it to restore photos because it's brushes for blending pixels were better then photoshops 5 years ago. Their brushes have an algorythm that runs off the end of each brush hair and can make some very real stokes. Every brush you have can be used as a cloner and that's what I have used for effects, you can set your brush, open a picture and use the auto clone to paint out the picture with that set up brush, and then if you wish, place it in photoshop to use as a blending layer for the picture you are working on there. It supports photoshop layers and is a full photo editor. It's only draw back is that it only uses 8bit color, I have tried very hard to stay 16bit or"12bit for you correct thinkers",,,and hope that Painter X has 16 bit support. It works best with a pen, real world professionals use the pen right on the screen, I was able to visit one last year when visiting my sister, she is a fine artist and magazine editor and a very big insperation to me,,,my big sister...
. So if you finds the time, you can do alot with it, just try it out,,,in the mean time I will continue to look for ways to use my upgrade money wisely this year,,,I am planning a trip to Oregon,,the land of a million water falls...
I will try and find a picture and post it, or just make one up.
Cheers as you say, another find day.
Oh and it is not a plug-in