[Lunatique]

Okey Doke. I've been exploring alternative choices for digital painting, as I've gotten sick and tired of Photoshop's crappy brush engine. I've been painting in Painter as an alternative, but the lame editing tools bugged me, as I'd have to keep bringing paintings back into Photoshop for certain editing features like flipping the entire painting horizontally, INCLUDING all the layers(it boggles my mind that the guys responsible for Painter overlooked such a basic, yet vital function for artists).

So, to make a long story short, I decided to explore other options, and here's what I've learned so far.

Now, I'm basing my opinions on MY PERSONAL painting style and needs, so what I think might be very different from other people.

First, here are the most important features to me in a painting software:

1)Fast processing, so I don't sit there waiting for the damn brush stroke to compute.

2)Pleasant looking/intuitive User Interface. It really shouldn't matter how something looks, as power and functions should be the most important things. BUT in reality, a hip/interesting/pleasant/pretty/non-distracting interface really puts me in a good mood whenever I boot up an application. It's almost like choosing between a well lit, well equipped, big painting studio with beautiful northern light, or a dinky, cluttered, dirty, poorly lit, tiny studio.

3)The brushes. There should be a good variety, from basic brushes, to ones that can pull off natural media pretty damn well. Sure, digital painting doesn't NEED to simulate natural media, but I happen to LOVE the look of oil paintings, and I WANT to be able to do it on the computer as well as in real life if I choose to.

4)Good blend tools. Now, I know some people never use blend, feeling it's a tool/technique that's irrelevant to their painting style. I happen to like blend, as it can remedy poor brush tools that can't do wet on wet.

5)Editing tools. Give me a good set of rotate, flip, lasso, color balance, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast functions, and you've got one happy camper.

So, on to the show:

Adobe Photoshop 7

I don't mind Photoshop's UI. It's not too ugly, but neither is it cool or pretty. Some of the way the tool palettes dock to the top is kind of annoying though.

I've explored the new brush engine for an entire afternoon, and I'm not impressed. It's gimmicky, and impractical to my style of painting. I pretty much paint on the computer exactly the same way I paint in real life, so I need a brush engine that can simulate the process of painting in real life. I need to be able to lay down colors that involves a lot of wet on wet as I'm used to in watercolor and oils. Photoshop CANNOT do this, period. Now, not having brushes that can handle wet on wet can be tolerated if there are blending tools that can take over that responsibility. But, Photoshop's smudge tool is notoriously slow, and unchecking the spacing box(which requires only a fraction of process time compared to having that box checked) makes some of the natural brushes useless for good blending.

The variety of natural brushes in Photoshop are nice, but they aren't worth much if they can't paint wet on wet.

So, Painting in Photoshop for me, sucks anal crust. A brilliant painter like Spooge can paint masterpieces with a friggin' mop and a bucket of ketchup, but Spooge I aint, so I need a better brush engine.

Now, as much as I dislike Photoshop's brush engine, I LOVE its editing tools. I know them like the back of my hands, as I use Photoshop as my digital darkroom for my photography. I would die without Photoshop.

Corel Painter 7

It takes a while to get used to Painter's UI mess, but once you get rid of all the unecessary crap, it cleans up pretty well. But, taking the time to FIGURE OUT what is necessary and what isn't can drive newbies screaming and running back to Photoshop. Considering how deep Painter's brush engine is, they did a pretty good job at sorting out all the brush controls. In general, Painter's UI is prettier than Photoshop, as it has lots of colored icons for easier identification of tools.

Painter's brush engine is truly matchless. It can do wet on wet, blending, and natural media better than anything in existence(unless there are proprietary stuff I don't know about). Painting in Painter is really a pleasure, especially for artists that have prior experience in real life painting. The vast range of painting tools are simply staggering. Many are useless crap, but there are just as many good ones. The processing speed of these tools are in general pretty good, if you know how to tweak the feature(number/density of bristles) and other settings. But, if you NEED to have certian settings AND use a big brush size, you are shit outta luck.

The editing tools in Painter are lacking. Not having a function that flips the entire painting--including all the layers, is just unforgivable. There are a few other things that feels like they were designed by a donkey. I wonder how much Corel/Metacreations paid their four-legged employees.

Now, my FAVORITE thing in painter is that you can turn the resaturation off in just about all the brushes, and use them as a blending tool. And MAN O MAN, these brushes-turned-blending-tools are like, blending/smudging on crack. Give me one of the good oil brushes, and I'll show you the best blending tool ever created on the computer. They are almost EXACLY like using a real brush without paint, and blending oil paints already on the canvas.

Corel Photopaint 10

I just recenly started messing with Photopaint, and so far I quite like it. The UI is my favorite among the four Titans. It's not distracting, yet it's pretty enough to put me in a good mood. The tools are easier to access than the others(if you set it up right), and very straightforward.

