Excellent Results, Stable as a Rock
I've been using Painter Essentials 3 for most of a week, and find it excellent in every way. My four kids are having a ball with it, too. No glitches whatsoever. The [...] tutorial videos that came as part of the package are very effective, too. It takes a little practice and artistry to produce attractive results, but that's exactly as it should be.

I'm using this program on a G5 iMac. Perhaps the folks experiencing the glitches are running that other kind of computer :-(

All in all, a great program at a great price.

Unstable, approach with caution
I got version 2 "free" with my Wacom tablet. After reading another review here of version 3 it seems not much has changed.
Almost every time I try to use this on a Mac it crashes. Not an elegant crash, the app just disappears and the OS tells me "the application has unexpectedly quit". Of course my work disappears with it.
Not very impressive. A piece of software with 5 million features that crashes is useless. Period.
If it actually worked, this would probably be a good piece of software.

Good program, great results; but can be glitchy.
I tried the download trial version from the Corel website. The direction are SPARSE, to say the least, and SUPPORT during the trial is non-existant, but eventually, I was able to use the product to produce some gorgeous "paintings." I used it in combination with effects from Adobe Photoshop Elements, and sometimes with Microsoft Photodraw. Just BEE-YOU-TEE-FULL! When I get a little extra spending money, I may invest in the full product purchase, but leaning toward going all out for the Painter software. I think instructions would have helped me get started sooner --you can check books out of the library-- but I liked the program and think it's worth working with. Yes, it was glitchy sometime, but not much, and certainly not more than AdobePE 3.0. I did reload the trial version once, but then it worked fine. I can't complain--it was a 30 day Free trial from Corel's website. Try it first--they give you that option with many of their programs. You don't like it--don't buy it. All you've wasted is a little time.

A different experience
I've not had the difficulties others have expressed with this program. My first experience was with version 2 which was bundled with my Wacom tablet. After using it for a while I was hooked and upgraded to version 3. With a tablet the program is very intuitive, unlike Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2, and produces wonderful results. I've never liked working with digital media until now.

A tablet is essential to getting the most out of the program.

Re: Buggy Software, Buyer Beware
This software is entirely unstable and not worth buying as my experience with it was identical to a previous review and crashes whenever a photo is opened into it. This is what it was intended for, so if it can't handle files it's supposed to function with, of what use would it be?

Fortunately Painter Essentials 3 came bundled free with a Wacom tablet and cost nothing more, but this reflects on them inasmuch as they purchased license to use it as bait to sell their own merchandise without concern for software stability or customer satisfaction. Beyond this, to compensate I purchased Painter IX as OEM to find Corel not in the least helpful or supportive of their software which is not paid an exorbitant amount for. It's a shame because they could make a good product and actually do with Painter IX, but not if the consumer cannot make the software remain open on their system. Perhaps it's a bug with Windows XP, but I'll never know being as Corel refuses to answer...

In retrospect I felt a need to edit this review being as I've discovered the problem I experienced with this program had a good deal to do with file naming conventions which it is apparently fussy about, not that I'd opened files first edited and saved with Adobe Photoshop Elements as previously suspected. Do not use any operand or bracket, only upper and lower case letters or numbers as for me this made a difference. Refuses to open bitmap files, so using correct extensions is of value. Hope this helps others who might have experienced this same issue! Sometimes the solution is simple, others not, but see if it's not the file causing a problem first, not that this should excuse Corel from responsibility in not providing a patch to prevent this.