CGTalk - Painter 11-Thanks Corel...

ThePixelDoc

02-26-2009, 05:09 PM

From the Corel website:
Enhanced! Selection Tools
A new Polygonal mode for the Lasso tool, plus overall improvements to marquee tools and the Magic Wand, let you make more nimble selections the first time around.

False advertising (period!).

Most of the problems with selections was those nasty 0,7px ants, and the lasso lagging behind the selection, that is unless your living in a half-speed time warp and you like it that way(?!). Also... after waiting for the ants... feather the selection, and then try to expand or contract the selection. No chance = grayed out.

Now, make a quick selection (don't forget to wait for the lasso and the ants!). Now choose Widen under selection: look at that fantastic speech balloon - from a CIRCLE! Not exactly the right time or place I intended to write, "well this is crap!"

Now try a simple Wand selection. Again, no chance to Expand, Contract, or Smooth the selection... even without a feather. Oh yeah.. you have to click the Transform button or key-combo first. How intuitive... and certainly "enhanced".

Now try drawing a selection with the Oval selection tool. Now drag it. Uh! Now its a rectangle. But then again... I guess I'm the idiot for not using the arrow keys, huh? Do that... oh how wonderful and enhanced! The selection blinks with control handles each press of the arrow. You could dance along with the "New and Enhanced" disco-ball effect... if ya like a slow Waltz that is!

Anyone from Corel want to explain why a polygon selection is considered "Enhanced". It was even in ColorStudio 1.0 and MacPaint since 1985! :eek: It IS the only thing you added or enhanced to make selections more "nimble"

Last TIP for today... go ahead folks and import your Painter X Workspaces. I DARE YA! Try: Start over and rebuild 'em... by hand as the previous poster mentioned.

PS: Hey Corel :wip: ... you absolutely sure you want to continue to maintain that Corel 11 is an UPGRADE and worth $200,00? It's a minor update and mini bug fix, nothing more, and certainly not worth what your asking.

smoothoperator

02-26-2009, 05:23 PM

Ok I tried out the demo and I have to say I'm disappointed in the update on a few things...well..the new version. Whatever you want to call it. I'll list the pros and cons...

Pros.
-Nice hard media addition. I like the tilt of the pen for shading aspect. markers looks nice.

-Rotation of the canvas and it's jagged edges seems fixed.

-Color Management is nice. An obvious need ages ago.

-Resizable mixer palette.

Cons.
-(THE BIGGEST ISSUE FOR ME) It's still slow. I think they have a typo in 30% faster. Take out the 0. More like 3%. Why? Because a large size brush for oil and real bristle still lag. And I mean above 30% diameter. ( running a brand new unibody Macbook Pro 15 do I need more than 2g ram?) Maybe it's faster in other medias but I didn't have an issue with those.

-Airbrush is still the same...too clumpy in result. Hasn't changed. They can keep that variation but make one like PS! I've said it to them but seems like a challenge.

-Oil, Real Bristle still not able to have grain. Is it just me but when I was using real paint you can see the grain of the paper when painting. Why don't they have that option!? Its stupid. Acrylic has that option and it's snappier than the others...but I want the option for paper grain on ALOT of the media types. Esp oils! I want to see some canvas texture! geez. Don't bother to tell me to apply it after either.

-UI needs a change. The floating window clutter can be better. I like the way ZBrush has theirs set up. Makes more sense. They can pop in and out when needed and it's clustered and still modifiable. Best of all your not distracted by the desktop in the background! That option is nice. For the app to take up all the viewing space with a solid bg.

-Preview window for Filters. STILL?! That tiny little window...GOD I LOVE IT. lol I don't understand why they can't make it so you can see the result on the canvas. I don't even want to see if there's a better curves adjustement filter. Won't bother checking.

This update in general is a miss as a full version. X.5 yes. But what the heck do I know right? I think I will go easy on the dev team at Corel & stop complaining about how Painter has missed a few things and go over to Adobe and complain how they spoiled me. LOL. I kid I kid.

Seriously though Painter is nice...just some things that Isn't perfect and it's a shame those things aren't changed sooner rather then later...or never ( remains to be seen ). Biggest thing is the speed/performance and grain for oils and real bristle. Airbrush would be nice to change but I can jump over to PS....again. lol
I for one won't be updating.

ThePixelDoc

02-26-2009, 06:59 PM

The airbrush mode is much worse than it used to be! Clumpy?! It leaves drastic dirty rings around color changes, the same as 9 and X before the updates.

Try painting with only a gray ramp, and you'll get multi-colored rings and artifacts. Yes I checked to see that Color variations weren't on. Also, when choosing the soft 50 Air the first time, Grain slider showed up at the top. I chose it again, and the grain slider was gone.

BTW: The horizontal lines are also back when zooming or working on a layer, sometimes when painting. I thought THAT... and the artifact rings were taken care of LONG ago!? Unbelievable! 1 Step forward... 3 steps back.

BaronImpossible

02-26-2009, 07:32 PM

I haven't downloaded the trial but I must say when I read the blurb I was surprised that nothing about the new features jumped out at me. Indeed, I failed to find anything which prompted me to say, "Yep, that sounds like a great feature". And reading this thread there's little that makes me eager to give it a go and change my mind.

And if the filter preview windows really are still tiny (and, in the case of Match Palette, completely inaccurate), after all I and everyone else has said, then that's almost unbelievable.

Jinbrown

02-26-2009, 08:47 PM

This thread (http://painterfactory.com/forums/66.aspx) on the Painter Factory forums may be the best place for Painter 11 feedback and bug reports.

David

There are two places at The PainterFactory (http://painterfactory.com) to post threads or messages about Painter 11:

For topics related to general understanding and use of Painter 11, post your threads or messages in the Corel Painter 11 - New Version! forum.

For technical issues and bug reports that will involve the Corel Painter development team, post your threads or messages in the Got a Question/Technical Issue/Bug Report for the Painter Team? forum.

Jinny

#

smoothoperator

02-27-2009, 03:37 AM

Jinny they read these forums. And if they don't it's a waste of FREE feedback. It's a forum titled Corel Painter. I've mentioned these issues to them so it's useless no matter how you spoon feed it. They know. What they do with this Free info is up to them.
Once upon a time prior to the net one would have to harass someone to get feedback about their product(s). Mail ins and phone numbers. Now it's too easy it's everywhere. Whatever. Autodesk will buy everything eventually. lol i kid i kid.

ThePixelDoc

02-27-2009, 07:45 AM

I was wondering how long it would take the #1 Painter Cheerleader “Jinny” to come to Corel’s rescue. Jinny: we’ve been through all of this before more than a year ago. I, as well as many others contributed to the Painter wish-list both here... and at PaintedFactory.com.

At that time, PainterX was already over a year old, and had seen only 1... I repeat “ONE” update i.e. bug-fix. So, considering that many, and if I dare say MOST of the bug-fixes went unfixed and ignored THEN, or they popped up their ugly heads AGAIN(!) in this “new version”... what should we do differently THIS time around?

I do believe that no matter what we as professional users wish for or want, Corel WILL ignore us. Last time I even went so far as to point to other websites, for other software, that had wish lists set up so that you didn’t have duplicates... and people could vote on the ones they needed most, similar to http://aerotaskforce.com/. A wonderful system that lets the developers prioritize what needs to be addressed. Did Corel do that? No.

So Jinny... please tell... WHAT can we as users do NOW(!) and differently, to help the people at Corel develop Painter to it’s fullest underlying ability?

If memory serves me (it’s here somewhere), I personally was “shot down” and told to shut up (basically) after Rob MacDonald announced that a new version of Painter was coming, and Quote, “...we’re working on some great stuff”. I held my end of the deal... stopped posting... and was patient. So now may I please post, “SHOW ME THE GREAT STUFF ROB!” A polygon lasso tool, re-sizable palettes, color sliders, and Color management done right... is NOT DOING IT FOR ME, and dare I say, definitely does NOT qualify as “great”’ in this day and age.

If I may be so bold as to possibly speak for other pro-artists and illustrators around here, we do NOT need Webinars on how to make paintings from photos with one click. We NEED software and a toolbox that “works”, and gets out of our way so that we can CREATE. Most of us know what we want and how to do it with different mediums since childhood, with training, and have practiced for many 1000’s of hours to perfect our craft. Today that means digitally with computers and software. Painter WAS a great jump to bridge the divide between traditional and future mediums. WAS. It has since version 8, and still is with version 11, lagging far behind the advances of the technological possibilities of the day. Do something about it, or at least turn it all over to the Open Source community if it’s not financially advantageous for you (Corel) to continue developing.

PS: And to think we were discussing here Open GL support, Core technologies, etc. being integrated. Makes us look downright foolish for wasting our time “dreaming”.

PSS: That 30% speed boost claim needs to be verified... AND Adobe just released an update to PhotoShop CS4 that does just that... and it was FREE!

PSS: Give me software worthy of the word “great”, and I’ll fork over a grand if ya need it. Did that with Adobe CS3 and CS4, and it was worth every penny to me!

ubermensch76

02-27-2009, 08:29 AM

photoshop cs4 64bit is a monster. I have switched over to photoshop for now for digital work. less pain more work.

ThePixelDoc

02-27-2009, 08:38 AM

Quote from Corel Website:

Enhanced! Adobe® Photoshop® Support

Maintain colors and layers when transferring files between Photoshop and Painter. This saves time when importing and exporting artwork between the two programs, because corrections are less necessary.

NOT TRUE and false advertising. (Who wrote that last line? Horrible English!)

Any layer that has an effect, or image that makes use of Adjustment layers, will NOT be imported to Painter. Also, Blending methods not supported by Painter will be ignored and throw a warning on opening. The layer is still there, but does nothing. Also, the same warning will pop up even if the method IS supported, like Multiply or Screen. However, it does display correctly.

Good news: layer opacity and layer mask comes in. Again, only with supported blending modes. Is better than before? Yes. Is it 'great"? No.

Once again, you will have to maintain separate working versions, or plan out your work-flow accordingly and ahead of time. OK... I wasn't expecting anything different in regards to that. Safer anyway.

Bad news: fat colored,alternating polo-stripes (about an inch wide!) when zooming in and out, specifically at 75%.

No it's not my system! A Jan.2008 8-Core MacPro - 16gb RAM - NVIDEA 8800GT - 512mb

ThePixelDoc

02-27-2009, 09:03 AM

photoshop cs4 64bit is a monster. I have switched over to photoshop for now for digital work. less pain more work.

ABOLUTELY AGREE! However... there were and still are times in my work where I want that super fast (with Custom Palettes) sketching, drawing, painting, etc. ability. Painter DID fit that space. It is why "bugs" are not allowed. Did I say "fast"? PS-CS4 is a dream come true these days... although, almost "too perfect". And the age-old "Just Add water" blend tool in Painter is almost indispensible for me. Although I have been working on some great presets with Smooth tools and scattering. A post is here on CG how to do that. Great stuff!

Like I've always said, Painter is a great toolbox to have at your disposal, but woefully under-developed, and with each new version (so that it works seamlessly with new OSes) is a digital bug-fest and almost always dissappointing visually (GUI) to open.

My box: CS4 (all), PS, LightRoom, Aperture, Pixelmator... and assorted utilities with gorgeous, get-work-done, interface-outa-the-way, screen real-estate efficiency.... and then Painter! Which looks like GIMP running under an x11 window emulator... and performs about the same (nothing against Gimp here... it's the emulator).

Anyway... I'll be skipping this UPGRADE and wait for an update/bug fix... or new version next year.

PS: Just curious: how's Painter looking under Vista-64, soon to be Win7-64? Anybody?

ubermensch76

02-27-2009, 10:12 AM

It looks the same in Vista 64 though the new version does support ram beyond 8GB as opposed to crashing in earlier versions if u have anything more than that. It was only in windows version I think.

Since the CS4 release I have grown accustomed to missing the blending engine from painter. And the workflow is fast.

If u want sketching stuff ( not at the level of painter but pretty neat ) u might want to try the upcoming version of sketchbook pro 2010. From the preview vids its looks like an awesome tool for skteching and roughing things out fast. Some innovative features I had wanted in 2d apps for a long time for professional Digital Artists.