The brush engine is not bad. I haven't noticed any glaring performance issues, but it's definitely not as smooth as the other apps. As far as tools go, it's pretty much a middle ground between Photoshop and Painter, which means, its brush engine is better than Photoshop, but not as good as Painter. It has a good selection of brush controls, but they don't seem as effective as Painter's. But, at least it can pull off wet on wet, and has a good range of blending tools. I still wouldn't use it if I have Painter available though.

The editing tools are pretty much identical to Photoshop, which means they are really good.

The thing that stands out the most in Photopaint is the color picking tools. You have quite a few styles to choose from, and I was overwhelmed when I first discovered them.

Satori FilmFX 3.20

This is the odd one of the bunch, as it is really for film work. It has a lot of tools that is specific to film, but it also has some nice basic painting tools for non-film artists.

The UI, IMO is quite ugly. Shiny 3D buttons for selecting painting brushes is just not cool. You expect to see that on some low-end 3D modeling/animation program, but not on a high-end 2D program. Hell, even low-end 3D apps don't use shiny 3D buttons.

The processing power of FilmFX is probably the most impressive of the bunch. You immediately notice it as soon as you start painting. It just FEELS smooth.

When you open up a new file, it lets you choose between all these different film/TV formats/resolutions, which was super cool.

You have a small range of brush styles to choose from, and they are all fast. No lag noticed at all. But, the tools are all fairly basic. No flashy natural brushes to choose from, except a few pastel/charcoal/oil brushes. You can customize and tweak them, but it's not as deep as Painter. It's understandable that FilmFX doesn't have all the crazy tools that the other 3 have, since it's designed to handle film work such as matte painting, not doing painterly stuff where you WANT to see all the brush work and minute details.

One really cool thing about FilmFX is the color mixing tool. You can let colors mix and choose all the inbetween mixtures.

The blending tool is probably the smoothest I've ever seen. Simply amazing. Too bad it can't simulate bristles on a brush though.

The editing tools are so radically different from the average 2D apps that most people probably wouldn't bother editing in them. It doesn't help that its UI is pretty unintuitive and strangely laid out. Maybe Satori's got donkeys working for them too?

Okay, that concludes my little reporting on the major four 2D apps. Of course, this isn't meant to be absolutely correct, ESPECAILLY, that I've only painted seriously in Photoshop and Painter, and am the most experienced in Photoshop.

Please feel free to add to this or correct any of my donkey-ass mistakes.

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: Lunatique ]

[balistic]

Well we now have a place to point the newbies Thanks Lunatique!

[strata]

Luna, you've either got waaaay too much time on your hands, or you're a freakishly fast typist.

However, you always have clever thought-through things to say, so it's all good anyways! ;D

Thanks for this comparison guide, it's useful even to those of us who are profficient in one or more of the programs but are always interested to learn more =)

[Lunatique]

Hehehe. People have commented in the past that I type freakishly fast, but I doubt I type as fast as your average secretary though. Hey, Bg/Dr. Bang/glitterbug/Shizo, you guys chat with me on ICQ. Do you guys think I type freakishly fast?

Glad my ramblings are of some value to some people. For all the crap I spew, it's only fair that I give something useful back to the sijun community every once a while.

And I do have a lot of time, as I've taken a year or two off from working to concentrate on learning 3D, paintings, photography, and writing.

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: Lunatique ]

[Dr. Bang]

you type slow cause your other hand is god damn busy playing with your **** all the time. I wish i could be your hand LOL JK OMG

[Bg]

Hmm, I remember making a painting in Satori FilmFx a long time ago, the image was so embarassing that I went and deleted the program...

Corel Photopaint, it was one of the first painting programs I have ever used (bought Corel Draw 3 back then and Photopaint came with it).. and I just recently found out that they're still developing it, does anyone know if there's (downloadable, the one at Corel's site is online demo) demo available?

Yes Luna, you type much faster than me, on the other hand there's a guy on my ICQ list whose typing makes me look completely braindead

[specialbrew]

I think I'm the only one round here who uses FilmFX, and despite its grim GUI, for me it still does the business because of the app's speed.

Getting really good results means spending a long time (and I mean a long time) developing your own custom brushes to replicate a 'natural media' approach. Whilst it is laughably faster than Painter or PS, unfortunately it lacks Painter's sophisticated real-time texturing and surface controls, so in a way you have to simulate these via the brush engine.

