[rabulist]

I'm pretty much a novice as far as digital art is concerned. I am familiar with enough of the different techniques involved to keep me going for a while, but I have problems finding the right resolution and image size in order to optimalize the working conditions(processor power vs. high res.).

I'm working with a amd-k6.

Any advise, anyone?

[Ko]

Just a quickie....

For experimenting, showing your pictures on the web or other digital media, working at screen resolution ex. 800x600 - 1280x960 will be sufficient.

But if you want to output your work to print you need to think in other terms than pixels. Then you need to make your canvas the desired size in cm/inches and then set the ppi (dpi) to something like 240 or 300 for optimum quality (This might need to be even higher for top quality with dry offset printing).

For highres work in Photoshop you will need atleast 256Mb of memory for Photoshop, and more is highly recomendable for a smooth workflow.
(Photoshop also takes advantage of dual processors. The brush engine in Phs 5.5 actually utilizes the second processor and adds about 80% performance)

To optimize Photoshop on slower systems you can do the following:
1. Turn of the navigator window
2. Disable "save preview"
3. Set a low value for history
4. Set thumbnails for layers to small or none.


I'm sure more will be added.

Ko

[ May 09, 2001: Message edited by: Ko ]

[rabulist]

thanks.
That was more or less what I was looking for.

I have enough memory, but when I try to work in high res. my pen sometimes gets "stuck" with one tool as if I was working with a mouse and didn't let go of the left button.

[Ko]

What version of Photoshop do you use?

There have been several problems with version 6, but the downloadable 6.01 patch should fix these problems.
I myself prefer Photoshop 5.5, as I don't like the interface changes to the brush functionality. And version 6 is MUCH slower, even on highend machines.

Otherwise make sure that you have the latest drivers from www.wacom.com
Try both the latest beta driver and the
latest released driver.

Ko

[rabulist]

I use version 6, so that explains a few things.
I like it, though, even though it's much slower than the previous version. I'll check that patch out.

Thnx.