ThePixelDoc

02-27-2009, 10:27 AM

Bug Fix: Turn off (uncheck) "Draw zoomed-out views using area-averaging" in Preferences -> General. Also improves the rendered picture when zoomed out (50%-66%-75%), instead of being pixelated.

New Bug: no document image (thumbnail) icons for jpg, psd, tiff, or png (I didn't try the rest) in Icon or Column view from a Mac, also doesn't show a preview in CoverFlow; only a Painter document icon with TIF, JPG, etc. overlayed. QuickLook however works.

New Worthlessness: PNG - no dialog box to alter settings, like color depth or transparency settings. Hence, a meaningless format since you'll still have to round-trip back to PS or graphic converter of choice to do this PROFESSIONALLY. Does respect transparency though if the Canvas layer is turned off.

Unfixed PainterX
Bug 1) Windows, and sometimes palettes open up behind the upper status bar. Fix: Move bar to access Palette or Window title bar.
Bug 2) Also, when dragging a doc to a window or the Painter Dock icon, all Palettes and status bars dissappear. Fix: you must choose manually from the Menu ->Window->Hide Palettes... TWICE! Don't forget that: 2 times! OKay. good to go now :)

ThePixelDoc

02-27-2009, 10:57 AM

If u want sketching stuff ( not at the level of painter but pretty neat ) u might want to try the upcoming version of sketchbook pro 2010. From the preview vids its looks like an awesome tool for skteching and roughing things out fast. Some innovative features I had wanted in 2d apps for a long time for professional Digital Artists.

... and headed straight over :)

Lex4art

02-27-2009, 08:49 PM

Pros:
1)Now multi-layered PSD-s images sived with normal one-layer preview image - that means two sweet things: now, then you save multi-layer PSD from painter, you can see it in ACDsee (or anwer image viewer) - no blank white image! And second - there no stupid PREVIEW.PIX files, that old versions of painter generates all time you save layered PSD.
2)FINALLY! Color weel now resizeble - http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/6082/painter11colorweeeeeel.jpg
3)Now option "Draw zoomed-out views using area avergaging" is enabled by default - YEAH, in 2009 year Painter able to make anti-aliasing! Amazing! PS. That options works fine since painter 9.x, in 10-10.1 versions it cause artifacts then enabled, in 6-7-8 versions it wont work if you enable it.
4)10% less kittens!

Cons:
1)Still painter v6 engine :( - that means nothing seriosly changes, and painter still CANT use more than 1 gb RAM - you can have 16 gb in your system, but painter will swap on HDD after reaching 1 gb RAM limit. You can check it :D

2)No GPU support... no multhi-tread cpu support... its realy old engine - and still 32 Undo's limit :D

Anyway - i prefer "SAI paint tool" for drawing ^____^. Painter just for evil brushes or natural media sometimes.

Lunatique

03-01-2009, 05:37 AM

Personally, I rarely see a product try to cater to both hobbyists and professionals at the same time and still succeed, but I think it's a blurry line when it comes Corel's attempt to cater to the photographers who want to create pseudo-paintings from their photos for clients who want a more painterly look. Obviously, professional photographers are also professionals, except they aren't professional painters, so they need a tool that can allow them to mimic the look of paintings with their photographs, as there is a demand for that style from clients. Whether that form of photography is artistically valid or not is not something anyone can really say with absolute authority, so Corel simply provides the easiest to use tools for it. I can understand their decision to do so, as Corel is first and foremost a business, and they are in it to make a profit.

As for not getting past bugs fixed or adding much requested features, I'm guessing that if we were to get their programmers in here and ask point blank, it's probably due to the difficulty level. I know nothing about the codes behind Painter, so I have no idea if fixing things or adding things would require significant rewrite of the code base. Sometimes software products eventually paint themselves into a corner and cannot evolve any longer because the code is simply too archaic and inefficient for today's operating systems and hardware (after all, the original versions weren't coded for today's OS and hardware). Sometimes a total rewrite is required if the product were to continue to compete in the marketplace, sometimes the company gives up and make it free or open-source, and sometimes they just kill it and forget about it. I don't know if anyone outside of Corel can reliably know where Painter is at and how far it can still go. I do know that there are a few alarming signs, and I've been quite vocal about my personal issues with Painter in the past, and I've done my best to make them known to Corel by either posting about them publicly, adding them to official feature request lists, and actually discussing them with Corel directly. As of now, the answer has been that the problems relevant to my workflow are too hard to fix or not part of their priority according to their place in the market.

I haven't tried 11 yet, but I will soon when I find the time. Can those of you who have tell me if they fixed the most grating problem for professional artists--the way transparent pixels are treated as white color when you blend on another layer without checking the "pick up underlying color"? That is the number issue for me, as professional artists very often must keep as many different things on separate layers as possible--to be able to shuffle them around and edit them at will. Being forced to use "pick up underlying color" negates any benefits gained from having separate layers. The best example is if I want to keep a character's hair on a separate layer so that I can easily change the background behind the hair strands later if I wanted to, or simply change the hair itself to different color or contrast/value. Now, if I wanted to paint soft feathered strands of hair, I must use a brush with some kind of bleed or blend--that's when I run into the problem. If I check "pick up underlying colors," my separate layer of hair becomes useless because now it contains some of the background as well.

I don't program so I have no idea if it's even possible to fix the white as transparent pixel problem. In Photoshop, since there's no actual blending going on between the layers, when you use the smudge tool, you are only altering the pixels on that layer--but what that allows is for you to fake a blend, feather, soften, without any artifacts. It's not totally ideal if you want a realistic wet-on-wet solution, but it's still better than nothing. I wish Corel could at least implement that as an alternative so we can use it if we want, instead of having to use Photoshop to get it.

agiel

03-01-2009, 06:11 AM

Unfortunately, that 'white pixels for transparent layer' is still a problem.

I also noticed these white pixels appearing around the edge of the canvas using blending tools (something I can't remember seeing in Painter X).

ThePixelDoc

03-01-2009, 09:37 AM

In response to "Lunatique":
I do believe you're being too kind. First and foremost, because Corel has a "hobbiest" version (from their website): Painter Essentials 4 - "Transform photos into stunning paintings".

I have no problem with them adding that feature into Painter "Pro". I DO have a problem if that is the only part of the program that they are working on, considering the huge number of user complaints re: bugs, and not taking the time to update their GUI to 2009 standards, or make Painter work with modern, new computers and tech.

Re: GUI - I as well no one here has asked them to redesign their GUI to look like PS, or any other for that matter. However, it HAS been agreed on I think unanimously, that there are areas that they should... and if I must say personally...MUST... fix and/or improve upon.

Re: Programming - certainly I believe it is a time consuming and demanding task. However, THAT is their business, just as creating illustrations is yours and mine. We do our utmost to deliver thoroughly professional jobs, at a competitive price. Why should we not hold a software company to those same principles?

As I mentioned in a previous post, when I go through my tool box on my Mac, the ONLY program that stands out as NOT being up-to-date technologically... is Painter.

Corel has shown with it's other products, that they CAN do a new GUI on an existing core engine... again, see Painter Essentials. Only difference is that they decided to cripple the version, so as to up-sell to Painter "Pro". From a management and program perspective, a totally stupid implementation, because the GUI in Essentials and Painter are completely different, and will seriously confuse someone when switching i.e. start over learning the Painter "Pro" version.

Good GUI Example: let's take Pixelmator. (http://www.pixelmator.com/)
Started in 2007 by 2 brothers. Appears to be about 6-7 additional contributing programmers on their team. In 2 years time, that small team has built a serious, low-cost (~$60,00) alternative to the almighty PhotoShop, that does elegantly, 90% of what a lot people do with PS or PS Elements. 100% Mac native and Photoshop compatible. NOTE: if you don't know already, Painter was developed first and foremost for the Mac... I believe in '87. Emulating, to an extent, the GUI guidelines from Apple, is not a bad thing for PC programs geared towards the graphics industry and future tech.

Yes, it is apparent that I use a Mac... HOWEVER, some of the deficiencies and inefficient GUI problems, are also on the PC side, where I also worked from '99-2004 (84-99 and 2004-present Mac). It will only become worse, as we have already heard from posters working on Vista 64, soon to be Win7.

Painter the program, is not the problem. It being in the hands of Corel...IS!
Set it free. Sell it, give it away, invite other innovative programmers to take over development... whatever. But PLEASE do not let it die or stagnate, until the day where we can no longer even install it because we are using a post-WinXP operating system and modern, new computer.

We as users have tried to help Corel:
with wish lists; bug fixes, tricks, workarounds and help; volunteer, user-contributed forums for newbies, like this one here, etc. THEY have refused to respect us by at least giving us a stable base to work from (Painter); have NOT even scratched off the Top 10 most posted about bugs and/or GUI problems; and continue to shyster us out of our money for half-baked new "versions"... which in truth are almost always just an "update"... that tend to break more things than it fixes. (Almost 4x what those brothers want for the whole program? - for an "upgrade"?!)

PS: Take a look at the Pixelmator (http://www.pixelmator.com/) site only as an example... and dream what Painter COULD work and look like... or what those 2 guys could do with the Painter engine.

PSS: Calling John Derry and Original Painter Team: "Remember way back, when you were those guys? Wouldn't it be great to experience your youth again?!"! Hint-Hint :)

Lunatique

03-01-2009, 10:46 AM

Well, obviously as the Forum Leader for this particular corner of cgtalk, I'm obligated to be diplomatic about these things. I tried to put thing as nicely as I can, but I'm sure you can read between the lines and feel my frustration--one that's been there for years. I do feel that venting anger may not help the situation when you are the minority voice, but at the same time, if enough people start venting their anger and disappointment, it'll serve as a wake-up call to the company, as the evident danger of losing user base becomes real. This happens when the user base gives up on a company, but I'm not sure if we're quite there yet--at least I don't think the majority feels that way. I don't mind negative comments here--that's why I rarely ever step in and moderate when people starts venting and bashing Corel. As long as it's done in a civilized and constructive manner that's in accordance with cgtalk's general policies, I'm fine with it. Companies NEED negative feedback to understand why the user base is unhappy.

BaronImpossible

03-01-2009, 12:26 PM

My issues with this situation run along roughly the same lines as ThePixelDoc's.

First off, I have developed software for 20 years and although I've never developed painting software, and I've no idea what Painter code is like, I'd take a bet that most of the bugs that have been mentioned in the past few years could be fixed inside a couple of weeks. Many don't even involve the brush engine, which I imagine is prohibitively complex, rather basic stuff like toolbar management, resizing windows, changing an icon, making a preview window bigger than a postage stamp.

As for alpha and beta testing, heaven above knows what went on there. Within 5 seconds of opening a canvas I - and many others - found that the artefact bug effectively rendered the software unusable.

Bugs aside, the other thing that gets me is where the clearly limited development effort is being centred. Painter is a Natural Media Painting Tool. Its purpose is to simulate various forms of painting as accurately as possible using digital software.

Yet instead of these - admittedly excellent - core functions being purged of bugs and developed further, effort seems to have been spent on developing "fun" functions to better trace a photograph amongst other things of no use to serious digital painters. What is the reasoning behing this?

Is it a drive to recruit the hobbyist market in the knowledge that there's no viable competition for natural media software and serious users don't have much choice but to stick with Painter? Well, maybe so, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone out there is working - right now - on a dedicated oil / watercolour / pencil similation package that has a fraction of the features of Painter but is solid and stable and absolutely dedicated to doing what 90% of Painter users want - pure simulation of natural media. No animation, no tracing, no magic instant pictures, no one-click wonder filters, no farting around - just painting. And if that happens, and Corel has not got focused, then Painter will die overnight.

Now that's absolute last thing I want. As I've said I've used Painter for years - and nothing else - and I love it. I've supported and promoted Painter and regularly sing its praises and even after all this I'll continue to do so, but when I see such ill-advised asshattery going on it's incumbent upon me to speak out and hope that this time, Corel takes note.

sand dragon

03-01-2009, 01:31 PM

A bit of nostalgia; Mark Zimmer interview (http://www.maxschoenherr.de/radio/radioCurrent/MarkZimmer/markZimmer.html) (1996). The audio is in Real Player format.

