[Brazooka]

Hi Everybody,


I'm new to these forums and I'm kind of new to digital art. I'm an oil painter for about 3 years now, but I always loved the idea of using my PC do do my work, but I have this "little" problem:

I need to make high res pieces like 32X20 inches with 300 dpi (because of the giclee printing requeriment), and I want to make the originals at the PC, using Corel Painter or Photoshop. When I first tested this size of file in both softwares, my brush strokes took like 20 seconds to be "processed". Should it take so long with this specs?

Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2 Ghz
(2X 512Mb)1 Gig Kingston PC3200 DDR RAM
Samsung 120GB 7200RPM Ultra-ATA/133 MASTER
Seagate 40GB 7200RPM Ultra-ATA/100 SLAVE
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128 MB

What would be a good hardware set for this kind of work I'm trying to do? Would it be a (software)configuration problem?

Thanks everybody.

[balistic]

Try roughing in your painting at a low resolution and then resampling it up as you add more detail. I usually block things in at screen res, double the size for medium details, and then double again for the finest stuff. Also, turn off any brush antialiasing, since it's not needed at print resolution.

You need a real lion of a machine to start right in at print res from scratch.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[Brazooka]

Actually this is a pretty good tip! Get the res higher as I put in more detail... Thanks for the tip Balistic!

What would be a lion? Are we talking about Powermac G5 kind of stuff? Do you think something lower than that would get the job done?

[eyewoo]

Also, for inkjet giclee printing, the ppi can be set as low as 150 with good results, rather than the 300 dpi that offset printers like. Working on a 32 x 20 inch image at 150 ppi rather than 300 ppi should make a big difference in the way and speed at which your brush moves.
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[balistic]

The thing with resolution in digital paintings is that you're never going to get more detail out of it than what you paint into it. Traditional media will keep revealing more and more detail the closer you get to it . . . little piles of paint, the weave of the canvas, et cetera . . . but digital paintings, even when you're faking in things like brush texture, have finite resolution. I would question the need to go a full 300 DPI on a digital painting. I think you could safely work at 200 and blow it up and nobody would be the wiser, for the aforementioned reason.

A beefy PC . . . something like a dual Xeon or AMD 64 would get you the most bang for the buck for painting. A couple gigs of RAM would be ideal, as would a striped RAID arrangement for your hard drives. You'd spend a lot less that way than you would on an Apple.

I've got a machine that's a little slower than yours (Athlon XP 2100, 1GB RAM) and I can get up to about 5000-pixels wide before it really starts dogging, and that's in Photo-Paint, which isn't as optimized as PS. If I had a job that needed something larger I'd probably go for an AMD 64 system. If it was really lucrative I'd go for dual CPUs.

Try the up-res trick though . . . that's how most digital illustrators work, and it really makes the blocking-in process a lot more fluid and, well, painterly. You might find that your current system is just fine if you adjust your workflow a bit.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[Brazooka]

Well, to tell the truth I'm just saying 300 dpi because that is what the person said me at the imaging bereau. She said that 300 would be the least good res for fine arts purpose... I even question her about that, and she said that anytihng below that would get that "pixelized" appereance.... I shall try a piece with 200, see how it looks like

I'm going for the trick, and with the time, if the market here respond to my work and I'm making enough money, I shall invest in a �dge"hardware". Not sure about a Mac... but maybe a FX or maybe even the dual xeon...
Thanks guys...

[eyewoo]

...
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[Mark Branscum]

[B0b]

ctrl+alt+i (PS CS2) or Image>Image Size (any verstion PS) then check the re-sample box and type in the size you require or if you select the crop tool you can type the size you require and then crop and it will do the rest

Brazooka - bang for buck atm is a Dual Core Opteron and then clock the ass off it on air - generally u can get a Opty 175 up in the 3GHz on stock

but if you're not into overclocking then Dual Core / Dual CPU Opteron anyway

then stick 8GB of RAM in it and run Vista

re. print @ 300dpi
ask them what line screen they're out putting

if they say 133/150lpi then you'll get away with 240dpi on output

if they say <150lpi then you'll need 300dpi+

[Mark Branscum]

Hey Bob,

I guess I messed up and wasnt clear on my post...

Im not looking for PS I am assuming is Photo Shop .... I am looking for a plugin for Painter I had once for some reason I thought you was using that... sorry my bad.

I am hoping to find this 0plugin that would basically stair step the resampling but for the life of me I cant remember the name of it... I do know as I recall it was a free plugin though....


Sorry for the confusion.
I might just have to get PS and use it for my resampling.

Mark

[B0b]

i'm sure this is in the manual somewhere (i don't have it on me atm)

but to resample
goto:
Canvas - Resize

uncheck Constrain File Size - and this will resample your file

[Mark Branscum]

Im aware of going to Canvas resize and then resize it by 10 percent at a time to stair step it... but there is a script already written that does this for you in fact it did it quite well

I am still looking and will find it I am sure somre where someone will know where it is or I will just stumble on to it.



Mark

[Gort]

I wonder how any of the dual core cpu handle some of the work . . .
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"You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf" - Jack Kornfield

[B0b]

nope can't easily find anything for resizing plug-ins..

what do you mean gort?

[Diruo]