in a bizzzarreio twist, I have both painter and photoshop, I rarely if ever use painter, and do all my painting in photoshop. why? well mostly because of the level of control you can have over your brushes.  I can make my own, and they do what I tell them too :D  thats not a boast thats just fantastic software...

have a look at the pallette well top right on you photoshop window.  click the brushes tab and you will be amazed at how many things you can play with.  but just for starters go to other dynamics and set the flow and opacity jitters to pen pressure.  have fun ;) 

a really good vid was given out with ifx a couple of months back where Mr amazing Henning painted a bloke in front of some nasty looking tenticles, the vid showed his whole work flow start to finish and the results were spectacular.  well worth a look, but I cant remember the name of the vid, if anyone else can chip in.

steve

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a belief will only find itself

I use Photoshop for most of my paintings and love the way it works, the options to change the brushes are endless, the layer system is bettered by no other software! And it just works so well without lag, even on very large files.

On the other hand I find Painter a pain to use, the way the layers works confuses me no end. Also I have major problems running it as half the time when I put pen to tablet nothing comes out on the screen and the lag I get makes it impossible to paint fluidly LOL

 

I'm not saying Painter is no good because it is superb when it works well, I just unfortunately cant use it!

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hey edart. why do you find the layers so hard to use? they work almost the same way as Photoshop. The only difference is that when you paint it'll still pick up the colour on the underlying layers instead of separating them completely. I find it helps to keep things blended nicely. I will admit that customizing brushes is alot easier than in photoshop.

now *heads off to find issue 9 on the shelf* 

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"Live life like a fantasy. Reality is only in your mind!" - Fabledgoat

I have both photoshop and painter.  I've been using photoshop for about 4 years, and I just recently got painter.  I've found that I like painting in painter much much better than photoshop, possibly because I started my first traditional painting class at about the same time.  Anyway, when I first started using painter, I had a lot of issues with the differences in the way layers work.  The biggest problem was that I couldn't merge a layer with any layer other than the canvas.  This really changed my workflow and a lot of "tricks" I used in photoshop to paint more quickly and confidently were thrown out the window. 

Something I've noticed is that using painter is a lot like using oils, while using photoshop is a lot like using acrylics, as acrylics dry so quickly.  Now I use painter for the main bulk of all of my illustrations, and I use photoshop for layouts (much easier when it comes to comic layouts) and for finishing touches, like levels, color balance and making sure values look alright.  I also only use photoshop when I'm working on photographs when using them for reference or to make a badly taken photograph look better.

That being said, you can get some really great results with your illustrations through photoshop, I just prefer the feel of the "traditional media" that painter brings to the table.

ooo....just as a tip here. You can merge any of the layers in photoshop with one another. Highlight more than one layer and then choose the 'collapse' option and it'll merge those layers for you. The collapse option I believe can be found when you click on the little area in the top right corner of the layers palette. Unfortunately I don't have the program with me at the moment to double check.

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"Live life like a fantasy. Reality is only in your mind!" - Fabledgoat

or the quick key shortcut Ctrl E will merge the highlighted layer onto the one below

steve

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a belief will only find itself

Oi fates! just wanted to let you know that the pallet well in PS CS3 is no longer there. Instead "brushes" is located on a dock next to the pallets. If  it's not showing then you can go to Window/brushes to make them show.

If you are running the leopard os, and you cannot find a menu item then go to help and type in the first search window and leopard will point to the menu item you are looking for. To use the photoshop help menu, you must look a little further down the menu list of help and choose photoshop help.

And kasky only a part of the right click issue has been addressed. you can/should enable right click in the system preferences of apple. hardware/keyboard and mouse, click on the mouse section then it will show you a diagram of the one button mouse that comes with the newer macs and usually it defaults to both buttons marked as the "primary" button. change the one on the right to "secondary" and voila! you have enabled right clicking on your mac!

 

I am also a huge painter fan, unfortunately, my family has lost my product key so I've not been able to upgrade to painter X.

:-(  I've gotten lots of help from people though and have learned some really great things on using photoshop more like i used to use painter. One of the biggest helps has been the use of blending modes. and the best one for getting a more painterly feel has been linear burn and linear dodge on low opacity. I haven't been doing much lately because I've been very frustrated at being without my tablet. I'm hoping to attempt to locate and purchase an internal usb cord today though.