David

ubermensch76

03-01-2009, 01:31 PM

Indeed I never could figure out what is Painter's Focus for the past couple of releases ?

Lunatique

03-01-2009, 02:34 PM

I'm under the impression that the hobbyist and photographer market is probably a lot bigger than you guys think it is. In fact I think it's probably a misconception that the professional artists are the majority of the user base. The professional artists and their endorsement of the software add an air of prestige, and I'm sure Corel welcomes that kind of publicity since the hobbyists will follow the professionals they look up to, however, evidence points out that the hobbyists and photographers appear to dominate the user base of Painter, or at least make up a sizable chunk--enough so that Corel has to cater to them in a significant way--perhaps at the cost of putting features needed by serious professionals on the back burner. This is only my own speculation though.

I have told Corel time and time again (when I had direct line to their engineers and managers) that IMO, Painter must try to match Photoshop in the areas of toolset, ease of use, reliability, power, and workflow, because at this point many people need to use both Photoshop and Painter because their strengths are mutually exclusive. I warned that, if one day Adobe decides that the market for natural media simulation has become lucrative enough, they will assign manpower to R&D that area, and as soon as Photoshop comes out with its own toolset for natural media, Painter's share of the market will rapidly shrink until the same fate that has befallen Deep Paint 2D will happen to them. The answer to that has always been that Adobe is not interested in that market because all the other markets that need Photoshop are far bigger in comparison, and Corel has no intention of competing with Adobe at all because they want to concentrate on natural media and most of Photoshop's tools are aimed at Photographers. I don't necessarily agree with that because as we all know, an artist is just as capable to turning out stunning paintings in Photoshop as he is in any other 2D software, including Painter, and those so-called Photographer's tools are one of the main reasons why Photoshop is awesome for 2D artists in general--those powerful editing tools are one of the main advantages of doing digital art in the first place!

Truth is, for any half-way decent artist that understands the principles of surface polish (brushwork, line quality, textures), they can use Photoshop and make a painting that looks very organic--as organic as anything that they can do in Painter. Maybe not the same kind of media emulaition, but nonetheless very organic and natural (Look at Craig Mullin's work--his Photoshop pieces are in no way any lesser than his Painter pieces). But you cannot say the reverse about Painter--it cannot handle image editing nearly as well as Photoshop, and very often in a digital workflow, the editing tools are the straws that will break the camel's back, not the brushes. I can do any piece of artwork 100% in Photoshop, including all kinds of editing and post processing, but I cannot do a piece of artwork 100% in Painter because I would have to boot up Photoshop at some point to finish it.

If an artist doesn't take full advantage of the flexibility that digital affords him, he might be fine with Painter, since much of his workflow still revolves around traditional methods and mentality, but for cutting-edge artists that really push the envelop with their innovative workflow that utilize the full capacity of today's 2D software, Painter still has a ways to go. Whether they ever get there remains to be seen.

For the moment, Painter is still the best software out there for natural media simulation, and that's what I'll continue to use it for, and tag team Painter with Photoshop. I really wish I could just stick to one software that has everything I need though, and I don't really care which company makes it happen. I guess it's kind of like the 3D market--you often have to use more than one software to get things done--Maya, Zbrush, Motionbuilder...etc.

joeparis

03-01-2009, 03:11 PM

I'm under the impression that the hobbyist and photographer market is probably a lot bigger than you guys think it is. In fact I think it's probably a misconception that the professional artists are the majority of the user base.
Yup, I think you might be right, Certainly in my experience, in the various forums Painter that I visit, the hobbyist and photographer are by far the majority; whether they are more vocal or that most professional "Painter" illustrators are too busy to join forums, is anybody's guess.

John Keates

03-01-2009, 04:42 PM

Add to that :
- the same funky color banding issues when painting or blending over a transparent layer
.

That is still in there? My god! I thought that would have been fixed in a point update for V9.

OK, so a lot of hobbyist use the program... do they not want layers to work properly?

I can't bring myself to upgrade until that is fixed or there is a "summon beautiful woman" button!

Lunatique

03-01-2009, 04:59 PM

I think that if we want to get Corel to address the issues that we professional artists have with Painter, we may have to do some work and promote our cause among the hobbyists and photographers--to make them understand why these features are important and why these bugs are unacceptable. Many of them probably never use the same features we use, and vice versa, and we may have to introduce our workflow to them and maybe they'll see the value in our workflow and begin to pester Corel with us. :arteest:

Tim3308

03-01-2009, 05:49 PM

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but w/the reality of P11 being so, so far short of what us professionals here thought even half would be included w/this product update, and the Photoshop talk here....

... I gotta ask:

Like Simon, I do 100% of my painting in Painter —yet I am stunned what I see coming out of hardcore PS illustrators -- I just about literally don't know how they do it. Painting in PS seems so awkward to me (I use PS on every assignment to do the image editing, composting, and know my way around pretty well), but I am so green when it comes to painting in PS. Picking colors even seems awkward (nothing as friendly as the P color wheel, right?), changing brushes is not as friendly, right? It just seems clunky for this -- but am I clueless? (Speaking of "clunky", I have bought Adobe Illus CS4, wow this vector stuff, talk about foreign!... as I am "teaching" myself)

I have a dumb question like, can you work on different " papers" in PS? Do they have brushes that pick up this texture (it seems to me the certain brushes impart the texture only, not related to the canvas paper, right)? Does PS have adjustable color variability on strokes like P? I am told the adjustment on brush tools is very limited compared to P, true?
Does PS CS4 have a leap in the brush engine over CS3 (my current version).

Is there a book one can recommend to an experienced user of P and PS (but not in painting in PS)? Example the Painter "Wow" series really do shine in getting "devil in the details" hints to self motivated Painter uses into messing and tweaking w/stuff they might not be ware of in Painter.

Thanks. It's really too bad the P11 version has fallen so short of what many of us were realistically looking for. Right, the white when painting on a layer is a pretty symbolic issue. There is really a good discussion going on here in a couple of threads in regard to P11. Corel could/should glean a lot... as way way too much was left on the table, not including the software is not even working right (wow, like Simon, I find it unusable). Total buzzkill... as we want to be champions/apostles of Painter, not tomato throwers.

T

ThePixelDoc

03-01-2009, 06:20 PM

...in reference to the Avatar picture, and in reply to Lanatique's comment:
I believe that you are correct in your assumption re: hobbyists, photogs and "pro illustrators". However... and not to belittle your in-depth argument, I will repeat: Corel has 2 distinct products already, one that specifically claims to be for photogs. and hobbyists. Let them go with that approach, and more power to them if the succeed. But at this point, they are both completely different worlds. Once they do move up to the “pro” version, as The Baron so eloquently (what a luscious prose!) questioned: do they not want Layers or transparency to work correctly?

I definitely like your choice of words regarding the “Tag Team” approach of working between PS and Painting, because it definitely is a pugilistic blood-bath at the moment. I would love to see the day when at the very least we could replace “Tag-Team” with Tango. There will always be the need for PS. Adobe surely has us all by the... well, whatever :) Painter, as you’ve pointed out to them... not so. Some of the time-saving improvements to PS CS4 are straight out of Painters “play book”: dynamic resizing of brushes and rotatable canvas... and one thing I suggested to Corel even before CS4 came out, that is Zoom Snap-Back.

I’m just happy that other people care about the program and take a minute to post. As you can see here, it doesn’t seem that a lot of pros care, are even bother anymore, considering a long 3-year line of fiasco-upgrades from Corel. More and more I see that Photoshop is the only prog used for the multitude of masterpieces here at CG. Could be that Corel has already lost their “pro” market. A sad shame.

About that Beta: I went to sign up for it a couple of months ago. However, I was unable to because Corel’s website refused to recognize Firefox or Safari as a valid browser, and went so far as to “suggest” I use Internet Explorer 4 - 6(!). Simply: I said forget about it. BTW: It was only recently that their main website was half usable.

Not sure where that company is heading, but it doesn’t look pretty or reassuring on a lot of fronts... or sites. I’m sure there are some good people working there, but where’s the leadership, vision, innovation, and management? Looks like only Bean-Counters and Marketing gurus to me.

I’ve said my mind, prodded Corel, yelled (in capitals) at certain people here and at PaintedFactory (my apologies again), and made myself out to be an old capital “A”-___.

I do believe I’ll take a break as well, until that “Summon a Beautiful Woman” button is added (love that one!!!) in Painter and not just here... or see what the new version of SketchBook 2010 comes up with. Just sad though.

PS: Thanks “Sand Dragon” for the great link to the Mark Zimmer interview! I’ve mentioned ColorStudio in a number of my posts. I demoed/presented the software here in Germany at CeBit in March,1990 for the lone authorized distributor here. Nostalgia: do you realize ColorStudio 1.0 had Bezier Tools and Paths, Shapes, Clipping Paths, 3 point Gradients... among other things... BEFORE a Wacom tablet or PhotoShop 1.0 existed? I'm friggin' old!

Is there no wonder we (I) expect more today?

PSS: I just finoished listening to the Mark Zimmer interview, and must make a correction: Wacom tablets did "exist" in 1989.... however, here in Europe they appeared on the scene in late 1990, when I bought my first one. Set me back almost 1000,00 DM (roughly the same in dollars) for an ADB A5, for my Mac IIfx.

I would suggest that Corel listen to this interview as well, especially the comment at the end regarding redevelopment/reprogramming/updating parts of the program to take advantage of the technology at hand. The part regarding GUIs is also most interesting.

I would like to hear what Mark or John Derry think today regarding the current state of Painter. I may ask for an interview... or considering that Kai Krause (KPT fame) lives in a castle a few kilometers away, possibly seeing about an "audience" with the Master. Now there was a nutty GUI designer! :surprised

BaronImpossible

03-01-2009, 06:39 PM

Like Simon, I do 100% of my painting in Painter —yet I am stunned what I see coming out of hardcore PS illustrators -- I just about literally don't know how they do it.

Me too. I used PS for several days and I literally couldn't get it to paint a single "painterly" stroke. I could get it to produce something that looked like varnish but blend and bleed? Forget about it.

Yesterday I did spend a while on Adobe's site and I didn't find one single reference to using PS to paint. Not one. I don't particularly like PS to be honest but Adobe certainly seem to know who they're targetting - and it isn't us painters.

And regarding the white banding, oddly enough it's still there for some brushes (e.g. acrylics) and not for others (e.g. artists' oils)

I can't bring myself to upgrade until that is fixed or there is a "summon beautiful woman" button!

Don't say that or v12 will have a function that imports a random photo of a woman, applies a filter and plays a loud TA-DA!

sand dragon

03-01-2009, 06:46 PM

About that Beta: I went to sign up for it a couple of months ago. However, I was unable to because Corel’s website refused to recognize Firefox or Safari as a valid browser, and went so far as to “suggest” I use Internet Explorer 4 - 6(!). Simply: I said forget about it. BTW: It was only recently that their main website was half usable.

Ah! that may well explain why my application was not accepted. I used Safari as the browser, so the form was probably never sent/recieved :shrug:

David

sand dragon

03-01-2009, 06:59 PM

Check out the Photoshop brushes on Alex Dukal's blog. (http://pelicanosypescados.blogspot.com/search/label/Recursos) I have not tried them myself, as being a Painter hobbyist, I don't have Photoshop.

David

ubermensch76

03-01-2009, 07:31 PM

I have a dumb question like, can you work on different " papers" in PS? Do they have brushes that pick up this texture (it seems to me the certain brushes impart the texture only, not related to the canvas paper, right)? Does PS have adjustable color variability on strokes like P? I am told the adjustment on brush tools is very limited compared to P, true?
Does PS CS4 have a leap in the brush engine over CS3 (my current version).

Is there a book one can recommend to an experienced user of P and PS (but not in painting in PS)? Example the Painter "Wow" series really do shine in getting "devil in the details" hints to self motivated Painter uses into messing and tweaking w/stuff they might not be ware of in Painter.

