[jfrancis]

Painter continues to baffle me.

I sprang for the new 6D Art Pen, the one that looks like a magic marker, with a flat tip that has a wide and a thin way of being used.

I also downloaded the new brushes from Corel that were designed to use this pen. Thes brushes have an "angle" parameter that can be linked to art pen "rotation," a new attribute reported to the tablet by the new 6D Art Pen.

SO far so good, except...

Most of the new brushes seem to work fine, although there is a 90 degree offset between what the brush does and what you THINK it will do. Use the thin part of the pen and you'll get a fat line, and vice versa. Fortunately there is an "angle" setting that you can offset to 90 degrees to "fix" this issue.

One particular 6D brush, the "Art Pen Brushes / Soft Flat Oils" has NO ability to tweak the angle thing. That WHOLE area of the brush control is grayed out. Why is that? That's one brush I actually want to use.


...also, How do you ungray out the old brushes in that area and allow them to recognize the Art Pen. For example:

Artist's Oils / Oily Bristle -- on THAT brush you can set the angle expression to "rotation" which is good, because at least it sees the Art Pen rotation, but there is STILL the matter of the brush being backwards; the thin pen tip gives the thick stroke and vice versa. You can't "fix" the brush by building the 90 degree offset into the angle parameter -- the angle parameter is grayed out.

[Jin]

Hi,

I'm groping in the dark here with neither the required Intuos 3 tablet nor the 6D Art Pen:

Try checking the Invert box next to the Angle palette's Expression field then paint some brushstrokes, testing the pen.

Click to uncheck the Invert box and do more brushstrokes at the same angles as before and compare them.

The Invert box reverses the effect of the Expression option.


Jinny Brown
TutorAlley Forums
Tutorials and Painter Info at PixelAlley

[jfrancis]

good guess, given you don't have the hardware, but unfortunately the inverse checkbox has no effect in this case.

I guess my question would be:

How do I create a brand spanking new brush that is identical in every respect to a pre-existing brush, except that where the old brush has a grayed out area, I'm enabling that area in my new brush

[Jin]

Simple answer is you can't, or if you can, I'll be happy to be wrong.

"Identical in every respect except that one", would mean something else had to change that would allow those controls to be available and then the brush variant *couldn't* be identical in every respect except that one (Angle palette controls available) because that one key thing has changed (we're going in circles).

To see what I mean:

� Open a new white Canvas about 600 x 600 pixels.

� Restore the Art Pen Brushes' Soft Flat Oils variant to its default state: Brush Selector menu > Restore Default Variant.

(I'm working with the Art Pen Brushes' Soft Flat Oils variant too) so I can see the default controls.

� Paint a brush stroke on the white Canvas as a basis for a comparison later.

� Open the Brush Controls palettes: Window > Brush Controls > General.

� Click the triangle at the left end of the palette name bars to open all of the following (don't click the name, just the triangle to the left):

General
Size
Angle

� You may need to drag the docked Brush Controls palettes to a better position on your screen so all three of these palettes can be open and viewable at once.

� With the Soft Flat Oils variant selected, go to the Brush Controls' General palette and change the Dab type from Flat to Circular.

� Look at the Angle palette to see the controls are now all available.

� In the Size palette move the Min Size slider to 100%.

� In the Angle palette, move the Squeeze slider to 35% and the Angle slider to 90 degrees.

� Notice in the Preview window the brush dab shape is more or less the same as the original brush dab shape, a medium narrow vertical ellipse.

� Now paint another brush stroke next to the first one.

� Notice the brush strokes are quite different, the first has "bristle" marks, the second is very soft with no "bristle" marks.

� Close the Size palette.

� Go to the General palette and one at a time, try all of the Dab Type drop down list options. Skip all Dab Types with names that include the words Liquid Ink, Watercolor, or Artist's Oils. Each time you check another Dab Type option, look at the Angle palette to see if the controls are all displayed.

After you've run through this experiment, I think you'll see that the most basic brush controls are in the General section, the Dab Type being the "king of the brush controls hill" hill, and everything follows that.


If you figure out something else, let us know. Other folks will soon be asking about this Wacom pen and Corel brush duo and it'll be good to have some solid answers.


Jinny Brown
TutorAlley Forums
Tutorials and Painter Info at PixelAlley

[jfrancis]

****

� Open a new white Canvas about 600 x 600 pixels.

