Hey Bart, eat MY shorts! What are you on anyway? I don't recall anyone inviting you here. "...vot twice..." GIMME a BREAK wouldja? Shhheeeshhh... Gem, I saw your question in the Poser forum, but I didn't want to answer there. I never did have Painter 5 or 5.5, as I got v. 6 right after it was released. But v.6 came with all of the v.5 brushes (on the CD as extras), and using that to compare, I would say that 6 was a considerable improvement over 5. What I particularly like about 6 is that it has the image map creator. I hear that 5.5 had it though, and I also hear that maybe somehow 6's version isn't quite as good somehow. Something along the lines of how Word 97 was better ("safer") than Word 2000. But the 6.1 patch has in fact made my Wacom tablet more stable, and for that alone I would consider it worth it, plus 6 with the ".1" patch has a few new features. I would say yeah, if you're a Painter lover as I am coming to be, go for the upgrade. Who knows what Corel is up to these days? Could be they just wanted to toss us a bone to make us think they're doing something. shrug But I do remember hearing that there were no plans for a new Painter any time soon, and frankly, I'm not that concerned, because even v.6 by itself is still one helluva cool app! :) -Mike