T

Regarding the first question just check the texture settings in the brush properties and choose any texture/patterns that u like. As well as the color dynamics. Other dynamics and all the stuff u can think of is in there.

The app ships with tons of presets for those and u can make ur own as well download them from the web. I think if u are the experimenting type u will find painting in photoshop a lot breezier than painter and I can tell u that I have used both as pro software. Once u get around the fact that u won't get automatic blending in photoshop but for all intents and purposes THAT is the only real limitation ( I am not talking oils/water colors of painter here. IMHO they are a joke for print res work anyway).

Everywhere else photoshop ( especially the latest monster : CS4 64bit ) just plain rocks if u have a beefy system to run it. I can work on 25+ layers for an image @ 9225x4650 pixels and it runs like the wind.

maybe u can think of painter engine vs photoshop engine as oils vs acrylics ( one takes a long time to dry and u can have colors blending while the other tends to dry off very very fast )

For the second question, I would recommend trying out some massive black dvds if u want to look but its a no brainer once u understand the brush engine in photoshop. After that Imagination is the limit.
Honest.

Just by looking at the range and style of work done in photoshop amazes me at the veritality of this medium and ingenuity of the people who use it for digital painting.

ubermensch76

03-01-2009, 07:39 PM

http://pelicanosypescados.blogspot.com/2008/03/artistic-brushes-para-photoshop-free.html

try this !

Tim3308

03-01-2009, 09:16 PM

Me too. I used PS for several days and I literally couldn't get it to paint a single "painterly" stroke.

Uhh, gulp.

but blend and bleed? Forget about it.

Really. Again, really? Wow. If I can NOT do that -- total deal breaker.I smudge/blend the crap outta my work as I go along. I HAVE to have that. When I painted w/ traditional media, I used my fingers in oils (and obviously pastels) as much as the brush! It is my whole background.

Yesterday I did spend a while on Adobe's site and I didn't find one single reference to using PS to paint. Not one. I don't particularly like PS to be honest but Adobe certainly seem to know who they're targetting - and it isn't us painters.

A tad ironic, wouldn't you say?

And regarding the white banding, oddly enough it's still there for some brushes (e.g. acrylics) and not for others (e.g. artists' oils)

Interesting. But I'm not even gonna experiment w/ it , as there are so many other problems w/ 11, I really don't care.

Thank you, Simon.

T

Tim3308

03-01-2009, 10:03 PM

[QUOTE=ubermensch76]Regarding the first question just check the texture settings in the brush properties and choose any texture/patterns that u like. As well as the color dynamics. Other dynamics and all the stuff u can think of is in there.

Okay, Checked it out. I see. Nice textures in there. Told you I was green. :)

The app ships with tons of presets for those and u can make ur own as well download them from the web. I think if u are the experimenting type

I am. Bought Painter (ver 7) and my first Power Mac (OS X.1 had just hit), after watching a close friend mess w/ Painter. I was 85% ignorant on a computer. Lied to the art director that I had been digital for 6 months (in that day, art directors were still leery of illustrators being digital --I swear). Took large gulps of obsessive compulsive disorder and after 3 days produced my first digital book cover. I'd call that "experimenting"! My buddy said my knowledge passed him after a week.

u will find painting in photoshop a lot breezier than painter and I can tell u that I have used both as pro software. Once u get around the fact that u won't get automatic blending in photoshop but for all intents and purposes THAT is the only real limitation ( I am not talking oils/water colors of painter here.

Unfortunately, Uber, I am talking about that type of media. If Simon is dead on about no bleed and blend, that is a PS deal killer. That sucks, to be blunt.

IMHO they are a joke for print res work anyway).

I strongly disagree. Example: The red dragon on my site here on CG, (way more stuff on my own site timjessell.com, was done for a large west coast outfit, that produces a tone of fantasy/sci fi art. The main art director is a killer illustrator in his own right. When he saw my hi rez large file (which does translate to print),he surmised my art was traditional--I took that as huge compliment. I fooled 'em again. Up close my work has "covered" and not covered canvas texture (like real paintings), and impasto highlights. Like I said, I fool 'em. I work "tradigitally". While I'm knocked out by the work I see done in PS, I guess some of my goals are not in the PS world?

Everywhere else photoshop ( especially the latest monster : CS4 64bit ) just plain rocks if u have a beefy system to run it. I can work on 25+ layers for an image @ 9225x4650 pixels and it runs like the wind.

Ha, you are a PC guy. While I know the Mac is a better format (please no argument there, accept it :drool: ), it was quite the news in the Mac community when PS CS4 version for Mac stayed at 32 bit -- but, it really only applies to MEGA huge files. But yes, I have no doubt you are screaming through files (Painter is "childish" in speed aspects and plenty of top hardware wasted on my Mac Pro)... and is a teasing attraction for Painter folks to PS.

maybe u can think of painter engine vs photoshop engine as oils vs acrylics ( one takes a long time to dry and u can have colors blending while the other tends to dry off very very fast )

I can see that, good analogy.

For the second question, I would recommend trying out some massive black dvds if u want to look but its a no brainer once u understand the brush engine in photoshop. After that Imagination is the limit.
Honest.

Okay, so there's no defacto book you would send a guy like me too? Like if someone's pretty good in painter, invariabley he's sent to a Segmiller book at some point (or the Wow! series). As far as massive black goes -- if it's mostly Ryan Church type work, while glorius (but the detail in the work or lack there of, I realize it's on purpose) they are really sc-fi architectural renderings (w/ very dramatic lighting) -- it 100% doesn't send me, and not what I look for for personal inspiration. The ruff "concept" stuff is just not my scene (hardly knew that niche even existed, to be honest -- I'm a Society of Illustrators type guy. I've never played a networked video game in my life, w/ my dateless buddies after working hours :shrug: ). Then again MB is so big they have everything, right?

Just by looking at the range and style of work done in photoshop amazes me at the veritality of this medium and ingenuity of the people who use it for digital painting.

I have mentioned this before: Here's how Painter vs. Photoshop was once explained to me in terms of producing illustrative work. Painter is about painting, PS is about knowing tricks. Those PS guys are real good and "tricksters" -- that's why I don't know what the world I'm looking at when I see their work -- what's painted, what's "tricks", ya know? It's not a criticism, but I wanna know how it's done, intuitively, if you will. Folks can be dumfounded by Painter's complex brush engine, but sheezzz, PS is a bottomless pit on what's in that program. Humbling.

But I remain very afraid, very skeptacle if I cannot bleed, smudge, and get gooey w/ PS :rolleyes:

Also, are there improvements to the brush engine in CS4 vs CS3 version?

T

Tim3308

03-01-2009, 10:20 PM

http://pelicanosypescados.blogspot.com/2008/03/artistic-brushes-para-photoshop-free.html

try this !

Thanks Uber, downloaded (though was not easy w/ his weird links) it and installed it, played a few minutes w/ them. Good stuff, and very nice resource (Lord knows PS casts a much wider net on the web than Painter) but they seem like varied chalks in painter w/85% less user "controlled". Is that fair?

Lunatique

03-02-2009, 05:00 AM

Looks like my prediction is about to come true--Adobe is on the move now:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5713864#post5713864

Regarding painting in Photoshop--I actually mastered PS before I got started in Painter and it took a bit of hardcore adjusting for me to start to get comfortable in Painter, but to date I still feel much more comfortable in PS. As already mentioned, the ONLY thing I miss in PS is the lack of wet-on-wet styled blending/bleed, but other than that, I really have no complaints in general--except maybe I'd like a Painter styled color picker in PS, or the perspective tool.

If you guys take a look at my portfolio--can you tell which ones are done 100% in Painter, Photoshop, or mixture of both?

Back in the day when Craig Mullins (www.goodbrush.com) talked about his take on the difference between painting in PS and Painter, he said that PS required one to think along the lines of gouache, the way that Syd Mead uses it. I would add to that and say you have to think of PS as a dry media--it doesn' "blend" technically, but you don't need to blend anything if you know how to control the opacity of your brushstrokes with pen pressure. And you CAN do blending successfully in PS if you know how to customize the Smudge tool according to your own preference. Some people will uncheck the Spacing for a faster response, and some people will use speckled brushes for a more organic look. Take a look at this thread for Linda Bergkvists' very helpful tips:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=253711

The trick in using Photoshop brushes is to play around with the various settings like scattering, dual brush, texture, brush shapes, opacity/size control with pen pressure...etc. But the truth is, even with just the default hard-edged round brush, you can do amazing things--that's why Craig often did--just the default round brush.

Tim3308

03-02-2009, 05:59 AM

Looks like my prediction is about to come true--Adobe is on the move now:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5713864#post5713864

Hi, I'm the creator of MoXi. I think I should surface and give you some update.

Thanks to joeparis for mentioning MoXi. Yes, Adobe licensed MoXi in 2006. I can't tell what they are doing with it, though.

I now work for Microsoft in Redmond, WA. I'm still working on digital painting thingy, but I'm afraid I can't tell much here. All I can say is that if things go well, you will have a very good upgrade on what would be available as painting software. I can assure you that technologically there's no problem. It's all just business decision.

Cheers,
Nelson Chu

Dear Gawd, please don't let it be Microsoft, for the sake of all that is holy. I couldn't think of a worse company for this guy to schlep for, other than HIS paycheck (yes, Mac guy talking here)

Never heard of MoXi (wow fantastic water color stuff), now I know why. :rolleyes: Robert, I've heard rumors/wishes of Adobe swallowing up a great brush engine (even Apple) from now Corel or to directly compete --wouldn't they call it "Paintershop"(?(Edit:that's dumb, it would be "Artshop"?) since I first learned how to log onto the web. The nugget above sure puts another log on the fire. I'm surprised Adobe hasn't ran down Painter 5 years ago, aren't you?

Regarding painting in Photoshop--I actually mastered PS before I got started in Painter and it took a bit of hardcore adjusting for me to start to get comfortable in Painter, but to date I still feel much more comfortable in PS.

"Your roots call you home", eh Robert (beautiful work, btw!)?

As my story said, I started painting w/ Painter(7) first (admittedly on good advice being a non digital guy at that point) -- so I dig my talons in a little harder on things I don't want to give up from painter.

an earlier quote from you (your site) rings true to me, looking at both apps:

I could never go back to using just Photoshop ever again. Painting in Painter is really a joy compared to Photoshop. This is especially true for people that have worked with traditional tools and missed them when painting in Photoshop.

As already mentioned, the ONLY thing I miss in PS is the lack of wet-on-wet styled blending/bleed,

Ha! Said "talons"

but other than that, I really have no complaints in general--except maybe I'd like a Painter styled color picker in PS, or the perspective tool.

Here, here, the PS color picker stinks. The one that pops up is kinda nice, but the one that stays on screen, well looks like for a photo editing program. ;)

If you guys take a look at my portfolio--can you tell which ones are done 100% in Painter, Photoshop, or mixture of both?

No fair, your a very "smooth as baby's butt" style painter -- hiding your tracks well in PS or P.:)

Back in the day when Craig Mullins (www.goodbrush.com) talked about his take on the difference between painting in PS and Painter, he said that PS required one to think along the lines of gouache, the way that Syd Mead uses it.

Roger, and why I would never pick gouache over oils -- considering they don't have to dry digitally!

I would add to that and say you have to think of PS as a dry media--it doesn' "blend" technically, but you don't need to blend anything if you know how to control the opacity of your brushstrokes with pen pressure. And you CAN do blending successfully in PS if you know how to customize the Smudge tool according to your own preference. Some people will uncheck the Spacing for a faster response, and some people will use speckled brushes for a more organic look. Take a look at this thread for Linda Bergkvists' very helpful tips:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=253711

Informative. Not sure how much I understood, but informative.:)

The trick in using Photoshop brushes is to play around with the various settings like scattering, dual brush, texture, brush shapes, opacity/size control with pen pressure...etc. But the truth is, even with just the default hard-edged round brush, you can do amazing things--that's why Craig often did--just the default round brush.