I've used FilmFX for about two years or so (being an ex-Painter user) and you can see some of my stuff at my homepage, though it has to be said that I haven't updated my site in well over a year, and I look at a lot of that stuff with a certain degree of shame. However, I'm sure you'll get the idea.

best

sb

[Frog]

Mmmm, relatively new to the whole malarkey of "painting" on a computer but two things I really like about painting in Photoshop are using blending modes such as multiply, screen or colour with a brush, and using the history brush to blend new strokes into old ones. Can either of these methods be used in other programs?

[eyewoo]

quote:

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Please feel free to add to this or correct any of my donkey-ass mistakes.

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Sure thing... be glad to...

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I need to be able to lay down colors that involves a lot of wet on wet as I'm used to in watercolor and oils. Photoshop CANNOT do this, period.

Luna... you gotta start playing with the multiply mode... or at the very least with normal colors and low opacity settings. You can simulate water colors on top of colors or thin colored varnishes laid on over and over... just like Leonardo... Hey, my man, that is one of the best things that Photoshop can do.... !!!

[a0]

I thought I'd just through in my two-cents - as I've played around with Painter, Corel, and Photoshop trying to decide the best platform as well...

We all use Photoshop in the studio I work in - Except one guy - Omar - also a very talented artist...he swears by Corel Photopaint, and is always showing me the neat things that it can do.

I admit, the UI for Photopaint is QUITE nice indeed...I may try experimenting with it further...

[Lunatique]

eyewoo-- actually, what you are describing is the equivalent of painting in gouche, which is painting in layers(glazing is when you do it in semi-transparent layers), and the paint you are applying does not physically interact with the layer of paint already on the canvas.

When I say wet on wet, it's more like applying oil paint on top of a layer of still-wet oil paint, and the two colors actually physically blend and interact, with the bristles on the brush pushing and pulling BOTH layers of paint.

[el scoono]

Have you tried Deep Paint? It works fine as a stand alone application, but it's really meant to work with Photoshop as a plugin. I find it has most of the natural media features of Painter and it enables you to go back and forth with a Photoshop file very easily. This way you can get a nice natural media feel without any of the eccentricities or bugs of Painter.

[eyewoo]

Luna... understood and I stand corrected... but of course I do have something to add...

I've said this before and I say it again (and again and again). Photoshop provides the purest interface and IMHO the most fundamental tools for producing digital artwork. Each nedium - water color, oils, gouche, egg tempra, poster paint, pencils, cut out colored paper, whatever... each has its own inherent characteristics which when undrestood offer the artist a serious, powerful and beautiful means of expresion.

Photoshop, IMHO, currently offers the most pure and fundamental way to express with digital pixels. It doesn't try to simulate other traditional art mediums... it just lays out its digital tools and offers up the best digital interface for using them.

Of course this is my subjective point of view -- And here it is in a nut shell: I don't feel there is any mileage to gain by using a new medium to try to simulate an older medium. Instead, I want to try to undertsand how the new medium works and what extraordinary things it brings to the table.

[Lunatique]

el scoono-- I've done a painting in Deep Paint before, and I thought it was pretty neat. But, for what it tries to do, it still can't compete with Painter, so I uninstalled it. It's a nice program though. I didn't list it because it is so similar to Painter, but not as good.

eyewoo-- I understand where you are coming from, and I agree with you that Photoshop represents the pure digital painting experience the best. For my own personal preference however, I want to be able to make artwork on the computer that has the creamy, lush look of oil paintings.

[Frog]

As an aside, this thread has prompted me to go and check out Satori and it's a well cool software concept!!! You can paint in vectors and it looks like pixels - awesome. This means everything is totally editable and resolution independent, I'm amazed this program hasn't caught on.

The brush response is lovely too, my only crit is that it doesn't seem to like dual monitors

[balistic]

quote:

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Originally posted by a0:

We all use Photoshop in the studio I work in - Except one guy - Omar - also a very talented artist...he swears by Corel Photopaint, and is always showing me the neat things that it can do.

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That guy must be my long lost twin . . .

[BooMSticK]

lol @ ballistic

Luna, I think you just nailed my view also on those programs. I don't think I have laid hands on Photopaint for at least a few years so I would really not know much about it in it's current state. I would love to take it for a spin though.

For me Painter is the perfect program. Yes, it can be a bitch to get into, but stay away from the stuff you wouldn't use anyway and it's actually not that complex. Saying that Photoshop can emulate watercolor is laughable compared what Painter can do.

Satori is a very very capable program, but its UI is even more wierd than Painter's UI. The resolution independency is soooo neat. I only own ver. 2 and has not upgraded, since Painter ( though no availabilty to work rasterized) is by far superior in simulating real media.