� Restore the Art Pen Brushes' Soft Flat Oils variant to its default state: Brush Selector menu > Restore Default Variant.

(I'm working with the Art Pen Brushes' Soft Flat Oils variant too) so I can see the default controls.

� Paint a brush stroke on the white Canvas as a basis for a comparison later.

****
I have done all of the above. The brush behaves as expected, except that the edge of the marker produces a stroke as if it were the face of a brush, and vice versa -- this is the 90 degree offset I talked about earlier. Maybe Corel thinks this is a good way to go since the "normal" way to hold a marker is with a vertical ellipse, and the "normal" way to hold a flat brush is with a horizontal ellipse, but I disagree with this logic. I think the virtual tip should exactly mimic the real tip. One should not just be symbolically suggestive of the other.

****

� Open the Brush Controls palettes: Window > Brush Controls > General.

� Click the triangle at the left end of the palette name bars to open all of the following (don't click the name, just the triangle to the left):

General
Size
Angle

� You may need to drag the docked Brush Controls palettes to a better position on your screen so all three of these palettes can be open and viewable at once.

� With the Soft Flat Oils variant selected, go to the Brush Controls' General palette and change the Dab type from Flat to Circular.

� Look at the Angle palette to see the controls are now all available.

� In the Size palette move the Min Size slider to 100%.

� In the Angle palette, move the Squeeze slider to 35% and the Angle slider to 90 degrees. no big deal, but the number window doesn't update properly when I slide the slider. I have to manually type the number in to be sure it's exactly 90.

� Notice in the Preview window the brush dab shape is more or less the same as the original brush dab shape, a medium narrow vertical ellipse.

� Now paint another brush stroke next to the first one.

� Notice the brush strokes are quite different, the first has "bristle" marks, the second is very soft with no "bristle" marks.

****

I have done all of the above. The brush no longer behaves properly. All North-South strokes on the canvas are narrow regardless of how I hold the pen. All East-West strokes are wide regardless of how I hold the pen. Expression is set to "Rotation" but Painter seems to ignore that data.

****

� Close the Size palette.

� Go to the General palette and one at a time, try all of the Dab Type drop down list options. Skip all Dab Types with names that include the words Liquid Ink, Watercolor, or Artist's Oils. Each time you check another Dab Type option, look at the Angle palette to see if the controls are all displayed.

I haven't done this work yet, but from the first experiment, it would seem that merely having the menu active doesn't guarantee that Painter is using the data. I will experiment further later.

[digitaldecoy]

Did anyone try the new art pen with photoshop CS2 yet? I�m really curious about how they have managed to integrate the new rotation feature. I�m not going to buy CS2 until next month but I really want to know if adobe did a better job than corel.
_________________
�Que la fuerza te acompa�e!

[jfrancis]

I plan to take a closer look at this issue, but my initial impression was that CS2 did NOT handle the pen properly.

Details here:

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2005/04/photoshop_cs2_i.html

[Jin]

I think you'd be better off to call Wacom and ask for someone who is very familiar with both the new 6D Pen and the Rotation feature in Painter IX and/or Photoshop CS.

I'd do it myself but there's only so much I can talk to them about, without the 6D Pen and Intuos 3 tablet available.


Good luck,


Jinny Brown
TutorAlley Forums
Tutorials and Painter Info at PixelAlley

[digitaldecoy]

jfrancis:

I think the art marker is not supposed to mimic the behaviour of a real marker (where you can use the sharp tip for thin lines eg.) but all it should do is to rotate the tip according to the pen�s rotation. It does exactly that in Painter and that�s just fine, I think. Do I have to understand your review in that way, that it does not even rotate the tip properly in PSCS2?
_________________
�Que la fuerza te acompa�e!

[jfrancis]

I would disagree about Painter exactly modelling the thick and thin aspects of the marker. I think the face should be the face, and the edge should be the edge.

Fortunately for both of us, Painter seems to allow you and me you disagree for the most part and still be happy.

Most of the Painter brushes have an "angle" value that can put in (or remove) the 90 degree offset thatis the basis of our disagreement.

Photoshop CS2 -- from what I've seen - is not handling the pen properly for either of us. I will test it furter, and I will also compare my tryout version to the official release to see if there is a difference.

...and I could be wrong about what it's supposed to do.