Not surprised. Those guys could paint w/hot colored waxed dripped all over, and pull it off w/ their "comp" styles (that's what their stuff looks like close in, especially Mullins). It's hard to find almost digital scribbles like he and Church do yet amazingly(!) pull together an image so well? Just looking at all those "concept" pieces gets old for me fast (space ships/weird architecture, very rough character paintings, landscape work thrown in) but hey that's their bag, and how they feed the bulldog. I'm old school -- I'd rather see Gary Kelley, Braldt Bralds, Brad Holland, Carter Goodrich, N.C. Wyeth, David Grove, Thomas Balckshear, Greg Couch, Frazetta, John Rush, Michael Deas, Daniel Craig (now a photoshop painter -- still can't believe how he does it -- I just flat out don't see it in PS. Like Simon, I don't get it) --- good old straight out of the halls of the society of illustrators stuff/subject matter pulled off in Photoshop. I know all of them could likely get going in Painter faster, again considering your quote above.

ubermensch76

03-02-2009, 07:51 AM

I have a traditional Fine arts background . My area of specialization for the final year was portraiture and abstract. I picked up digital painting about 3 years ago when finally I picked up the wacom and now a cintiq running on a mac pro 2008 ( so Tim3308 u know now that I am not anti mac :) but for photoshop 64 I have to run vista which is a great OS all things said and done but anyways that is not the point here.

When I was asked to produce full color artwork I picked painter as my app of choice and the rest of the studio was using Photoshop considering that its natural media emulation would suit my traditional media sensibility. Be that as it may I soon found agonizing slow down in updates, brush lags etc ( mind u I am proficient in cg stuff and no sluch in getting aroud limitations ) and THAT is the killer for any creaitve process.

Some guys picked up painter after looking me using it. Having learnt a serious lesson , for the next project I used a hybrid painter/PS workflow by which time I realized photoshop is no slouch in that dept. Blending stuf I can do with out. There are ways to get that effect in photoshop ( my fav method is picking up nearby colors and painting them in ) .

Finally for my current one its all photoshop 64 once I got comfortable with the software for digital painting and knowing I can open a triple page spread ( graphic novel lingo ) and work on it with almost no performance hit it was the deal breaker for me and no I don't miss the blending feature much now.

Having said that I do wish there is a massive overhaul of the painter software and it should take its rightful place under the sun as the 'uber' app for traditional media work in the digital realm which it still does but its barely hanging in there.

*****Just as a small experiment try using the color dynamics settings and set the foreground/background jitter to pen pressure mode, use some brush that mimics the traditional media , maybe turn on texture and maybe pick some texture that looks like a canvas surface, set it to subtract mode and check 'texture each tip. on and u will find that it does a nice little ' TRICK' ,so to speak, of blending between the two colors.

Hecartha

03-02-2009, 08:02 AM

Another program (university concept) called IMPaSTo (http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/impasto/) with a true grain/oil interaction
see their video (http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/impasto/impasto_mp4.avi) (31MB)

But again, nothing we can try

About perspective, the best tools I have ever tried are inside the latest Manga Studio EX 4 (http://my.smithmicro.com/win/mangaex/index.html) allowing brush strokes constrained to perspective system (1 point, 2 points or 3 points) and there are also symmetry rulers, radial line rulers and concentric circle rulers. No need to see any grid, every brush strokes you start are constrained to the selected ruler (same concept when you start a brush stroke with shift key pressed)....smart system far better than the next Sketchbook pro that just try to emulate traditional tools. But it is a comic book program and not a painting program.....

03-02-2009, 09:48 AM

Regarding Blending Brushes in Photoshop: There is a way to create such a brush. The technique is described in Don Seegmiller's "Digital Character Design and Painting: The Photoshop CS Edition". It just needs some simple steps to set up:

- create a small image, something like 50x50, leave or make it completely white
- select all and save as pattern
- create a new image and paint in the edges you want to blend
- take the healing brush and set it to pattern(instead of sampled)
- paint along the edges to blend

http://www.optisch-edel.de/junk/psblend.jpg

Check it out and see if you like it. Obviously this is still far from painters capabilities, just thought it should be mentioned.

pixel_streamer

03-02-2009, 10:13 AM

I've been using painter since version 3.5 (on a PC the whole time) and I've rattled along with some fun additions like the mosaic (only used it professionally twice), the water tools, again for only a couple of my projects. While fun features like that may spark an initial sale, and are fun to play with, those features won't be keeping people with the software.

Fast, efficient and solid programs keep people returning. Even programs that aren't as full-featured as everyone wants. I've dealt with problems like banding and others IE: rngs around the airbrush at low opacity, banding, which was thought to have been squashed with a checkbox "fix" in painter ~5 or so— something like 1998. To name a couple. Those problems (or the code that caused them) have been there so long, they are probably a ghost in the machine by now.

I've really enjoyed buying multiple versions of this software. Even seeing its growth. And over the years I have contributed in part to, or worked with, over $3200 worth of Painter. But I feel like I was more productive in version 5 than in my current version of X.

Also, I've brought at least 3 people over to the Painter side of the fence (before v6), because of the ease-of-use, and the program's flow. (I LOVE PAGE ROTATION, and I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned earlier.) Features like page rotation are unmatchable with PS, and that alone brought a couple of people to Painter.

After reading what's posted here, though, I'm sorely disappointed. I'm starting to see a Lightwave phenom here. (Those working with 3d, you know. Luxology picked up a lot of steam after LW dropped it's ball.)

I haven't used Painter in over a month, since X.1.1.1.1..1.1.1.. crashed the last time I used it.

Fed up with dealing with it and waiting for problems to be repaired, I was hoping for an upgrade that solved the crashes I had been having. But it doesn't look like spending more time or money with the software would yield any better results.

I've taken more than my due time filling out surveys and things for Painter, and all that, too. I will no longer recommend the software to anyone since I have lost so much time with it.

However, I may continue to do some work in it, since I can use the brush and eraser without a problem. But I'm fast seeing other solutions for that too. I just Love the feel of the media in painter. I work in the inking tools a lot, with custom brushes. The other guys just don't match it.

Whatever. More than enough people have hated on Painter. What happened to the things that I thought would take off with Painter?

The vector tools got no help in versions 6 through 10. WT---h? Fractal Design had Expressions. That program had transparency with vectors before Illustrator did, but couldn't export it's files correctly to Illustrator format. It was great other than that. (It was bought by the big MS. See Silverlight, and Expression Studio, maybe)

I was hoping that flavor of vector technology would still be behind Painter (just take a look at an exported script; those numbers translate almost directly into vector code.) I was hoping that since Corel with Corel Draw as a base could breathe some life into the vector portion of Painter, maybe a combo is coming? Maybe one that provides the photoshop/illustrator mash-up that everybody wants?

Finally, I want to preview my .rif files outside of Painter.

Where's that plug-in, so I can organize my old files?

Lunatique

03-02-2009, 10:57 AM

No fair, your a very "smooth as baby's butt" style painter -- hiding your tracks well in PS or P.:)

Not really--I paint in both styles. Take a look at the close-up crops of these:
http://lunatique.cgsociety.org/gallery/186343/
http://lunatique.cgsociety.org/gallery/124550/

But obviously, those are Painter brushwork. :D Photoshop brushes tend to leave a more digital mark behind, as you are essentially painting with a "stamp." You'd have to try and conceal the repetitive nature of the stamp in Photoshop.

BaronImpossible

03-02-2009, 12:31 PM

Another program (university concept) called IMPaSTo (http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/impasto/) with a true grain/oil interaction
see their video (http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/impasto/impasto_mp4.avi) (31MB)

That's a pretty good brush engine, almost impossible to tell it's not the real thing.

Will be interesting to see what Adobe comes up with. I'll stick with Painter as long as I can because despite recent disappointments it's still superb software and it's still the only viable painting package on the market IMO.

I know people do create amazing artworks in PS - Robert Chang included - but to me the method is too contrived. Essentially PS is not designed for natural media painting and the thought of changing my workflow to cater for that is daunting. I almost never use a separate brush for blending, instead I use pressure settings on a normal oil brush. Also blending in PS using a Blend or Smear tool is very, very different to blending simulated natural media.

Taking it to the extreme, given time I could replicate any of my paintings exactly using Microsoft Paint on Windows 98. The fact that you "can" get a Painterly effect in PS would - for me - be at the expense of artistic method, turning the process into a drudgery of work-arounds to compensate for the software's shortcomings.

I will certainly be using Painter for the forseeable future, and also supporting Corel in their development of Painter, but it's still nice to be aware of the options if all else should fail.

Fes

03-02-2009, 03:32 PM

I will certainly be using Painter for the forseeable future, and also supporting Corel in their development of Painter, but it's still nice to be aware of the options if all else should fail.

I feel the same. Hugely disappointed in the bugs and new (faulty) tools in Painter 11, but I shall be still using Painter X as it suits my painting style more the PS.... tho PS has to be part of my workflow to make up for Painters shortcomings.

I live in hope the if Corel do not get their act together, someone else will be trying to develop something along similar lines.

Lunatique

03-02-2009, 03:57 PM

I know people do create amazing artworks in PS - Robert Chang included - but to me the method is too contrived. Essentially PS is not designed for natural media painting and the thought of changing my workflow to cater for that is daunting. I almost never use a separate brush for blending, instead I use pressure settings on a normal oil brush. Also blending in PS using a Blend or Smear tool is very, very different to blending simulated natural media.

Believe it or not, I rarely use the Smudge tool in PS. I just blend by controlling the pen pressure/opacity of the brush. In fact I probably use a blending brush a lot more in Painter. :)

PainterPM

03-03-2009, 07:48 PM

If memory serves me (it’s here somewhere), I personally was “shot down” and told to shut up (basically) after Rob MacDonald announced that a new version of Painter was coming, and Quote, “...we’re working on some great stuff”. I held my end of the deal... stopped posting... and was patient. So now may I please post, “SHOW ME THE GREAT STUFF ROB!” A polygon lasso tool, re-sizable palettes, color sliders, and Color management done right... is NOT DOING IT FOR ME, and dare I say, definitely does NOT qualify as “great”’ in this day and age.

Hi Doc,
Good to hear from you again. I have to say that if you took my reply to you as a shut up or an opp for me to shoot you down I ask that you accept my apologies. That certainly was not my intent. It was indeed to let you know that I indeed was looking forward to some very cool stuff in 11. I am sure I wouldn't win anyone over if I start tearing into our community, wouldn't be a wise move on my part.
There is some great stuff for all of our customers in this version I AM VERY proud of this version. Now I see that you don't agree and I respect that. And we do have some of your requests on the table for development. We can't get everything in one release unfortunately.
We did get multicore support with our transformations into this version and the transformations are also all new. The new media control has also been very well received with in the community and we are very proud of them since they add to the power of our brush engine. We also rebuilt the color management to fit with your workflow. Our color management was fine on it's own in X but wasn’t great when transitioning to other programs. Many of you wanted that changed and we changed it. Are their other things we need to address? By the look of your thread.... yes. Will we? We are working on 12 now getting features spec written and we have many of our customer’s requests on the list.
I know 11 is a great version and there is a lot of stuff in here for our customers to take advantage of. And the feedback we have been getting is reflecting that.
Jinny obviously loves Painter and I thank her for her support.

Cheers,

rob

joeparis

03-03-2009, 08:24 PM

I know 11 is a great version and there is a lot of stuff in here for our customers to take advantage of. And the feedback we have been getting is reflecting that.

Rob,

I'm happy to see you are looking at some posts here. Re: feedback - Personally, from the evidence coming from four busy forums, I see mainly worries about bugs.

Missing strokes and stray dabs are the most serious, as far as I'm concerned. It makes it impossible to paint! Free transform crops outside the canvas. I have bought the upgrade but I'm wondering if it was a mistake.

Tim3308

03-03-2009, 08:28 PM

Hi Rob,

I will assume you have read the other reports here (Simon and I are experiencing virtually the same problems and he did much more testing on other machines -- me, I've got be painting on deadlines and can't spend the time right now that Simon was able to squeeze in).

Steve Sz. has been in communication w/ me, and posts coming in show I am not alone. Something is seriously wrong -- I can not use P11. Painter X.1 is running so much faster and smoother. Even resizing a document window is painful in P11,(choppy and slow), not to mention the brush experience that make us say "No way we can use this, like it is". It's too painful.

