[strata]

I got my new wacom yesterday and tried to start painting in painter6... but I couldn't find a half normal brush! They were all multiline camelhair likes and stuff... so I went and got seeg's brush from his site, but it lagged like crazy! Mr seeg must have a fast puter

So I'm wondering what brush do you guys use when you paint? Settings and so on...

I tried doing a search on the forum, but I didn't find what I was looking for... so any input would be great...

thanks

------------------
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

[BooMSticK]

Usually I'm painting using the Round Camelhair brush. At sizes over 25 it begins to lag, so for bigger areas I tend to use the digital airbrush which probably is just as fast as the one in Photoshop, only better.
Play around with the initial size settings to get just the brushlook you're looking for...
,Boom

[strata]

I tried the camel hair, but that made alot of strokes next to each other?

Gonna try some more tonight, thanks tho =)

------------------
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

[Pat]

Don't forget to train Painter on your particular brush pressure. In preferences, the first thing I do when I boot up painter is to hit the "Brush tracking" option. On my system it reduces the amount of pressure I need to get a stroke. In the case of the smeary brushes, it really changes the look of the brush. I use the camel hair quite often as well.

If performance still lags, switch to a variant of the tool and tone down the "Feature" value in the brush Brush Controls window. Sometimes, when I need real quick strokes I switch tools entirely... using sharp chalk or some other tool.


-Pat

[strata]

What do you set the brush tracking to? Pull everything to 0 or vice versa?

------------------
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

[Pat]

I just make a few quick strokes with the tablet in the drawing area that pops up. Painter will set the sliders to the values which are more sensitive to your hand.

-Pat

[strata]

Oh look =D Didn't even notice the scratch area... thanks =)

------------------
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

[DonSeeg]

Hi there, let me know if you have any trouble with the brushes after you do adjust the brush tracking. Also remember that you need to set the tracking each time that you start painter. I have some other interesting brushes if you are interested.

Don www.seegmiller-art.com

[strata]

Seeg: Very! Gimme all you got =D

your brush worked alot better after I did the brush tracking thing! Still lagged a little bit when I tried it at size 4 or something, but earlier it lagged like mad at one so it's a happy improvement =)

I have a new question though: Yesterday I was painting with the dirty marker (which I had made completely round and stuff like Mike May said in some thread) and it was working out magnificently... then I saved my picture in jpg to show a friend, and when I started painting again the brush had suddenly become really really grainy... I don't think I changed anything by accident and I played around with the grain slider to fix it, but nothing worked... you wouldn't happen to know why would you? I really liked that brush...

Anyways, any and all brushes you have would be MUCH apreciated thanks =)

------------------
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

[philjaeger]

i don't know if these comments have been mentioned yet.... layers REALLY slow down the brushes. i work on 16" x 20" images @ 300 dpi, with the most complex brushes (100 size, captured bristles, pressure and color senstive...) and i have absolutely no slowdown. if i even bring in a second layer everything seems to move 10 times slower. i keep guide layers as masks....and do other layer work in ANY other program.

Phil

[strata]

Oh, thanks =) Good to know!

Didn't have any layers though ;D

thanks anyways...

Should it be this slow on a pentium 677mhz 128 MB RAM?

------------------
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

[philjaeger]

your P677, 128 mb ram is plenty quick, as long as the image isn't too large. A general rule is to work on an image 3 times smaller than the amount of ram. following that rule your images should be no larger than 42 mbs. they're probably much smaller than that...eh. Also, if you haven't tried this yet....1) don't run any other software while you're running painter. 2)and try edit/preferences/windows/maximum memory for painter. that sometimes helps me....sometimes.

3 years ago i started using painter 4.0 with a 100 mghtz mac w/ 128 mb ram. it worked just fine on letter sized images @ 72 dpi.

try speeding up the brushes by changing the brush controls/spacing. i usually use 8% for my brushes, but it really can vary what a brush needs to look decent.

all the brush controls will change the speed your brushes respond.

also....check to make sure you have the latest driver for your drawing tablet. there are some weird things that can happen with older drivers.

Phil

[quaternius]

philjaeger - This is interesting info.
I typically work on final images that are 30-60megs and I use a good many layers. I don't seem to have the brush slowdown you're talking about - though I do slow to a crawl if I try to "move" a large layer - but that's what reference layers are for. And I don't seem to have the brush lag so many people talk about here on the Forum either. I get quite large without the lag becoming an issue - over 135 or larger with most brushes I use - 'course I tend to stay with the custom brushes I've built - but they're mostly just a few tweaks on the standard brushes (important tweaks I guess). What's going on? Am I just lucky or what? I'm working on NT4 pIII sub-gigahertz w/512 Megs RAM. I do use a 3Dlabs graphics card w/32megs of videoRam (not very much anymore), since I do some 3d - and I know 3dlabs has very good NT drivers - but that shouldn't matter much for 2D. I AM running 7200 RPM harddisks and have spent some time optimizing NT4; but I wouldn't think that could make such a difference in computers - maybe it does. I do know there's a fair amount of tweaking that needs to be done to both NT and Win2000 - they don't automatically recognize all the important and sometimes basic hardware issues needed to optimize your system - let alone optimize for Painter or Photoshop. Now THAT is something we all have to do for ourselves, so I'm guessing that's where some, if not most of, the speed difference is occuring, (assuming all else is equal).

Has anybody done any optimization testing for Painter on the PC?

Q

[philjaeger]

Thanks for the reply quaternius,
My system is basically the same as yours....PIII 800, 384 ram....
I can work on 30-60 meg images with many layers. In fact when i started inking a comic @ www.cosmicsodapop.com i had to keep all the charcters and objects on separate layers. there were some 20-30 layers on a 10" x 7.5" image. i think the page was around 120-240 megs. there was a recognizable lag, so i had to divide the page into two or three sections, then recombine them when i finished. Layers may only be an issue if each layer has tons of info on it.

I am now working on a 16" x 20" image @ 300 dpi. its around 120 megs. it definitely has problems if i start adding more than one layer to it. if i was to upgrade to 512 megs, then i could probably go with an extra 4 or 5 layers.

another painting i'm working on is in photoshop (to start). 20-30 layers, 16" x 20" @ 300 dpi....and as large as 320 megs...i don't have a lag problem. photoshop seems to handle the layers much better.

until i get more ram i'm going to stick with doing major adjustments w/ photoshop....and just use masks instead.

i just checked on reference layers....well over the last 3 years this is the only part of painter i haven't used (i think?).....but i know why...i generally don't need to move large images....but its nice to know that reference layers exist in case i ever do. if i did graphic design type work i think the reference layers would come in very handy....and there are probably alot of other uses i'm not thinking about.

Phil

[quaternius]

Phil -
Thanks for the info. It confirms a number of things for me. I'd have to agree that everything about Photoshop layers is obviously superior to Painter's - I'm looking hopefully forward to a Painter7 that gets closer to the layer performance of Photoshop.

I've only been using Painter full-time since last June and feel like there's still tons of stuff I need to learn about it that will help me work more efficiently.

On the reference layers I probably use them almost exclusively for rotation tweaking - if I need to rotate a layer I can get it just right with the reference and move the real thing just once - so I don't degrade the layer image with several successive rotates... like you said, this is generally more in the realm of graphic design, but often helps me straighten a tilted building or something else that needs to be aligned in the image.

Q