Painter 11 (they’re up to Painter 12 as I type this, but I don’t have upgrade money right now) has a default Mixer pad that loads up fine as a default, but if you clear it, you lose it. For good*. But wait! you say, it’s gotta be written into the application somewhere, right? Indeed it is, but for some silly reason, Corel doesn’t give you access to it again- not on Mac, or Windows.

Go download TinkerTool System Release 2 and then come back to me. Done? Cool. Let’s do this.

First find your Corel Painter 11 application and hold down the Control key and single click the icon. You’ll see the contextual menu show and one of the first options in the list is: Show Package Contents. Select it. Welcome to the stuff you’re not supposed to mess with. Find the Resources folder.

Make a duplicate of a plain looking file called “Mixer Pad.” Put your new copy on the desktop. I had to copy/paste it and then delete the duplicate I made in the Resources folder. Goofy, but whatever. You can exit the Package Contents; you’re done in there.
Open up TinkerTool. Run it in Evaluation Mode – NOT Demo mode. (Then, go buy the application and raise a glass to the developer for saving your sanity.)

Rename the copied file on your desktop “Default Mixer Pad.”
Get to the Attributes pane of TinkerTool and drag and drop Default Mixer Pad onto the File or Folder window.
You now have access to the HFS Type Attributes area. Apply the values below (in caps as I’ve written here).
Type Code: SCRT
Creator Code: ARX1
Click the Apply button.

Now the icon for Default Mixer Pad should look like a Painter icon.
Move the file to your Applications > Corel Painter 11 > Support Files folder for safe keeping and easy access. Double-click it whenever you want the default mixer to replace the open mixer.

Hope this helps and I need to give credit to this forum post for getting me most of the way there – it just wasn’t updated for OS X Lion (the app they mention to change file/creator types will not work in Lion).

*Alternatively, if you hold the Shift key down whilst booting up Painter, it will ask you if you want to restore the application to factory defaults. You can try this too, however, I like having my stuff arranged ‘just so’ and so I haven’t had the courage to try the reset. Apparently you can avoid all the instructions above by doing it this way, but I prefer having the new default file available to me anytime.

For some reason, Apple has hidden it. Not sure why, but if you need to delete preference files, caches, or application support files, you’ll need access to your Library.

Go to the Finder and click Shift-Command-G to bring up the Go to Folder action. In the resulting Finder window is a search box under Go to the folder:
Type:
~/Library/
and click Go.

Don’t want to do this every time you need your user Library folder? Me neither, so I dragged the Library folder icon from the top of the resulting window to the Favorites section of the left side Finder panel. Now I have a one-click shortcut to my Library.

Why’d you do it Apple? We’re big kids and can handle our own Libraries…

UPDATE: As pointed out by Martin Žufánek on Facebook, you can also make a simple change in Terminal if you’re comfortable with it:
You can also open Terminal and type following: “chflags nohidden ~/Library/” (without quotes) Hidden attribute is gone and Library visible like in previous OSX.

I just went from what looked like a tiny rainbow-coloured row of peas down the side of my screen to this.
- Finder
- Overflow, organised into sections based on use
- Plainclip, because it’s too damn handy
- Downloads folder
- Trash

It’s a thing of beauty.

I feel calm now.

Next stop: cleaning the rubbish pile of links and drag-offs from my desktop, sorting my downloads folder, and organising the Inbox in DEVONthink. Not today, though. Only so much radical change at once, please, or else I’ll have to go lie down.

Like me, gorgeous artists of mouse-clickery.
Like me.