I've never had this amount of problems using the next version up (I came to painter in version 7) and have embraced the upgrades. So, I hope there are answers soon, regardless of all the user wish lists for this version, that didn't make it in (some a real surprise, some not) and 12? This is serious stuff for Corel and not nit picking in the slightest (as in all the "how's painting in Photoshop" talk it has spurred in several threads, since P11 hit -- that's not good).

Mac OS 10.5.6 Mac Pro 2 x 3 Ghz, 10GB RAM, 100 GB scratch disk, separate drives for OS (500 GB) and User (700 GB), 2 Intuos 3 tablets

Thanks, T

BaronImpossible

03-03-2009, 09:20 PM

I know 11 is a great version and there is a lot of stuff in here for our customers to take advantage of. And the feedback we have been getting is reflecting that.

I'm sorry, Rob, but that sounds like you're dodging the issue and focusing on the subjective point about whether the new features are great or not. You have had many people, me included, feeding back that the package is actually not fit for purpose as a result of several show-stopper bugs. This isn't a question of new features (and yes, hard media is excellent, proper colour management is welcome) it's about the software actually working. Random paint dabs. Random horizontal brush strokes. Cut and Paste not working at all. Cropped selections for those fortunate enough to have Copy and Paste. Degraded file performance. Crashes when using rules. Degraded brush performance. Jitters when line painting.

And even when these are fixed we are still left with the more minor issues that we have highlighted, in some cases consistently for several years, yet have not been implemented. Miniscule preview windows meaning they are useless. Bugs when resizing windows. Disappearing toolbars. Brush reset icon identical to brush select (how long does it take to change a 16x16 icon?). Non-retention of mixer preferences. Non-retention of colour set preferences. Very anti-intuitive brush, icon and library managment, etc.

I never expected P11 to be perfect. Every product has bugs and not every suggestion can be acted upon. But over time I've spent a lot of time making suggestions, analysing bugs, trying work-arounds, all whilst promoting and recommending Painter to other people, and now not only do I find these issues have not been fixed / incorporated in P11 but the software itself has other bugs that make it unusable.

Assuming the serious bugs are going to be quickly fixed then make no mistake, P11 as a package will be a seriously good piece of software and far superior to anything else on the market. The brush algorithms it uses are amazing, the new hard media is excellent and I will recommend P11 to anybody who does not have Painter X and who is interested in digital painting. And of course I will continue to use Painter (X) myself (and yes, it's a pity all this good stuff has been overshadowed by completely avoidable problems)

However, what I won't be doing is spending any more of my time making suggestions and reporting on bugs because that input is clearly neither wanted nor acknowledged. My (our) efforts to impress upon Corel the seriousness of the issues we've found has resulted in a single response; that being Corel appear very happy about the situation and may well fix some of the problems we've been reporting for three years in 2011 or thereabouts.

aadams

03-04-2009, 01:56 AM

one thing I was hoping for was better perspective tools...I am glad about the new brushes, but there are things that were missing...that didnt *seem* to be too hard to implement....

ellipses for the perspective tool...

perspective grid tool and divine proportion/thirds tools baked into a layer...

quick arcs and calligraphic strokes versus freehand and straight lines( ala studiotools paint section)

open gl support?

but hey...I guess the team is doing the best they can with what they have...so

CONGRATULATIONS

thanks for the hard media tool...

PainterPM

03-04-2009, 02:16 AM

PainterPM

03-04-2009, 02:35 AM

I'm sorry, Rob, but that sounds like you're dodging the issue and focusing on the subjective point about whether the new features are great or not. You have had many people, me included, feeding back that the package is actually not fit for purpose as a result of several show-stopper bugs. This isn't a question of new features (and yes, hard media is excellent, proper colour management is welcome) it's about the software actually working. Random paint dabs. Random horizontal brush strokes. Cut and Paste not working at all. Cropped selections for those fortunate enough to have Copy and Paste. Degraded file performance. Crashes when using rules. Degraded brush performance. Jitters when line painting.

And even when these are fixed we are still left with the more minor issues that we have highlighted, in some cases consistently for several years, yet have not been implemented. Miniscule preview windows meaning they are useless. Bugs when resizing windows. Disappearing toolbars. Brush reset icon identical to brush select (how long does it take to change a 16x16 icon?). Non-retention of mixer preferences. Non-retention of colour set preferences. Very anti-intuitive brush, icon and library managment, etc.

I never expected P11 to be perfect. Every product has bugs and not every suggestion can be acted upon. But over time I've spent a lot of time making suggestions, analysing bugs, trying work-arounds, all whilst promoting and recommending Painter to other people, and now not only do I find these issues have not been fixed / incorporated in P11 but the software itself has other bugs that make it unusable.

Assuming the serious bugs are going to be quickly fixed then make no mistake, P11 as a package will be a seriously good piece of software and far superior to anything else on the market. The brush algorithms it uses are amazing, the new hard media is excellent and I will recommend P11 to anybody who does not have Painter X and who is interested in digital painting. And of course I will continue to use Painter (X) myself (and yes, it's a pity all this good stuff has been overshadowed by completely avoidable problems)

However, what I won't be doing is spending any more of my time making suggestions and reporting on bugs because that input is clearly neither wanted nor acknowledged. My (our) efforts to impress upon Corel the seriousness of the issues we've found has resulted in a single response; that being Corel appear very happy about the situation and may well fix some of the problems we've been reporting for three years in 2011 or thereabouts.

Hi BaronImpossible,

As I wrote to Tim, I do see what you are pointing out, and i thank you for the kind words at the end. I really don't want you to feel that your input is neither wanted nor acknowledged. We are very happy about the release of 11 and what we were able to accomplish with this version. However what you pointed are all valid points. Please take my word that we will look at these.

Rob

workbench

03-04-2009, 02:56 AM

Surely one of the beta testers must have experienced the common bugs we're all experiencing like UI lag and the Intuos 3 problems. And the interface design in general? People been hating it since Painter 8 and it's still the same visual mess after all these years. The curious thing is that Painter 6 had a much better interface, even to the details, if we added the Dry watercolor command to the custom palette the button will gray out when we Dry the canvas, if we paint again with an watercolor brush it will became active, small details like tell me "the devs really put attention and effort into this", when I try Painter 11, I like everything minus the UI, plus the ultra slowness of it.

I can't complain much since you guys actually took my suggestion for once and made the zoom traveling optimal again, still when I open an image it's not at an optimal level like 50% or 100% but the usual Corelness 27,98%, 35,89%...

Dukal

03-04-2009, 03:28 AM

Thanks Uber, downloaded (though was not easy w/ his weird links) it and installed it, played a few minutes w/ them. Good stuff, and very nice resource (Lord knows PS casts a much wider net on the web than Painter) but they seem like varied chalks in painter w/85% less user "controlled". Is that fair?

First at all thanks for the link to my blog!
That was the first of my "Artistic Brushes" packs, you also could try the second one:
http://pelicanosypescados.blogspot.com/2008/12/artistic-brushes-pack-2-free.html
and here's a video showing how each brush work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR5l1ne85Ac
Obviously Photoshop isn't Painter, but after work sometime in Painter 11 I've decided to put my hands again in Photoshop (that was around two years ago when bought a Wacom Tablet) creating this brushes and actually I love to paint in PS!

What is wrong for me with PS:

as BaronImpossible suggested Adobe is targeting PS mostly for designers and photographers than illustrators, the improvements to the brushes engine are minimal! (I really don't like the behaviour of the brushes in CS4 so Im still working with CS3), as lunatique said I also would like to have in PS a color picker wheel like in Painter and a more useful way to select between brushes constantly (again Painter is a good example).

About blending in PS: I use a lot the eyedropper tool (Alt) to pick a tone between two colours like I showed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwH97ArKYds

Cheers!

ThePixelDoc

03-04-2009, 08:45 AM

First off, a big Thank You goes out to The Baron, Tim, Joe and the others for “backing me up” and replying first to you Rob. Unfortunate, but I can’t so eloquently or kindly reply to my disappointment regarding your post.

Oh yeah... Hi Rob... which will be the nicest thing I have to write to ya today. Here goes.

May I kindly, but loudly ask in a seriously irritated, football-coach bark, “ WHAT THE F*** DO YOU DO ALL DAY?! What exactly does your job/position entail? You come onto a board where we all have some pretty serious complaints and bugs to report regarding your “UPGRADE” P11, and then you say you have to touch base with Steve-O about “Tim’s problems... but be assured you are in good hands”. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! There are at the moment, 4 major pro-artist forums recounting a laundry-list of problems, and you are “VERY HAPPY and PROUD of P11”?! And you agree it is an UPGRADE class software?!

I visibly shrink if a client points out (and I inwardly agree) that a shadow isn’t dark enough in a presentation. Especially since I have a trusted team of 4 people, physically separated (km’s apart) but working in unison, and no one caught it... me included and ultimately responsible for it in the end. But YOU’RE PROUD, and don’t even know about half of the problems circulating on the forums... and must “touch base with Steve” first? Have you READ all of the posts yet at the different forums? I surmise: NOT! When ya get the chance, will you still be PROUD?!

I have shown patience ... I have shown tolerance for your and for Corel’s needs: like vacations; replying to posts with PR-ghost writer text; like always falling back on Jinny and her unrelenting desire to make Painter work for all of us and finding a work-around (BTW: did ya know even SHE is experiencing some evil bugs?).... but at some point, I lose it.

So now you want us to WAIT until Painter 12? You wait, don’t tell me: your surely working on some GREAT stuff for that. In the mean time, considering the BUGS...may I ask for the poor souls that will purchase this version 11 (I won’t be!), a timetable for bug-fixes?

PROUD!.... UN - F____ING - BELIEVABLE!

PS: You sure can be glad that you are physically separated from me, because I would damn well give you a 3 month case of Tinnitus in person! :twisted:

Lunatique

03-04-2009, 09:37 AM

TRick

03-04-2009, 10:31 AM

...We are working on 12 now getting features spec written and we have many of our customer’s requests on the list...

Can the "use grid" option for the image hose from P7 make it back into P12 ? It can not be that complicated that I have to wait 5 full upgrades for that !!! I use applications that are far more complex and have far more users and still they listen to a single user and integrate wishes into the NEXT possible upgrade...

Why is processor use at 100% (WinXP 32) after I dried all ink and do nothing, even when I drew one single stroke ? Is this some sort of "intelligent" caching ? The only app I know does this is Autodesk Motionbuilder because it relies heavy on the realtime interaction between processor and graphics unit. But for a 2D painting app ??????

Jinbrown

03-04-2009, 02:43 PM

ThePixelDoc - I understand you're frustrated. We all have those moments. But maybe it's best to turn it down a notch. Also keep in mind that employees of Corel are supposed to defend their products and make the best out of their marketing and PR efforts by reassuring the user base and diffuse signs of rising malcontent--that's their job. Also keep in mind that even within a company, people often disagree, but can't publicly air their dirty laundry. We don't know the inside story of how decisions are made at Corel, who's calling the shots, or if people are being asked to work on features they disagree with, or being stopped from wasting time fixing bugs that are deemed as not important. We can't just go screaming at every Corel employee we come across. Most of the time people who get screamed at are the innocent ones just doing their job.

Thank you, Lunatique, for finally saying this!

As to ThePixelDoc and his ungracious (understatement) comments made to both Rob and me directly, and indirectly to the Corel Painter development team:

He obviously needed you to explain to him that people working in corporations can't be as open about things they know as we'd sometimes wish they could be.

In addition, and this is directly to ThePixelDoc:

The following is not said in defense of anyone, including myself. It's only said in hopes of clarifying a few things.

You're way off base responding to my post in which I provided info on where people can post Painter 11 related threads at The PainterFactory. First, my post was to David Gell in response to his in which he provided the link to only one forum for Painter 11 problems and bug reports. It was perfectly appropriate to let David (and anyone else who might be interested) know about the other Painter 11 related forum that had just been added at The PainterFactory.