In the end each program has it's strengths and weaknesses. The combo of having both Painter and Photoshop is just unbeatable! Joining those two programs into one would be a dream come true...
,boom

[Traa_Vuz]

try this new painting app out ... its a freebee ... not complete but its interesting to mess around with ....
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Ridge/7251/cyberop.htm

download: http://www.dailypost.com/download/files/general/graphict/dogwaffle/Dogwaffle.zip

[Lunatique]

I tried Dogwaffle not too long ago, and I just couldn't see any reason to use it over Painter. It's a nifty program, and it's for free!

[specialbrew]

Another freebie app is the odd-but-interesting Pixia, which is Japanese in origin. It's somewhere between Painter and PS, bitmap based and uses layers. However, the brush performance is fairly choppy on hi-res and having just one source image as a brush profile doesn't quite cut it for a 'textured' effect.

sb

[gekitsu]

just my 2c on eyewoo's point:
well, painter has a brush engine with enough options, tweaking and features that you are able to emulate traditional media. now think about what you can do with these controls over your brush's appearance without trying to ressemble traditional media?

while you have photoshop's very plain and superclean tools, you cn eit painter to make a digital image that is undoubtedly digital but looks more lively and expressive through the brushstrokes, color variation etc...

does digitality mean that you should not have separate controls over resaturation and bleeding, color variation, angle of drawing tip etc... just because traditional tools may use similar features?

[eyewoo]

quote:

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does digitality mean that you should not have separate controls over resaturation and bleeding, color variation, angle of drawing tip etc... just because traditional tools may use similar features?

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Absolutely not... use whatever capabilities are offered. I use the levels (brighten, darken), saturation, color balance, contrast, all the time. Very few of my images end up with the color they start with. I am constantly readjusting, enhancing and dehancing specific areas, etc. as a picture develops. My point was only to point out that trying to simulate traditional media seems pointless to me.

quote

Quote:

...just because traditional tools may use similar features?

BTW... I'm a bit confused by this part of your statement? What traditional tools are you referring to?

[gekitsu]

my point was:
take a broad brush for example. you have the possibility to change its angle on the fly.
now we take painter, make a brush with a let's say ellipsoid tip, some cool way to apply color, structure or whatever and have the angle of the tip bound to the angle we hold our pen.
we use exactly the feature of changing the angle of the tip a real brush has without ressembling traditional media.

photoshop's brush engine (at least in ps 6.0.1)does not allow real tweaking of your brush like this. it just offers this photoshop brush thing.
i say: it's still very digital to use features painter offers, even if their original sense is ressembling traditional media.
for your kind of work, all this levelling etc... photoshop is the better prog, i see.
but what do you do when you want to make something digitally with actual brushwork?

[eyewoo]

quote:

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but what do you do when you want to make something digitally with actual brushwork?

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My point of view for digital work is that there is no such thing as brush work in any traditional sense. I know Painter simulates it, but that is what it is a digital simulation.

What I seek are ways to capitalize on the actual digital tools available and explore ways to use them in their native digital environment, so-to-speak. For example, stroking with a wide stroke at a low opacity creates a very nice effect when the strokes overlap each other. The look has a nice digital feel and the technique can be used to produce an unlimited number of digital textures - skin, bacground, metal, glass, whatever.

Here's a full rez piece from one of my portraits...



See how the shape is molded by overlapping strokes using the pencil tool at various sizes and low opacities. On some of the very hard edges you can see a bit of the jaggies, but when this is printed, they are really not evident at all. The full image is 5500 x 4000 pixels.... and can be [url=http://www.eyewoo.com/displayPort.html?6^3^port_mark^Portrait%20of%20Mark%20Hoffman]seen here[/url] in reduced size for the web.

[edraket]

I think this is a very interesting discussion.
But you guys should not try to convince each other.
People should all have their own style. And use whatever program they think fits their style best.
I think painter has lots of possibilities to create a distinct style. But then again. It also is easy to just go with the flow and let the program dictate your style for you.

I personally never have the patience to work long enough with a program to really get used to it. It just takes so long untill they can match the fluency I have in other programs. I always give up before that.
And it's not like my boss would suddenly buy me painter or something if I were to want that.

[gekitsu]

eyewoo, what you say about those pverlappin strokes etc... is what i consider being digital brushwork.
i call the tool to give pixels a different color value a brush.

of course, you can work with photoshop's tools, like you do. but on the other hand, painter gives you a lot more possibilities to change the look of those tools.

but as far as you are using your way with the lasso tool and all the levels etc... dialogues i have to say: photoshop is the best for this kind of work.

just what you say about the photoshop tool you use for overlapping brushstrokes and a nice digital feel: painter has the possibilities to emulate traditional media. but it's up to the user what to use these possibilities for. and on thislevel, painter's possibilities simply outlevel those of photoshop

but in the end... it's good that we are using different apps. as we would most likely use different brands or types of color, brushes, maybe even completely different media when painting traditionally.

just want to say: painter is more than pure emulating of traditional media