ParticleShop Review: Creative and unique brush collection

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In this ParticleShop review we’ll look at some example uses, and dive into the various settings and brush collections available.

Review Update, August 4, 2020: I have reduced the score in two categories which has brought down the overall score of ParticleShop significantly. Corel’s pushy sales tactics after purchasing and installing ParticleShop is the primary reason for the reduction. Below this review I have posted how to stop Corel’s aggressive ad tactics on your desktop. ParticleShop is still a blast to play with after dealing with the ads!

Full review

ParticleShop includes a core pack of 11 brushes. At the time of writing this review, ParticleShop included an additional five brush sets with 15 brushes each. This is a great deal, but Corel often changes the initial purchase deals, so you may find a different package deal if you decide to purchase ParticleShop.

After installing ParticleShop and all the extra brush sets, I was up and running! You’ll find ParticleShop in the Filter menu.

Using the brushes

ParticleShop is super easy to use. Just pick a brush and start painting!

While writing this ParticleShop review, however, I found that it was sometimes difficult to find brushes that suited my ideas. I found that the best approach was to just pick a brush, paint a stroke or two and hit ctrl/com + z if I didn’t like it. Eventually I found some really fun ones to experiment with.

On the right side panel you’ll see the various brush packs available, as well as the brushed included in the Chaos set.

ParticleShop Review: Brush settings and options

With any given brush, you’ll be able to play with a good number of settings. There’s the standard Opacity and Size settings (which can be controled with number keys and brackets, just like in Photoshop).

Both Size and Opacity can also be used with a pressure sensitive stylus, which is a fantastic feature!

You’ll also find a slider named Count, which changes the intensity of the brush effects.

The left side of the ParticleShop interface lets you select your tools: Brush, eraser, smudge, eye dropper and color wheel. Being able to pick colors using two methods is great. I found the eye dropper super useful as it allowed me to sample colors in my image. I did miss having an option to insert RGB or Hex values, but this is really a minor thing considering all the existing options.

Saving your brushwork

While writing this ParticleShop review I was very interested to find out how saving brushwork would appear inside Photoshop.

First off, ParticleShop does not work with Smart Objects. That being said, it’s really easy to work non-destructively.

When you click Save, you’ll be presented with this options dialogue which gives you the option to save the brushstrokes on a separate transparent layer! (just make sure you start out with a copy of a layer or a merged layer)

This makes things really convenient when your work appears inside your Photoshop layer stack! Having the strokes on a transparent layer like this makes it a cinch to apply a mask to the effect!

I had a great time playing around with ParticleShop! Here’s another quick experiment with a few brushes.

ParticleShop example effects

Here’s the starting point of an image I played with in this ParticleShop review:

After using a brush from the Core pack and one from the Chaos pack, I had this.

Once it was imported into Photoshop, I duplicated the ParticleShop layer so I could edit the green and orange effects separately. I did some quick masking and played with the blend modes and opacity.

ParticleShop Review Conclusion

ParticleShop is incredibly fun to play around with. Testing out the various brushes is sometimes tedious, but once you find the right one it’s amazing,

The one feature that’s missing, is the ability to mark brushes as favorites (or some other system to bring up favorite brushes). Corel provides an extensive ParticleShop FAQ page as well as some tutorial videos.

Overall, ParticleShop is so unique that despite its shortcomings, we recommend it for its creativity boost!

Review Update, August 4, 2020: I have reduced the score in two categories which has brought down the overall score of ParticleShop significantly. Corel’s pushy sales tactics after purchasing and installing ParticleShop is the primary reason for the reduction. Below this review I have posted how to stop Corel’s aggressive ad tactics on your desktop. NOTE: ParticleShop is still a blast to play with after dealing with the ads!

We also included ParticleShop in our list of Photoshop plugins for artists.

Check minimum requirements

Before you purchase ParticleShop, we recommend that you check the minimum requirements, especially if you are running the latest and greatest version of your operating system.

Here’s how to check:

Click here to go to the main ParticleShop page and click the “TECH SPECS” tab below the logo.

ParticleShop review update: Aggressive sales tactics (and how to stop them)

Unfortunately Corel uses aggressive methods to sell brush packs upgrades after installing the initial plugin.

They use two methods which I will show you how to disable.

How to stop ParticleShop ads on startup screen

When you first launch ParticleShop you’ll get a pop-up offering you a variety of brush pack bundles (presented as big discounts). This is a very simple thing to turn off. Just uncheck the box at the bottom labeled “Show this at startup”.

How to stop desktop popup ads for ParticleShop brushes

This may only affect Windows users. While researching how to disable these ads, I was unable to find directions for Mac users. Please comment below if you are a Mac user and seeing these ad popups.

Here is the general concept to stop the ads: Find your Windows Task Scheduler and disable Corel’s “CorelUpdateHelper”.

Since there are so many versions of Windows, you may have to seek specific directions for how to find the Task Scheduler on your version of Windows. Here’s basic directions:

In newer versions of Windows, just click the Start button and start typing “Task Scheduler”.

In older versions of Windows you will have to get to your Control Panel, then Administrative, then Task Scheduler.

Once you’re in Task Scheduler, click “Task Scheduler Library” on the left panel. Then, find CorelUpdateHelper, right click and Disable.

All done. No more ads! (from Corel ParticleShop)