[antx]

I came across a tutorial for painter classic. I got a copy of PC with my Wacom so I installed it and went on the tutorial. At some point the tutorial said that Water in PC works just like the Smudge tool in PS. I never got useful result with Smudge in PS but during the tutorial I got very fast very good results with the Water function in PC.
So I thought that I give the Smudge tool in PS another try (I also used some tricks I picked up at several places). But the result was again just useless. Then I tried to do exactly the same in PS and PC with the same source image and that is the result:

source image painter�s water Photoshop�s smudge

Is there really such a difference or am I doing just something wrong?

[ceenda]

Well, I think the question is not so much:

Why is the Photoshop smudge tool not as good as the Painter water tool?

Rather:

Why isn't there a water tool in Photoshop?

Basically, there is a smudge tool in Painter and it works pretty much exactly like the smudge tool in Photoshop. The water tool was never intended to be a smudge. It is an approximation of water blending colours together, not a mathematical method of blurring pixels together. Perhaps Adobe will add a water tool to complement the new real-media brushes, but it's not likely.

[BooMSticK]

and just to fill in...

'Smudge' in Painter is in fact called 'Smear', if you are looking for a tool that behaves like 'Smudge' in Photoshop.
Confusing eh?

'Smudge' in Painter is another tool that behaves quite different from Photoshops' smudge. It (Painters') takes grain from the paper you have selected and uses that. Smudge feels like something inbetween the waterblender and smear tools. Try selecting different paper types and/or sizes/contrast and see how this influences the smudge tool.
,boom

[balistic]

Photopaint has a "smear" that works like Photoshop's smudge, and an "undither" that can be made to work like Painter's water.

For the Photopaint people in the hizzowse.

[antx]

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I just thought that those two things are equivalent because the tutorial said so. And then I got those very different results and was wondering if it is just me or not...

Is there a demo version of the recent version of painter available? Would like to check it out. Maybe its worth switching.