Wishlist for Painter

#201

I’ve changed the title of this thread, so it’s not just for upcoming patches, but features/tools/bug-fixes you’d like to see in Painter in general.

#202

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#203

Hi genocell,

In response to part of your item # 4:

In Painter 8.1, Painter IX.5, and Painter X.1 we can change the Mixer Pad background color:

Mixer palette menu > Change Mixer Background…

I don’t remember if we could do this in Painter 8, before the Painter 8.1 patch/Update was installed, but would expect we could, and could also with Painter IX and Painter X before the patches/Updates were installed.

In your item # 6:

By “scroll bars”, to you mean sliders used to set values in the Color Info palette and in other areas of Corel Painter?

Your item # 7:

Thanks for sharing your method for controlling the Tracker palette behavior. I’ll have to try that.

While I agree, and many others also agree, that we need a better way to identify the brush variant when we’ve dragged the brush category icon into a Custom Palette, there is a way to do it while we wait for an improvement: Enable Tool Tips (Help > Show Tool Tips), then hold your cursor very still over the brush category icon and the name of the brush variant current when the brush category icon was added to the Custom Palette is displayed.

Overall, good suggestions, presented in an intelligent, clear, and positive manner.

Thanks again

#204

Thank you very much for replying, Jin.

About the palette background color, thank you. I thought I had Painter all figured out. That option was there all the time when I used the save mixer pad option and I didn't see it! :P
Also I forgot to mention that I use Painter IX.5.

About the scroll bars, (item #6) it's this:

[img]http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/9409/colorinfoss5.jpg[/img]

I just mention it there because I have read some other users' suggestions to replace it with Photoshop's interface. I'm not sure how many people use it but I'm one of the users that use it a lot with my AutoIt/AutoHotkey rig. Not much of an importance but just in case...

For item (item #7)
Well thank you. I don't know if anyone else use this same method but I like to use it because I can call it up anytime I like by pressing the "\" key to bring up the tracker in the middle of the painting, select a brush and hide it again (ala Open Canvas). I don't want to use the custom palette as it will clutter my workspace and I don't know which icon stands for which brush. Also the brush settings stay locked all the time.

About your suggestions of using Help > Show Tool Tips with the custom palette I tried that before but it kinda hurts my shoulder a bit. ;)

Thank you for replying.:)
#205

I’m going to mention a few of very important ones that has caused me to use mostly only Photoshop in the last couple of years. They are probably not easy to fix, or else Corel should’ve gotten them by now. I hope Corel figures out a way to fix these problems, or else my use of Painter will remain limited down the road.

  1. Transparent piexels are treated as white color when using any brush that does blending. This one is a deal breaker for me these days.

When I was working on the styleguides for Spiderman 3 and Surf’s Up for Sony Pictures (you can see them in my CG Portfolio now), I was asked to keep everything on separate layers (as any commercial client would ask, because it’s the smart thing to do when changes need to be made later)–cast shadows, form shadows…etc are espcially important to be kept on separate layers. With shadows painted on multiply or gel layers, it’s not a problem as all pixels are treated as transparent in those layer types, but when I have for example a normal layer of let’s say Cody’s (the main penguine character from Surf’s Up) or Joe’s (the chicken character from Surf’s Up) arm or other body parts that needs to be on a separate layer, and since they are animals with feathers, I’d need to do lots blending of the outer edges of those body parts, it becomes a HUGE problem. The transparent pixels that gets touched by the blending brushes would turn white and my separate layer is now useless. I can’t go back and erase the white pixels either, as they are actually blended in with some of the colors on the edge of the feathers.

  1. When working on a normal layer and checking the “pick up color underneath” box, some brushes will cause black artifacts to appear as you paint on transparent pixels of that layer.

  2. The image manipulation/editing tools aren’t as powerful or robust as Photoshop. I think one of the reasons why we love working digitally is because there is so much power to wield when it comes to making changes that never would’ve been possible when working traditionally, and as much as I enjoy drawing/painting in Painter, I really need the robust editing tools so I can change/fix things quickly as I work. Even duing the early stages of sketching out the composition, I’d often need to use the transform tool to change the proportions of specific areas, and Photoshop’s transform tool is just so much more intuitive and powerful. This is a shame because Painter’s drawing tools are far superior to Photoshop’s–the line quality, the choices of pencils/pens…etc. But in the end I’d have to sacrifice all of that because it’s just faster and more powerful to use Photoshop for sketching because of the robust image editing features I need during the conceptual stage. This is particularly important when it comes to doing concept work where you are copying segments to another layer, transforming in whichever way, tweaking contrast, colors…etc in ways that require advanced control and fast/efficient visual feedback. Even a tool like Liquify in Photoshop is life-saver because it can often take care of problems that otherwise would require massive repaints, and it can do things that the transform tool just can’t.

