photoshop vs painter smackdown

[klingspor]

Coming from the programming and *NIX world, I am a firm believer that "A tool should do just one thing, but it should do that good". So I actually like it the way it is.

Painter = Painting
Photoshop = Composing, Retouching (ok, a lot more, but you get the idea!)

It's highly unlikely that Painter will incorporate all of Photoshops features, so it would have to be the other way around - which is surely bad for competetive reasons. I don't want to see Adobe crush even another competitor this way...

One should always use the right tool for the job and not search for a magic all-in-one...

[wolver1ne]

I agree that Painter should be what it was designed for, painting. I've had a chance to try latest version and I should say it's pretty damn good. The mixer is an extremly good feature if you are an artist who used to mix colors in real life. Mixer is exactly the same only digital, which is great.

Other than that Painter and Photoshop work great together. Could be me but I can't say that managing layers in Painter is quite handy. I am used to Photoshop so maybe it's because of that. I do all of my work in Photoshop, but when I tried Painter it wants me to learn it as well, as it is a very handy tool if you do a lot of art and Photoshop doesn't actually give you all what you nead. I say that if learn both, Photoshop and Painter, then it's a great step because both of them have something that makes it kinda complete or something.. So I don't think there's a VS., more like two good softwares working together giving the artist everything that is needed... at least from my point of view. :)

[schmu_20mol]

mmmhhh....a lil ot....has anyone ever tried to customize his PS brushes to anything you can find in Painter (i don't know painter that well - just played around with that free painter classic) ?....

[klingspor]

I don't think it's possible to do most things in Photoshop, simply for the reason that painter actually emulates natural media: For example, when you paint red watercolor over yellow watercolor, the result will actually be orange, depening on if your paint is dry or not! That won't work in Photoshop I believe.

Also, Painter has many more templates that simulate real life brushes... on the other hand, most pre-installed Photoshop brushes are, for me anyway, quite silly...

[manfriday]

I think Painter 8 is pretty great.
I like the layers in painter 8.. if you use the native .RIFF format it supports groups and such, which is kinda nice.. I dont know if PS supports grouping layers.. if it does I have never used them in PS.
I use layer groups to group together my different map types. when I am working on a texture for a model I tend to have the bump,spec,diffuse and color maps all in a single file, and I group them together.
Then I can just turn on the map I wnat and save it out as a .BMP file or whatnot..
it works for me.
The only thing I miss from Painter that PS has are good dodge/burn tools.

Painters Dodge and burn tools do not work properly. especialy when ya use the airbrush tools.
Rather than moving the color to a darker value it shifts it to a differet hue.. i dont understand why they never fixed that.. it has been a problem for as long as I have used painter (6).

[klingspor]

Photoshop 7 supports layer groups, I'm not sure about earlier versions though. They're just called "Layer Sets", but they work much the same way as in Painter...

[kex]

if both companies keep updating photoshop will never be like painter as the updates for photoshop result to nearley noting in feature advancements.

[yinako]

Originally posted by manfriday

The only thing I miss from Painter that PS has are good dodge/burn tools.

Painters Dodge and burn tools do not work properly. especialy when ya use the airbrush tools.

right on, because of this single tool I have to swtich between apps, on average I switch once every 5 minutes. And thats what bothers me...

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