Multiply and darken are also good blending modes to use. A large chunk of improvement for me has also been from reading Imagine fx from cover to cover monthly. i've yet to actually do any of the workshops however and still just reading about it has been tremendous. I may see if I can find my original "gargoyle" and post it. Take a look at my gallery and you will see the progression. The original that I'm talking about was done entirely in painter 6. I've since completly re-worked it in Photoshop CS3 I have a little tweaking left to do and then I think I'm likely to declare it done and post it in the finished works, maybe even still sans pen.

 

I still want painter though ;-(

good luck!

 

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Love is the only important thing... everything else is just details.

E

I actually meant this is how it's done in Painter. Not Photoshop.  

fabledgoat:

ooo....just as a tip here. You can merge any of the layers in photoshop with one another. Highlight more than one layer and then choose the 'collapse' option and it'll merge those layers for you. The collapse option I believe can be found when you click on the little area in the top right corner of the layers palette. Unfortunately I don't have the program with me at the moment to double check.

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"Live life like a fantasy. Reality is only in your mind!" - Fabledgoat

lol...  I have cs2 ;)  does it for me, besides there is no way I can afford to upgrade.

steve

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a belief will only find itself

got my original posted now so if you want to see what I've learned here and from ppl at work check out the progress in my gargoyle album.

The entire original was done in painter. To be fair i had a dying monitor at the time, and tried to color correct as best as I could.

Everything hence was done in photoshop CS3 with the exception of the photo and lines, that was Illustrator cs3 and i did it that way to try to respect my model's privacy.  

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Love is the only important thing... everything else is just details.

E

fabledgoat:

I actually meant this is how it's done in Painter. Not Photoshop.  

fabledgoat:

ooo....just as a tip here. You can merge any of the layers in photoshop with one another. Highlight more than one layer and then choose the 'collapse' option and it'll merge those layers for you. The collapse option I believe can be found when you click on the little area in the top right corner of the layers palette. Unfortunately I don't have the program with me at the moment to double check.

Oi!  Thanks for the tip.  That just saved me loads of headaches.

I also use Corel Photopaint and Corel Painter IX. I use both Corel Draw Suites 7 and 11. My favourite by far is Photopaint 7 from Corel Draw Suite 7. I use it a lot in combination with Photoshop 7 and Painter IX. I started out using the Corel Programs and still prefer them to Photoshop although it has its good points too :)

Mairéad 

 

here's just an example of where to find the collapse tool for merging layers.

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"Live life like a fantasy. Reality is only in your mind!" - Fabledgoat

You make a lot of good points especially since so many people obviously create such great images with photoshop.  I'm having a real black spot at the moment and the pictures just aren't coming.  I'm finding adjusting to the different style of painting really hard as well.

 re. why buy a mac?  Well, I've never had one and I wanted something a bit more powerful than what I have to handle large image files (especially vector graphics) and will support two monitors (when I can eventually afford a second one).  The mac is also hailed quite highly in the designer world and photoshop et al are associated quite strongly with the mac.  Since I wanted CS3 anyway, it made sense to buy it with a mac.  Actually I got a mac pro (sweeeeet) with wireless keyboard and mouse.  The mouse has the two side buttons but they don't act as a right button (and they are quite hard to squeeze).  I'm getting around the mac but its really just a different way of doing the same thing.  I like the mac and I like the pc.  I don't think I'll get another mac though since they are bitterly over priced.

 re. tutorials.  Thanks for this mention.  I will definitely use them.  Give Katze a bit of space before I bombard her with questions.  haha.  I'm afraid I'm just so new still that I don't even know how to make a brush.  Infact, I can't even find a brush that is just either a solid dot or a dot with faded edges.  The most basic of shapes and I can't figure out how to get a hold of it.  doh!

 

 

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I asked the teddy, 'do you feel lucky punk?, well, do you?'. meow.

just a note on the price, they're actually not THAT pricey when you take into account what you get with them. yes, they are more expensive than a lot of PCs. The myth of PC vs Mac pricing has actually started to fade in recent years with comparisons.

Also, iMac's now are VERY powerful mac critters at a decent price.

If you got a Mac Pro then you've definitely decked out with some of the best and the price does come with that. I would have actually recommended the higher end iMacs. Enough power for most designers / illustrators but at a fraction of the cost.

 

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"Live life like a fantasy. Reality is only in your mind!" - Fabledgoat