These problems completely break my workflow in Painter and I’d curse up a storm and remember why I had gone back to Photoshop more and more for the last couple of years. I still love Painter’s brushes–there’s no comparison to the kind of satisfaction I get when I work with my own custom brushes in Painter, and the wet-on-wet capability keeps me coming back to Painter time and time to paint specific areas that need the special brushwork. But even for my personal work where I don’t need to keep everything on separate layers, it’s starting to become an issue too. Sometimes I want to use specific brushes to paint the hair, and there is always some kind of blending involved when painting silky hair. I always want to keep hair on another layer because I might want to make changes later, and I’d hate to have to erase part of the face along with the hair strands. But due to the problem mentioned above (transparent pixels treated as white), I simply can’t get what I want as I’d end up with those horrible white smudges all around the areas I’m trying to blend. I can’t just check the “Pick up color underneath” box either, because let’s say a strand of hair goes over an eye–if I tried to blend that strand, I’d screw up the eye underneath.

I’ve been a supporter of Painter for a while now and recently people are starting to notice that practically all of my newer works are all done in Photoshop, and they are emailing me to ask why I stopped using Painter. It makes me sad to have to tell them why, because I really do believe these issues can be taken care of if they ranked higher on Corel’s priority list (this is only my assumption), but I don’t know whether they are tricky issues that requires complete rewrite of a lot of codes, or Corel is simply concentrating on different priorities. If there are ways to work around these problems, I’d love to know about them, but for something as simple as wanting to blend hair on another layer without the white pixels showing up or smudging the face underneath, I’m absolutely frustrated I can’t do something that simple. Photoshop sucks when it comes to doing silky hair blendings, so I really need to figure something out soon.

#206

Lunatique, you are absoultely 100% right. I think these are the most severe problems that I have to face with using Painter. Most of the time dealing with problem #1 and #2 makes me really frustrated when I think I can’t use layers AT ALL to separate hairs and I have to manually erase or retouch the areas around hair strands. It is really frustrating and time consuming to say the least.

Problem #3 is by far one of my pet peeves of using Painter. Of course you can always fireup PhotoShop for a workaround, but it really breaks your workflow and mood. I can’t waste my time to boot up PS to make a very small change to an object properties and using Painter’s effect -> orientation tools ALWAYS makes me think “Photoshop is way better at doing this” or “I’m wasting my time”. It’s just the truth.

I think these problems you mentioned ranked the highest in the “things need to be changed in Painter” and Corel needs to address these problems if they were to retain their user base.

#207

I would love to have a way to easily access previously used text settings. Say I used Arial, Bold, 9 point, black, centered often. It would be nice if Painter would either remember these settings when working on a new file, or have some kind of a “favorites” list that you could quickly choose from.

As it is now, each time I open a new file, I have to trudge through the default text settings to configure them to be the same as a file I closed seconds before.

#208

Here’s a very simple one: allow me to lock the canvas. I like to pencil my drawings on their own layer, not on the canvas, in case I want to put my coloring on a layer under the pencils or something like that. But it’s easy to forget sometimes and start drawing on the canvas… it seems silly and arbitrary that the canvas cannot be locked. And if you do start drawing on the canvas, it isn’t necessarily easy to select it and put it on its own layer…

(EDIT: Sorry, I live under a rock and didn’t know Painter X is out. So ignore this post if Painter X already addressed this problem…)

  • Kef
#209

The one thing I’ve been craving for in Painter is the option of a larger colour palette. The ‘rainbow ring’ I can work with just fine, but the triangle in the middle is so small, it’s very hard to select colours that are neighbours to the one you have selected. If you want to move the little selection ring just one or two pixels, forget about it, once you click it, you’re instantly several pixels from your original colour. I would definately prefer one that is the size of the one in Photoshop, the full 256 pixel range.
Clearly, the colour palette dates from Painter 1.0, when people were thrilled about working at 800x600 resolution displays, but these days we’re working at 1600x1200 and up. It’s time for an upgrade there!

Thanks,
Jolle

#210

Hi. I too have a problem with this and I certainly would like Corel to make a bigger triangle.

What I do is I only use the triangle as a rough color selection since there’s no way you can be precise with it, and then use the HSV color info slider on the Color info palette to fine tune the color selection.

Now you might say that the slider is too short for any precise movement down to one value of increments. There is a way to resize it as long as the lenght of your monitor! This way you can precisely slide the HSV sliders and the HSV values don’t move too fast.

What you do is you take the layers palette, resize it the length you want the HSV slider to be (the color info palette) dock the color info palette (HSV sliders) on to the layers palette and undock it. Now you got yourself an extra long HSV slider that you can precisely choose your color after you have roughly chosen it from the color triangle.