After working as a professional illustrator and technical writer over a span of nearly 28 years, since retiring in 1998, my time has been spent (full time and much more) supporting Painter users and supporting Painter the software.

I do not cheerlead for Corel nor to I come to the rescue of Corel, though sometimes I'll help to straighten out misconceptions as Lunitique has done in his post quoted above.

I am not a Corel employee and have only done contract work for Corel when I wrote a tutorial published in November 2006 The Painter Canvas newsletter, again when I wrote a tutorial published in the January 2007 issue of The Painter Canvas newsletter, and since July 2007 when I began moderating The PainterFactory forums.

I have shown patience ... I have shown tolerance for your and for Corel’s needs: like vacations; replying to posts with PR-ghost writer text; like always falling back on Jinny and her unrelenting desire to make Painter work for all of us and finding a work-around (BTW: did ya know even SHE is experiencing some evil bugs?).... but at some point, I lose it.

Please don't use me as a weapon when attacking another person. Please don't misconstrue what I do and why I do it.

Of course I experience problems and bugs that other users experience in Painter, always have, and always will since I'm a user too. As with all of us, our experience with Painter bugs varies as we work with different systems, platforms, OS versions, and the kind of work we do varies as well.

If you read all of my posts in all of the forums I visit daily and post to regularly, you'll see that I've never been hesitant to talk about problems I experience and bugs I find when using Painter. I'm no less frustrated than any other Painter user when this happens.

It's not fun, and having worked to deadlines for nearly 28 years, I know exactly how it feels to have problems using the tools one needs to get the job done on time.

It's not fun even if all we're doing is playing with Painter on our own time.

"Even SHE" is a ridiculous phrase when used as you did in the quote above. There's nothing special about Jinny except I happen to love Painter, always have since Painter 4 was first installed on my computer one night in 1995, have used every Painter version since then (all of which are currently installed on my computer) and have used Painter nearly every day of the year for the past 14 years. I thoroughly enjoy helpng other Painter users learn the program, have fun with it, produce work with it, and I do my best to help find workarounds so they won't be stuck, unable to use the program until the problem is fixed by Corel.

Why should I wait to share a workaround when there's one to share? If someone doesn't want to use it, that's up to them to decide.

I'm one of many who have worked on one or more Corel Painter version Beta teams, and am, as the rest are, bound by the NDA we had to sign not to discuss anything that we learned during the Beta testing period. This, I believe, is standard for Beta testing in other companies as well.

No one's trying to fool you, ThePixelDoc, or cheat you, or lie to you.

It would be nice if you could find a way to cool it and when you want to communicate with any of us, just keep basic respect for other human beings in mind.

On that note, I'll try to do the same, and wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Jinny Brown

#

aadams

03-05-2009, 01:33 AM

it was a funny post though(to read)

but mom said never snicker at another's expense...

...but seriously corel thanks for painter...I love it...its just a tool that *needs* photoshop in many situations...and sometimes the workflow....is well a bit clunky dunky...

but I love it.

and I look forward to every release...

and I am really excited and hopeful when I try it at home that the hard media gives me

chartpak markers on waxy paper...like abstract buildup of chemicals *other* that watercolor.

as per the other stuff...

if painter cant do what I want then I use the tool that can.

@ corel team

easy does it...you can get snarfed by adobe or autodesk in this recession...

at least give us a head's up about the upcoming releases...or a to do list....or a priority list

keep our mouth's watering....that what sidefx and next limit and pixologic do...

all the best and thank you so much for a wonderful tool(I just got a wacom intuos)

ubermensch76

03-05-2009, 08:29 AM

Did somebody try the transform tool on large files ? It uses up all the eight cores on my system for a 18" x 9" @ 300dpi images with only two layers and is painfully slow like I am running it on a pentium celeron single processor. Lags for about 3-5 seconds before catching up and all the while my processor is running at 100%

The same image in photoshop, using the transform tool, shows using only one core @ 50% max and does the job in realtime.

What gives ? AFAIK this is the only tool in the current painter that is multi threaded and me thinks that if not for the multicore aspect, it would totally unusable.

BaronImpossible

03-05-2009, 09:59 AM

if painter cant do what I want then I use the tool that can

I'm the same. I know some other people want to be able to complete all their work in Painter, and that's fair enough, but I don't see this as something I need, or that's desirable. If I need more advanced image processing that isn't available in Painter I see no problem in going to another app. I would much prefer, as I've said before, that the core functions are developed as a priority and made as slick and as bulletproof as possible.

I would see it as prefererable if Corel went this way and pushed PSP X2 at people who wanted more advanced processing features, possibly offering it half price to all users of the current Painter version and including features to integrate them (e.g. a toggle option in each to save & switch your current image between the two rather than having to save, close, switch app, open, save, close...) People who want magic filters could then use X2 instead of a natural media tool (sorry, couldn't resist)

planetaaron

03-16-2009, 03:58 AM

The best and simplest way to put the frustration that everyone is feeling over this new version is:

We want painter to be a great program, and we do not want to have to resort to using some other software (such as photoshop), but it's getting to the point where we are almost left with no other choice.

If that doesn't hit home with Corel, honestly nothing will.

Bugs like skipping strokes, inexplicable CPU utilization, apparent incompatibility with Wacom products, etc. are not minor issues. These are things that should have kept the software from shipping until they were fixed. Nevermind that when I look at the list of new features in the latest version, it looks way more like a point release and rather than the next major version. Quite frankly, considering the small market share that Painter holds in comparison to Photoshop, one would think that Corel would be doing everything in their power to listen to their user community and not introduce more problems than they solve with each release.

And to be clear, I'm not talking about bells & whistles, I'm talking about core functionality of the painting engine. If I want to drop shadow-warp-distort my image, I'll gladly open another program to do it no problem. If I paint a stroke in Painter, however, it better show up on the canvas in the right place. Otherwise what's the point?

My brand new MacPro is arriving the day after tomorrow. I was looking forward to giving Painter 11 a spin on it, but all things considered, I'll stick with X.

Miguimau

03-17-2009, 11:48 AM

Well...
I´m quite a passionate Painter user, a (hate the term but it´s what fits) a pro and a Mac user. Therefore I share many of the technical criticism, as I did before Painter 11 came out.
I share the criticism against the GUI (wth, Painter 11 dark grey menus are even worse), new transforming and certain selection tool are still weird, transparency is not great, etc etc . I don´t want, again , Painter to be a PS bad copycat, I don´t want Painter to be a cloning photographs tool.
But honestly, Painter 11 is a good version- they just will have to listen to the abundant testers and users reports and fix the bugs- and the new features are good. I could stay using Painter X, in fact I´m still using Painter 7 as well, but I like the new features. Painter is still alive and they improved stuff. It´s more than I have been waiting for...
Perhaps we have a Painter X.3/4 and as a Mac user would have prefered to wait for a year and have a Snowleopard compliant cocoa, full multicpu and 64 bits version. But I doubdt Corel could do that...comercially speaking.
I know that the ¿small? Corel Painter team has worked hard on this release and despite the fact that I´m dissapointed for certain areas, things are not the black and white panorama suggested. We got the freaking PNG, resizable palettes, good new brushes (and not just o couple of them) new color management, etc
We can discuss it, we can decide to buy P11 or not, we can write in capitals but PixelDoc, you are being pretty unfair regarding to the individuals.
I have successfully applied for the Beta Testing using exclusively Firefox and Safari on a Mac running Tiger, BTW. (It was buggy on the beginnning but was not that big deal)
And your remarks bashing Jinny are u-n-f-a-i-r . I haven´t only seen here helping people with accurate, kind advices for years. I have read her tons of objective, detailed beta recent reports , and her sometimes edgy posts in the beta forums. The cheerleader stuff you throw is not only unpolite. Is deeply unfair.

I will try to make their lifes harder B) with bug reports, repeating requests to the boredom and making all the criticism I consider needed, but I want these guys keeping Painter alive- but not in a zombie state ;)) so I will buy the thing as well. I will grunt. But I´m buying it. I will understand if others decide to step away... but personal attacks won´t help, believe me.

The developing and testing team have worked very well, that is for sure.
Of course, we DO need a couple of service packs and Painter 12 will finally have to be that blast we are waiting for. :wise:

PainterPM

03-17-2009, 08:10 PM

Hi Everyone,

I am having a hard time keeping up with all of the feedback. The Wacom support and stuff has me a little worried because we didn't see anything until in got in your hands... we are looking into that as i write this. At this point we are unsure where it is coming from, it is across different OS' and not consistent by any means. We are working on it.
I am however glad to see you are putting us through the paces. I know I haven't posted in a bit but I am reading.... Thank you for the feedback. I will keep you posted on any new developments.

Cheers,

Rob

Miguimau

03-17-2009, 09:06 PM

Almost 4000 views only this thread... your news will be welcomed, n doubdt.
Thank you, Rob.

tomt

03-20-2009, 02:05 AM

I posted the below on the Painter canvas and a couple of other Painter related websites.

I bit the bullet and decided to get the registered Painter 11. I couldn't find a place to put the Serial number, (Senior moment, or should I have waited for the trial to end?) so what the hell, I removed the trial and re-downloaded and installed it from the Corel website. No problems, put in the serial number and all is right in the world........but, I noticed one thing in the installation process that I never noticed before. There is a choice now to enable Auto up-dates. As my kids would say,"Awesome!".

Photoshop has been doing this for at least two incarnations or more and it works very well there. I hope to see it work just as well here. There have been many bugs reported and maybe we'll get to see them fixed transparently. Any comments Corel Team? Love to hear back on this one.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/images/ca_misc/progress.gif

PainterPM

03-26-2009, 07:28 PM

dvillus

03-26-2009, 07:40 PM

We do have an Auto Update introduced in this version. When a patch comes out is will download in the background.

Rob

So you do have a patch coming out :)

Brucie Rosch

03-28-2009, 07:15 PM

I haven't upgraded Painter for a couple cycles, and I suppose I'll continue to wait, given the problems I'm reading about in this thread. I had hoped that this would be a compelling upgrade, but it seems it's NOT offering great new features, nor much improvement of the core functionality (real world media in a digital tool set), nor reliability improvements and bug fixes.

Too bad. I earn my living as a professional illustrator. I rely on my older Painter in my illustration career. I've learned to get by with what it does and doesn't do, and use Photoshop to plug the holes and be sure about my color spaces. Photoshop and Adobe in general gets it right as far as their commitment to professionals is concerned. They know their mission and stick to it.

I've been wanting to experience the so-called new brushes, but without better basic quality control and attention to the needs of professionals, I'll go on with my old, lame Painter, more or less because "it ain't broke." I can't afford to have my tools simply not work for me. At least I now know enough NOT to trust Corel's glowing marketing speak about all the improvements.

I've been hoping for (I guess) 6 or 7 years now, that Painter would go on improving. I'm guessing that what someone said in an earlier post is true: the basic code is probably a twisted, balled up nightmare, and Corel won't be able to do much of significance with Painter without a foundation-up rehaul. Since they demonstrably aren't committed to professionals, I doubt this will happen, and I also fear that one day the older version that I CAN rely on, will no longer install on new hardware and system software.

edit: I'd also rather spend my money on the new Wacom Intuos 4, which sounds like a truly substantial upgrade. The reviews make it clear that Wacom is not blowing smoke about the new features. Corel might learn from Wacom and Adobe about how to take care of its users. If they do it right, they'll get my money and my thanks. If not, forget it.

Fahrija

04-01-2009, 06:52 PM

I didn´t upgrade since version 7 cause this version contains the established GUI of Meta Creation (if I´m not right about that, please correct me). It was aimed to be a "painting-tool". And it looked like a self-contained program which clearly showed that it was heading towards that intention.

John Derry joined this board a while ago and I was very curious to know why corel turned painter into a GUI clone of photoshop. John answerd by saying they have got a lot of feedback from OEM users who bought a wacom and wished the software would look like the well-known photoshop. It definetely does confirm that there is a big group of mainstream users whose vote counts more than those votes of specialized people. Beside that to me there was a confirmation of what seemed obviously. A software company buys a software without having an own vision in which way to develop it. And without having the confidence to push the individual "painting-tool"-intention forward they ran after the well known GUI of Photoshop. Maybe it even was the intention to buy a "vehicle" that could be turned in to a PS clone just to get some more money within the splipstream of adobe. Anyway, it just looked like everything was solely driven by marketing. Well! Within that context: what kind of quality in terms of detail (bug-fixes) do you expect from a company operating like that? It´s likely impossible to get any kind of closed achievement if there is no individual strategy.

