[Frog]

It seems to me after some fairly extensive experimentation that Painter 7's new watercolour brushes actually look nothing like watercolour, whatever you try and do. Coupled with the fact that the brushes are very slow as well it seems a backward step to have gone to, especially since the Painter 6 Watercolour brush looked fairly convincing.

Any fixes or ideas from those of you that know Painter well, it seems that it isn't possible to just recreate the Painter 6 watercolour brush?
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[merlyns]

well I'm having the same problem the watercolor brushes dont look like watercolor that much and their teribly slow. until prresent I didn't find a way to fix this.

-david
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[Lunatique]

I tried loading the Painter 6 brush library, but the version 6 WC brushes are still behaving like version 7. Why is that?

[Pat]

It looks different because the watercolor engine was totally revamped. Even though you can use brushes from earlier versions of Painter, watercolor brushes don't function the same under the new engine.

The new brushes take a bit getting used to. They're also a big CPU hog. You can curb this somewhat by avoiding excessive values in the brush settings --stay away from brushes that take forever to dry and turn off accurate diffusion.

I think the new brushes have a lot more potential, but only when used with quite a few other non-water based tool ie. airbrushing followed by chalk with a layer of watercolor over it all. If you've simply got to have the older styled watercolor brush you're basically sunk. I dug through my files and found a recipe for a Painter 7 watercolor brush which emulates the older Painter 6 version. It's not a perfect match, but for a lot of people it could be a godsend. One of the cool things about this brush: if you paint with white it will erase --a behavior which is emulated from Painter 6 that a lot of artists miss in the newer, more sophisticated brushes.



-Pat

[Lunatique]

HOT DAMN that's good. It's close enough to satisfy a lot of people I bet.

So, do you leave a copy of Version 6 installed just for the WC brushes? LOL!!!

[Frog]

Hey thanks for that Pat, the brush certainly is quite fast. What I miss most from the simple Painter 6 brush is the pooling at the edges of the stroke, I might fiddle with your brush and see if I can get it to do that.
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[Jin]

Hi all,

There are several things we can do with Painter 7 Water Colors that help:

Paint with dry brushes on the Canvas, then from the Layers section menu, choose Lift Canvas to Water Color Layer. Pick a Water Color variant and Paper combination you think might give you the effect you want (experiment a lot!), then from the Layers section menu, choose Wet Entire Water Color Layer.

Depending on the Water Color variant and Paper and any user settings made to either or both, the effect can be anything from subtle to extreme and you can, with some practice, get very nice results.

A lot of Painter 6 and Painter 7 owners/users keep both versions installed in order to use Painter 6 Water Colors either with or without also using Painter 7 Water Colors.

A Painter 6 Water Color image, with Canvas > Wet Paint still unchecked, saved in RIFF format then opened in Painter 7 will have a dry Water Color Layer. It can then be converted to a Default Layer (Layers section menu > Convert to Default Layer). You'll need to leave the Composite Method set to Gel to have the Water Color appear as intended.

Pat,

Is that from Juma's WetSet library? I haven't taken time to reproduce the brush variant using your screen prints since it takes a bit of time. How about uploading the .XML file too, by the way? It would be easier and prevent errors when making the setting adjustments. (Just a suggestion.)

[Frog]

Hi Jin, good tip and I'll try it.

I believe you are beta testing Painter 8, I realise you are probably under an NDA but do you think Corel might ever reintroduce the older watercolour brushes alongside the new ones? It seems that this has been a very common complaint.

[edit] It's very frustrating that Corel keep insisting how they've improved the watercolour engine, when it's clear as daylight to actual users that the new brushes simply don't look like watercolour while the old ones did. Even more ennoying for me is that I had two versions of Painter Classic that came with tablets I bought and I gave both of them away!!
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[Lunatique]

WOW Jin, you're beta tesing Painter 8? How does one get in on that? I'd LOVE to beta test it, and also hand in a "wishlist" of features. Where can I do that?

[Pat]

Jin, I'm not sure where the brush came from, but I'm positive it's older than Juma's Wetset. I think I might have downloaded it from the old critical-depth forum before that crashed. It was in the folder with a very cool chinese sumi brush and a Paulo "good" brush I know I downloaded from there.

Sorry about not loading an XML file too; just force of habit when I share Painter brushes. I'm still not mentally adjusted to being able to share PC and Mac Painter brushes. Here's the XML Version of the old watercolor brush, Painter 7 only.

Jin, whatever you do make sure Corel addresses that damned inadvertant 10000% magnification problem when using the keyboard/mouse shortcut combo. If you accidently drag the tablet pen even 1 pixel while using that shortcut, Painter zooms to 10000%. This can hang both the Mac and PC versions if it tries to auto-build a complicated brush.