I don’t think they are going to do any major UI change in the near future so this is the least
you can do. But you’ll get used to selecting colors this way in no time. :slight_smile:

#211

Not sure if it has been said or if it’s even in painter but…

I think their should be a perspective tool. What it would do is automatically set up your perspective lines for you. 1 point, 2 point, and 3 point. You could set where ever you want the horizon line and vanishing point to be and set how ever many guide lines you want to shoot out from that vanishing point. You could move the guide lines too if needed (while still locked on to the vanishing point). Then once the painting is done, have a option to remove the perspective lines. Also have a option to change the color of the lines and a transparency option.

#212

It’s already in Painter. If you’re not sure, you probably should’ve checked the help files? :wink:

#213

Painter X only! :slight_smile:

#214

Hi,

The Perspective Grid was introduced in procreate Painter 7 and it’s in each following full Corel Painter version.

To learn about it, read the following:

Painter 7 Help > Help Topics > Contents tab > Basics > Working with Documents > Using the Perspective Grid(Click all of these in the left panel and info on Using the Perspective Grid opens in the right panel.)
Painter 8 Help > Help Topics > Contents tab > BasicsIn the right panel, click the link named “Working with Documents”. On the next page, scroll down to the sub section named “Using the Perspective Grid”.
Painter IX Help > Help Topics > Contents tab > The BasicsIn the right panel, click the link named “Working with Rulers, Guides, and Grids”. On the next page, scroll down to the sub section named “Using the Perspective Grid”.
Painter X Help > Help Topics > Contents tab > The BasicsIn the right panel, click the link named “Working with Composition Tools, Rulers, and Guides”. On the next page, scroll down to the sub section named “Using the Perspective Grid”.

.

#215

Guess I was thinking about the new Divine Proportions and new Layout Grid.

Whatever. <shrug>

#216

The only thing I wish to see in Painter is live editing. Things that are done so often such as scale, rotate, and so forth. It would be great to see it happen while you do it instead of having to guess. I don’t like jumping over to photoshop to do something that simple for accuracy and then jump back to Painter. I also notice that when something is rotated in painter it has a tendency to blur. The same blur even happened a few times when I copied and pasted within the same image. Could just be my Painter, but I doubt it :shrug: I love Painter immensely and I enjoy what it is built for. I also love photoshop greatly especially for what it is built for. When it comes to painting I never hestitate to go straight to Painter, but I really hate thinking I will have to technically edit something, becaus ethen I will have to run to Photoshop (Good thing for the PSD format). But I do believe the editing tools in Painter can DEFINATELY be a lot more friendly.:slight_smile:

#217

I’m surprised this hasn’t come up yet:

Eyedropper with Area Averaging:
This works just like a default eyedropper, but you have the option to set a number of pixels below your crosshair which painter will average together to determine your color pick.

Example - red bar next to white bar. With area averaging, clicking the hard line where they meet will give you PINK. Then you just drag in the direction you want to make your color pick more red or more white.

This is how Photoshop works. It’s the same as painter by default but you can set
“sample size” to 3x3, 5x5, 11x11, etc. for area averaging. It makes picking colors MUCH easier.

This is something almost every digital painter finds useful once they try it!

(Thanks, Jinny, for helping me to find this forum.)

#218

New to the forum.

  1. I’d like to be able to move directly from one layer mask to another, without clicking a second time on the thumbnail.

  2. I’d like the layer mask to scale with the layer, or clearly state how to do this is the help file if this is possible.

#219

Hi,

Can’t help with your number 1 item as I, too, need to click twice to make a Layer Mask active.

Number 2 works for me just fine. Here’s how I do it:

[ol]
[li]Create a new Layer.[/li][li]Create a Layer Mask for that new Layer.[/li][li]Paint on the Layer Mask.[/li][li]Paint on the Layer.[/li][li]Make the Layer Mask active.[/li][li]In the Channels palette, highlight the appropriate Alpha Channel (i.e. Layer 1 Layer Mask).[/li][li]Click the Load Channel as Selection icon (left icon) and choose (for instance) Layer 1 Layer Mask from the Load From: drop down list. Now the selection is active.[/li][li]Deselect the selection (Ctrl/Command+D).[/li][li]Use Canvas > Resize and change the dimensions to double the original Width and Height in pixels, then click the OK button.[/li][li]Repeat Steps 6 and 7. Now the selection is again displayed but this time appropriately larger than in Step 7.[/li][li]Use Ctrl/Command+Z to Undo back to the original image size (as in Step 8).[/li][li]Use Canvas > Resize and change the dimensions to 50% (or half the number of pixels for Width and Height).[/li][li]Repeat Steps 6 and 7. Now the selection is again displayed but this time appropriately smaller than in Step 7.[/li][/ol]In other words, the Layer Mask and Alpha Channel are scaled up or down with the image when we use Canvas > Resize.

I’m using Painter X.1 in WinXP Home SP2.

Jin

#220

Thank you for your response Jenny. 13 steps for what should be a “link” icon in the Layers Palette seems quite bazarre.