I saw myself watching how tremendously lively looking artworks could be produced by artists like niclas bouvier, noximad, marc goerner and the great Olijosman just using PS. So, why bothering using a half-baked PS clone instead. I switched the tool. I agree with others here. The transition does not come over night - nonetheless it works. But I am not the "blend guy". So I hadn´t that much trouble. I now do almost everything in PS even if i missed the canvas rotation long time. But for sure I would have bought a cintiq to get rid of that problem instead of investing money in a conceptless product. I still like the glow brush or the old airbrush for doing some parts here and there but that doesn´t put me in the need of buying any of the corel versions. I keep track of artrage from time to time and I would give it rather a go than using Corels Painter X"whatever"

Miguimau

04-01-2009, 07:51 PM

I didn´t upgrade since version 7 cause this version contains the established GUI of Meta Creation (if I´m not right about that, please correct me).
You are right. I prefer that GUI, too.
Painter´s evolution to a PS wannabe = very bad. That´s true.

PerryDS

04-02-2009, 09:09 PM

I was all excited about the potential of a new version, but after viewing all the negative feedback, especially technical bugs, I will stay away from upgrading. I did pick up X, and it's ok ... but very much prefer the direction metacreations was going in. I feel Painter has to evolve into itself and not try to be a second best app to photoshop. It's suffering from a severe identity crisis.

Miguimau

04-03-2009, 01:07 PM

Give Painter 11 a try, anyway. :) You have the demo.

Quadart

04-03-2009, 01:43 PM

Very informative thread.
I have version 8 and have abandoned using it long ago, due to slow oil brush speeds and versatility compared to PS. I was really disgusted with Painter 10 after trying the demo only to find that the oil brushes were just as slow as they were in version 8 (on my previous comp). I can’t compromise with a painting app that can’t keep up with me.

On the flip side, I’m giving the p11 demo a spin and like the speed improvements (not ideal) with the oil brushes compared to version 8. Though PS has a broad range of brush creation potential for signature digital marking effects (not natural media), it has nothing comparable to Painter’s oil brushes or blending capability in general. As mentioned, a lot of what Painter can achieve can be achieved in PS, though much more painstakingly. I will probably use P11 mostly for figurative sketching and speedpaints (mainly figurative and natural landscape), and using it where convenient in illustration work.
I think PS is great for hard-edged techy sci-fi oriented concept art and speedpaints.

I have noticed a few bugs in the short time I’ve played with P11, such as brush ghost artifacts, periodically not being able to access the prefs pane, and sliders intermittently not working via the Intuos3 pen. I haven’t noticed any stray brushing yet, or crashing. This certainly does not build confidence in the software. I hope these issues are slated to be patched soon.

As far as PS painting goes, I’m sure many of you have seen this:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=137&t=735471

I assume the work shown on his site is all PS, but can’t be sure (check out Concept Art):

http://www.seunghohenrik.com/

Lunatique

04-03-2009, 06:36 PM

Yeah, Henrik is really good. He used to be a regular poster at Sijun, back in the day when Craig Mullins was still active there too. Guys who do that type of work with PS know how to use the various PS brushes to create a very organic look. PS brushes are essentially different shaped stamps, and if you realize that and learn how to get creative with using stamped shapes, you'll learn how to milk the most out of PS brushes. Painter brushes are much more varied and the wet-on-wet brushes are what sets Painter apart from PS for me. You cannot simulate that wet-on-wet look with PS no matter how hard you try. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe tackles the natural media simulation in the very near future, and when they do, it'll be very interesting to see Adobe's approach, and also Corel's reaction to it.

BlackARK

04-14-2009, 05:45 AM

Interesting thread, but I still can't see why Corel classified Painter with a next version while charging it's installed user base for what's obviously "something like a patch". I'm a daily Painter user, but after trying the demo, I'll wait until either Corel spends some serious time on the program or better yet, they get tired of being expected to get it right and just sell the tech to Adobe already so I can get it all in one box. Then again....it's only a matter of time for the latter whether Corel gives it up or not. Corel should think more of supporting and nurturing a loyalist base as to be ready when that time comes, especially when that's what we the customers are paying them to do. Don't get me wrong though, Painter X is sufficient for my needs at this time. I love it, but as new tech goes through the mill and becomes cheaper, procs contain 8 cores, it becomes common to plug in 8gb of 1ghz+ clock memory for less than $100, and software companies finally take a lesson from the garage/home office game programmer and take advantage of the GPU on last years video cards, I would definitely like my Painter program to load up and be able to more than "take full advantage of the latest Pentium 3 processor and 2gb of 266mhz RAM". Get my drift? I still can't believe they asked to get payed for Painter 11. I'm still a fan though, but sorry guys, I'm not swiping my Visa for this one LOL.....that is unless they are just trying to test us loyalists and you really do have a worthy patch lined up which is more of what we practically begged for over a year on the Painter factory board LIKE MY BORDERLESS, "MENU BAR-LESS" FULL SCREEN MODE I AND OTHERS ASKED FOR, set to release within the next 2-3 weeks. If they go a year without seriously addressing the repeated requests of their customers in a satisfactory manner (you can't please everybody, we understand, but you can't expect 90 people to pay for and be satisfied with what only 10 people wanted without hearing a bunch of mouth), I'll be convinced that Corel was a bad move for the original developers of Painter. Time to work nights and graveyard fellas, don't let Painter end up as a shrink-wrapped jewel case deal on clearance beside the cash register at Best Buy.

Charlie5

04-16-2009, 04:47 AM

I have been following this thread since it began, and totally agree with BlackARK. Everyone has been screaming at Corel to fix this damn version 11.

Come on Rob (Painter PM), how long before we the CUSTOMERS !!! get a patch???

I had no choice but to buy 11, as my new machine has the latest tech with 12gb ram blah blah blah. So my version X won't work on it. I am a professional illustrator and this version is an absolute joke! I use Photoshop more and more now that 11 is soooooooooo slow, though some things I need painter so I have to put up with all of the damn faults in it. HIHGLY FRUSTRATING!!
One of the biggest narks is that it takes about 12 or so attempts to open a document...keep getting "Can't open File" and then "disk space insufficient". I HAVE ENOUGH SPACE TO KEEP NASA IN BUSINESS !!!
As plenty of people on this thread have stated, I too love Painter, but this 11 is an absolute nightmare!
When oh when will we get a solution ! PLEASE!

Sparreholm

04-16-2009, 06:16 PM

My long awaited copy arrived today and I have only tried it for like 30 minutes but sorry, this release a joke. Instead of that WOW-feeling you expect when starting up a new version of a program you love this is like...how can Corel be so sloppy!

Bugs I have noticed so far (running on Vista 64 with plenty of processor speed and memory RAM and Disc):

- Color window: There is a scrollbar covering the color-wheel for some odd reason.
- When trying to set up my standard workspace, you know moving around the sub-palettes, the palettes disappear or become doubled.
- A few more that I will try to duplicate (and update here)
- I did check for updates but none is available at this time.

Now:
- Rob, tell us how us CG people can be constructive and help you.
- As many have written here before, we love Painter now prove Corel loves us back. Send us a major patch right away.

Regards,

Johan

Sparreholm

04-16-2009, 07:04 PM

Adding:

- The new Real Hard Brushes are really great.

Regards,

Johan

ubermensch76

04-16-2009, 08:34 PM

Adding:

- The new Real Hard Brushes are really great.

Regards,

Johan

Yes amidst all this negativity ( well justified I might add, whatever the plight of the developers, I don't blame them but do blame Corel ) this one just rocks ! Rocks !. The pencil hard media variant could do with a little more natural touch but the rest just , rock !

kraal

04-16-2009, 08:44 PM

i just finnished my first complete painter 11 illustration and have to just say this. I acheived what the program was created for.... sure its not perfect but i spent far less time trying to pick apart the software and just draw

Odonthe1st

04-16-2009, 10:45 PM

I think of working in painter more as having to use work-arounds then in Photoshop. I love lots of brushes in Painter but some don't work on transparent layers, some are too slow, some the opacity scaling is horrible, etc...In Ps you can create a brush on the fly and it works exactly like you planned, and you continue working. Then you can switch brushes and continue working at the same opacity, no need to mess with brush tracking, no worrying about color banding, no creating a new layer because you wanna experiment beyond 32 undos, no stopping and fighting with a transform or a 1 inch preview window. Ps CS4 had brush issues and they released a patch that fixed it even though they don't count artists as much of their market base. Ps still has issues for digital artists (tilt to size still doesn't work correctly as far as I know) but at least your workflow is consistent. You have to make concessions in Ps and do things like drop a texture image on top of your work at the end to make it look organic. That's not fun and I don't get a 'ooo that looks like real oils' feeling like you do when making a cool brush stroke in Painter but as a professional if it's faster, if it works consistently and without bugs and idiosyncrasies you use it. Painter slows me down too often for me to use it from start to finish. If I want that 'cool brushstroke' feeling I'll go use real media, I much prefer it. I work digitally because it's supposed to be more convenient and forgiving. If it gives me fits of frustration or forces me to slow down, change gears and takes me out of the creative process for more then a few seconds to change a brush then it's not a tool professionals are gonna want to use. Well, they'll use it until something better comes along.

I'm thinking Corel is dropping the ball on Painter and competition is springing up all over. I don't know if it's lack of staff or the brush engine is just incredibly complicated or what the problem is but it doesn't seem like progress is being made in the software as a whole. The link to the awesome watercolor sim here http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=474684 really makes me think Painter is falling behind. A piece of software this expensive needs to dominate the market like Ps does. It looks like Sketchbook Pro 2010 has the perspective and ellipse tools I've been wanting (and posted examples of on Painter Factory a year ago http://painterfactory.com/forums/t/259.aspx?PageIndex=4 ). I'm trying to download the trial now. I hope changes are being made at Corel to keep Painter alive, I don't want to hear "Autodesk buys Corel, discontinues Painter, Corel Draw...."

djs37

04-16-2009, 11:24 PM

I have been reading this thread, and others like it on this site and those such as CG Concept, with dismay. As an amateur/hobbyist, I've always found Painter to be fantastic. I started with v7 and then moved to v9. Tempted by the real brushes and hard media, I decided to go to v11 after playing with the demo.

I was very disappointed to read the negative comments and thought perhaps they were simply the rantings of a few frustrated professional artists who had one coffee too many.

I really want to love the new version but I'm beginning to side with its detractors.

It's eating my memory and I can hear my fan struggling when I run it.
When working on large images, large brushes crawl like never before.
When using the drag tool via a Wacom express-key, I get brush ghosts all over my image.
If I move my picture around in the work area, it seems to leap about, suggesting it's out of control. (That's after disabling all snapping options in Preferences).
It has crashed at least twice already, and it drove me mad when it did.
The new colour wheel is great but I want to see the colour sliders in HSV. Why does it keep defaulting back to RGB and I have to change it each time I run the program?
Painter is a charming program. I have always enjoyed reading material produced by its proponents such as John Derry & Jinny Brown and I have always found it a pleasure to use.

That pleasure is giving way to frustration and I have to echo the repeated calls on here. Please, Corel, please launch a thorough patch/update as soon as possible. I suspect that, until that time, there will be so many negative comments on boards like this that sales will suffer and threaten the future of the product. I certainly wouldn't recommend this version until it becomes stable (even though I think the real 2B pencil is great).

I have followed these boards for a while and have always been impressed when reps from companies like Corel (e.g. Tanya Staples & Rick Champagne) have taken the time to reassure the dedicated and loyal users. This has always been a nice touch and it's a shame that we haven't had any more detail lately. As someone who would like to be dedicated and loyal, but who feels it may be time to get to grips with other software, I hope such reassurance comes soon.

Dave