Luna: I kept Painter 6 on my machine for a good while, but I've finally gotten rid of it in favor of 7. I'm one of those weird guys who actually likes the new watercolor brushes.

-Pat

[Jin]

Hi guys,

It's funny how many people assumed I was on the Beta testing team when I wasn't. I was unable to join the Beta team until just recently, unfortunately, as I would have liked very much to participate from the beginning. You're right, Frog. All Beta testers had to sign a non disclosure agreement before joining the team so we're not allowed to discuss anything that we learn during Beta testing, either during or after it's over.

Luna,

Corel solicited Beta testers late last fall, on the Corel Painter newsgroup, corel.graphic_apps.painter and probably elsewhere. I don't recall now exactly where else. Since Painter 8 is due to be released this Spring, and since someone posted a message the other day saying he'd received an invitation to the press release for Painter 8 to be held sometime next week, it's doubtful (very) that they're taking on new Beta testers now. If you'd known about it in time, you could have applied, so next time around if you want to be on the team, keep an eye on the corel.graphic_apps.painter newsgroup. That's also a good place to post your comments about the software, including things you'd either like to see fixed or things you'd like to see added. Though it's a user group, Corel Painter people read the newsgroup and occasionally post messages, so at least they know what we want even if they aren't able to fix or add it due to time and/or budget constraints.

Pat,

If it's the Old Watercolor brush, it's also available to download at PixelAlley. It's one that Matt created early on in our efforts to reproduce brushes that worked like Painter 6 and earlier version Water Colors and it's close, but still misses the pooled edges we all love so much. Terrie did a fairly good set of brushes (tlb-sw647) that come close to the old Simple Water variant but, again, still don't quite make it. They're good ones, though, and worth trying especially if you like the Painter 7 Water Colors. You'll find those on my site too, at:

http://www.pixelalley.com/Painter7/painter7-water-color-brushes.html

One of the difficulties with Painter 7 Water Colors is that if the artist is not a traditional watercolorist, they need to begin from scratch learning how real watercolors work. It takes time but some beautiful work can be done. I've seen some and though I'm not a traditional watercolorist myself, I can appreciate the fact that with patience and practice, I could learn to use Painter 7 Water Colors well. They really are interesting and hold lots of possibilities.

Adjusting the settings can help make them work faster. The first brush you'll see on the page linked above, for instance, is an extremely slow brush and though I like how it looks, I've found only a few ways it can be used successfully. Still, it requires a lot of patience as painting a single brushstroke can take a long time. The leaves you see in the demo image were painted inside a selection, using more than one brushstroke in the same selection (one over another). That's how the "piping" around the edges happened. When a second brushstroke is laid over the first one, those edges build up as the paint seeps outside of the selection. It's a strange thing and fun to watch, though I haven't found a whole lot of uses for it.

One of the setting adjustments that helps is found in the Brush Controls palette's Size section. Move the Feature slider to the right to decrease bristle density. You'll need to experiment to find the happy medium between a too slow brush and too little bristle density. Other adjustments that can help are found in the Brush Controls palette's Water section. Lower the amount of diffusion (move the Diffuse Amt slider to the left) and/or increase the dry rate (move the Dry Rate slider to the right). As with the Feature slider, both of these adjustments affect how the brushstroke looks, so you'll need to experiment.

An obvious thing, that's true for a lot, if not all, of Painter brushes is that working with too large a brush size slows down painting.

About the Zoom to 10000% thing, the solutions I can suggest are to either:

Use Ctrl/Command-+ and Ctrl/Command--

or use the Scale slider in the lower left corner of the image window,

or type the Zoom percent in the box to the right of the Scale slider.

To zoom back to 100%, double click the Magnifier tool.

I seldom bother holding down my pen with or without Alt/Option (to zoom out) and using the Magnifier tool as it's way too unpredictable.

Jinny Brown

TutorAlley Forums
http://www.tutoralley.com
PixelAlley Section Links Page at:
http://www.pixelalley.com/pixelalley-sections-pages.html
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[Frog]

Thanks for your helpful reply as usual Jin. In the end I gave up and reinstalled Painter Classic, it's a shame that I have to put up with a reduced feature set to get usable watercolour brushes but that's all I can do for now.

Unfortunately I don't buy that line from Corel that you need to be a trained watercolourist to know how to use the new brushes - that's just an attempt to blame the user for the poor implemtation of their software. I've used watercolours and Painter 7's engine feels nothing like them, and more importantly looks nothing like them.

Watercolours do not look like grainy soft fuzz, they have many hard edges, especially when they are laid unevenly. If Corel could have got some of the chaotic effects you get from real watercolours such as cauliflowers and backruns that would have been really cool but I think they need to admit that on this attempt at least they have failed.

Thanks again for your help though
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