Help please, opacity issue!

[Jinbrown]

Hi,

Painter has loads of brush controls so you'll do well to begin studying the User Guide or Help > Help Topics, and plan to spend a good deal of time experimenting with the brush controls.

To begin with, Opacity Expression can be controlled by choosing the Pressure option.

Another thing you can do to get more control over how much paint is laid down is to go to Edit > Preferences > Brush Tracking (I think it's in the Painter IX menu on Mac's), and paint a brushstroke on the Brush Tracking scratch pad using more than your normal hand pressure. Then when you paint, it will take more pressure to get more paint. Using normal pressure, it should be easier to get less opaque brushstrokes.

Some of the brush variants also use other controls to determine how much color is laid down in the brushstroke.

If you lower the Resat/Resuration slider, with some brush variants, that may also help.

Again, set aside some time to learn how Painter IX brushes work instead of struggling to understand them while working on a project. It'll be time well spent.

Have fun!

[diriendha]

Well, not the advice i was expecting to ear, but great advice none the less! the brush tracking tip realy did it for me!

Thanks a lot, you might just have put me on painter for good!

[Jinbrown]

Hi,

I'm happy to hear the Brush Tracking tip worked for you. Remember to reset it if you run into problems like this one. Often it can be the answer.

It works the opposite way, too. If you paint on the Brush Tracking scratch pad with very light pressure, when you paint more color than normal will be applied in the brushstroke.

Also, in case you're setting pressure on the Wacom tablet, I've found that not to be my best choice as it seems to provide less subtle differences clicking Firm, Medium, and Soft, than we can obtain using Painter's brush controls and Brush Tracking.

You're not the first Photoshop user to be somewhat taken aback when confronted with Painter's complex brushes, the huge number of brush control options, and nearly endless combinations of brush control settings we have available to create our own custom brush variants.

Stick with it, though. You won't be sorry once you become more comfortable with Painter.

It's a terrific program and lots of fun!

[Hungry Hippos]

Hey Jinny, you mention in your last post about setting the pressure on the wacom tablet, how do we know what pressure settings are on the tablet currently and how could we disable such a function if it is enabled? I checked my wacom properties in the control panel and I see the pressure options, but there is no option to disable/enable them.

Hope you can clarify this, also love your brushes!, i'm still trying to get my head around this program but it looks like once mastered it is a fantastic painting program, I was never that keen on Photoshop for digital painting.

Also perhaps you could help a previous Photoshop user with a couple of simple comparisons.

I have the Painter IX trial version, what brush best simulates the soft round brush in Photoshop, and to a lesser degree the hard round brush (though at larger sizes the hard round brush is not so good).

Thanks in advance, I still have a lot to learn but hopefully will get some where in the end!

[Jinbrown]

Hi Hungry,

You don't want to disable pressure controls for your Wacom tablet. There are other ways to get the results you want.

I did some testing in an attempt to see what, exactly, affects pressure with my brushstrokes.

First, I opened Brush Tracking to check my settings and they were:

Velocity Scale: 0.73
Velocity Power: 0.16
Pressure Scale: 0.24
Pressure Power: 1.02

(These are not necessarily the settings I use generally, as I reset my Brush Tracking frequently for different brush variants and different effects.)

Next, I opened the Wacom Tablet Properties control panel, clicked the Tip Feel tab, and moved the Tip Pressure Feel slider from the "notch" just to the right of Soft at the left end of the slider up to Firm at the right end of the slider. With the Painter IX icon highlighted in the top window, "Applications with Customized Tool Settings", I clicked the Apply button, then the OK button to close the dialog box.

Then I went back to Painter IX, chose the Pastels' Round Hard Pastel 40 variant and made a brushstroke and nothing appeared. Since there's no way to see which of the buttons, Soft, Medium, or Firm was clicked previously, I guessed it was Firm so I clicked the Medium button, made a brushstroke, and then the Soft button and made another brushstroke. In both cases, Medium and Soft, the brushstroke appeared on the Canvas.

Again, I opened the Wacom Tablet Properties control panel, clicked the Tip Feel tab, and moved the Tip Pressure Feel slider from Firm at the right end of the slider back to the "notch" just to the right of Soft at the left end of the slider. With the Painter IX icon highlighted in the top window, "Applications with Customized Tool Settings", I clicked the Apply button, then the OK button to close the dialog box.

And again, I make similar tests to those described above using the same brush variant. Without changing anything on my Wacom tablet, my first brushstroke appeared on the Canvas. Then I clicked the Medium button on my tablet and made another brushstroke. Again it appeared on the Canvas. I clicked the Firm button on my tablet, made another brushstroke, and it, too, appeared on the Canvas.

My conclusion at this point, is that the Tip Feel Pressure slider setting in the Wacom Tablet Properties control panel is the primary Wacom tablet setting for pressure, and the buttons on the tablet, Soft, Medium, and Firm are secondary settings.

Then, within Painter IX, we have the option to further adjust the amount of pressure needed to get the kind of brushstroke we want. If we paint on the Brush Tracking scratch pad with normal pressure, and providing we haven't set the Wacom tablet to something extreme relative to the way we paint (in my case, this would be Firm), we should see our brushstrokes responding to pressure.

If we paint on the Brush Tracking scratch pad using more than normal pressure it will take more than normal pressure to apply color in the brushstroke (this is helpful when we want more control over how much color is applied in the brushstroke).

If we paint on the Brush Tracking scratch pad using less than normal pressure, it will take less pressure to apply color in the brushstroke (and we may get more color than we want).

No doubt reading the documentation that comes with the Wacom tablet will explain how all of this works, and it may make my conclusion described above incorrect. I'd suggest reading that documentation, since the Wacom folks should know best how their tablets work, and I'm not an expert on this subject. I just do what works for me. ;)

As to your question about Photoshop brushes

I am not a heavy Photoshop user so it would take more time than I have to do a fair comparison. However, I can say two things:

• Photoshop's brushes and Painter's brushes (any version) are based on different brush technology so you may not be able to reproduce a Photoshop brush exactly in Painter IX (or any version).

• It takes a good deal of time and practice to understand Painter's brush controls, so don't expect to understand them quickly. With enough time and practice applied to working with Painter's brush controls you may be able to come close to reproducing a Photoshop brush, and in most cases you'll be able to produce something you like better.

Maybe this will help in the meantime

In Painter IX, if you go to the Brush Controls' General palette and study several brush variant's basic settings you'll see the Subcategory options include the words "Flat", "Hard", "Grainy", and "Soft".

Choosing a Subcategory name that includes the word "Flat", "Hard", or "Grainy" should give you a brushstroke with pixelated edges.

In addition, if the Subcategory name includes the word "Grainy" the brushstroke will interact with the current Paper texture and, depending on how rough or smooth that Paper texture is, it can also to a greater or lesser degree affect how the brushstroke looks.

If you choose a Subcategory name that includes the word "Soft", you'll get a brushstroke with anti-aliased edges.

For example, open a new white Canvas, choose black as the Main Color, choose the Pens' Ball Point Pen 1.5, move the Size slider to 10.0, and paint a brushstroke. Then go to the Brush Controls' General palette, change the Subcategory from "Grainy Hard Buildup" to "Grainy Soft Buildup" and paint another brushstroke next to the first one. You'll see the first brushstroke has pixelated edges and the second brushstroke has anti-aliased edges.

[jfrancis]

Not only is there brush tracking in Painter -- but there is another whole level of control in the Wacom Tablet software itself.

You can set the firmness or softness of the tip there, and it will remap your pressure through a curve that brings out (or supresses) the low end of the pressure scale

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