Starting

[noen]

yeah - i would recomend pencil and paper - it has huge advantages over all other softwares:

its free
its very durable and highly portable
its shock resistant!
platform independant: the only hardware you need is that wet stuff between your ears
easy and cost effective to learn
capable of any resolution you want and any size you need
capable of photo-realistic imagery or highly abstract work - you decide!
infinite levels of gray
add colored pencils and you can have infinte colors!

;)

[sand dragon]

Hi Red Moon,

Depending on the make of tablet you have, some ship with Painter Classic (a stripped down version of Painter, now at version 2), so check your tablet Cd's in case you already have a copy.

In all honesty, I cannot recommend Painter 8 (the latest version of Painter), unless you could pick a copy up really cheaply on eBay.

Painter Classic is available for both Mac and PC. If you are a Windows user, there are a couple of low-cost/free applications which could be ideal for what you want;

Open Canvas is available from here (http://www.geocities.com/dhlphenuse/oC_faq.html)
Dogwaffle is available from here (http://www.squirreldome.com/cyberop.htm)

David

[Cole]

Painter 7 totally rocks, however 8.... is another story. Try to find a copy of painter 7 somewhere and your completely set. 8 is ok... i guess, but has some really annoying "features"

[Trickster]

erm... could i ask something about this painter 7 options thing? what does resat and bleed do? it's really doesn't do anything!?

[Lunatique]

Read this: http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85888

I explained them in detail.

[Red Moon]

Thank you!

Your answers and links helped me very much.
I love using pencil and paper, but i want to have a try with an e-pencil.
I think i will have a try with painter 8.

Red Moon

[tayete]

I am feeling a "deja-vu" right now...

Every new release of a version pops the "the old version was better" up. Not only for Painter but for Photoshop, 3ds Max, etc...

When Painter 7 appeared some people claimed Corel had flawed it with the new watercolors engine, etc... Then the forums were filled with "get hold to Painter 6".

Now Painter 8 has been released is version 7 the good one...

I am really worried, as I think this is a really nice version of Painter (I like it much more than 7) but real gurus of Painter as Jin don't seem to like it so much. What version do you think was the best and wy? Do you think it is going backwards instead of forward?

[Lunatique]

Nah, no reason to go back to 7. 8 is just fine. It brings back the old Water Color that everyone loved so much in 6, has tons of new brushes, perspective grid, mixer..etc.

We only whine about 8 because they got rid of the Custom Palette and made the Brush Designer a seperate process. These annoyances certainly doesn't make 8 into a "bad" software--just makes you click a couple more mouse clicks to get to what you want, that's all.

[Jinbrown]

Hi,

While I do like a lot about Painter 8 and won't even attempt to say what version is "best" because that depends on the user, I have to disagree about Painter 8 being just fine.

It is full of bugs in the software and the Painter 8 User Guide is equally full of errors.

The perspective grid is not new in Painter 8. It was present in Painter 7.

We could always mix colors in any Painter version, either on the working image or on a blank Canvas used just for that purpose. We do not need the Painter 8 Mixer to mix colors. In addition, the brush used to mix colors in the Mixer is not available to use when painting on the image while mixing either on the working image or on a blank Canvas allows us to use brushes we would actually use in painting.

Several things that were extremely useful in earlier versions have been taken out of Painter 8:

Custom Palettes

Brush Controls palette (ready access to brush controls for on the fly setting adjustments)

Keyboard shortcut to initiate custom scripts is now used to initiate Edit > Preferences and there is not a keyboard short replacement for initiating custom scripts. In addition, this can't be done by programming an F key or Shift+F key combination.

The Browse button is not available when opening a file (in some OS versions, but it is in others).

The list of bugs continues to grow and it's very long even now.

As I've said before, I love Painter and don't intend to give up on it even if Corel did make some pretty awful choices when developing Painter 8. They know what we want and hopefully, though it doesn't appear we'll get a Painter 8 patch, Corel will bring back things we need and fix the bugs, or at least the most worrisome ones.

Painter has, for years, carried unfixed bugs from one version to the next. If Corel can manage to fix the most glaring ones, the ones that really cause us trouble, I think we'll all be extremely grateful.

In the meantime, we can use Painter 8, or any other version, to do some really nice things. The advantage of buying Painter 8 is that it's the only version Corel supports currently. It also offers both Water Colors and Digital Water Colors.

Though it has a huge number of brush variants, the number is really not indicative of actually unique brush variants. For some reason, and I think it was to make Photoshop users happy, Corel bloated the brush library with multiple sizes of the same brush variant. Any halfway serious Painter user certainly knows how to change a brush variant's size.

The "best" Painter version is the one that does most of what you want and also is most likely to provide eligibility for upgrade pricing to the next released version.

[BigFloppyLlama]

Is there a trial of painter 7 somewhere? I've used 8 and Classic and neither really was what I was looking for. But I'm all for trying 7 if I can find a place to get a 30 day trial or whatever. Corel's site doesn't have the previous trials though.

[Jinbrown]

Hi,

Nope, there's no Painter 7 trial version available.

You can probably pick Painter 7 up somewhere at a good price, though. If you do get Painter 7, take time to download and install the Painter 7 Upgrade. It provides some nice new features and bug fixes.

You can download it at:

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/Painter/7

If you've already installed Painter 7, you'll need to follow these steps to avoid problems:

1. Move any files you created into a new backup folder somewhere outside of the Painter 7 folders.

2. Uninstall Painter 7.

3. Manually delete any remaining Painter 7 folders and files.

4. Reboot.

5. Install Painter 7 and don't open it even one time.

6. Install the Painter 7 Update.

7. Reboot.

8. Launch Painter 7.1.357.

If you're a Windows user, you can check the version number (not sure how this is done on Mac's):

Highlight the Painter7.exe file, choose Properties, click the Version tab, in the lower left panel, highlight Product Version. In the lower right panel, you should see 7.1.357 if the Painter 7 Update installed correctly.

Painter 7 with the Painter 7 Update installed is a good version, fairly stable relatively speaking, and there's loads of user support available as we've had a lot of experience with it by now.

Good luck! :)

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