Painter 6 :: Possible Machine Problem

[xbrotherx]

I am fairly new to digital painting so bear with me please.

I am running Painter 6 with a Wacom Intuos pad on a PIII 500Mhz box with 392MBs RAM.

I completed one painting using the Smeary Round paint brush all on one layer and had minimal problems. But now I am in the midst of working on another piece and unless I put full force to the pen I get this aqua/purple/blue pixely crap on the canvas where the brush tip is placed before the actual color starts to flow out.

Does that make since? I have my canvas set to Wet Paint and the particular color I am using is a peachy flesh color.

Has anyone ever experienced this? Is this a weak machine problme, bad tablet, what?

On another note, and I can gues this is because of my current computer configuration, i can make a stroke on a 800dpi painting and get a delayed reaction on the canvas. I figure that is just because of lack of sufficient RAM and CPU speed but I am not sure. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[jester]

I have almost the same configuration (PIII 500 MHz, 512 MB RAM and Painter 6) and sometimes encounter the same problems. They are almost never reproducable. I even managed to work on an A3 size, 600 dpi, 25+ layers pic rather safely (safe often!), and bang! suddenly the effect you describe occurs. I guess it's a buggy code.

Jester

[Jin]

Hi,

When you get that ugly beginning on your brushstroke, try making one brushstroke, then using Undo. Then following brushstrokes may be normal. This has worked for me and I hope it will work for you as well.

Other important things you should know:


Painter 6, 7, and 8 have a file that stores brush information to make brush building faster (Painter has to build the brush before you can use it).

NOTE: This file has nothing to do with temporarily saved user settings, by the way. In Painter 7 and Painter 8, those are saved in the cached variant, an .XML file for which the file name is the same as the default .XML brush variant file but the file name is preceded by "c_".

Back to the file that stores brush information to make brush building faster:

The file name is Pre-built Brush File (below I'll refer to it as the "PBF") and the file is found in the following locations:

Painter 6 main folder

Painter 7 > Brushes folder

Painter 8 > Brushes folder

Depending on which brush variants have been used and how complex they are, the "PBF" can grow large very quickly (Impasto variants are an example but there are others) and negatively affect Painter's performance.

After an hour or so, save your file (use Save As) in Painter's native RIFF format, close Painter, and delete the "PBF". Painter will automatically regenerate the file the next time Painter is opened. Before you delete the file, though, take note of its size and try to remember generally which brush variants you were using. After a while, you'll begin to know how frequently you need to close Painter and delete the "PBF".

While you're working, try to develop an awareness of Painter's behavior and whenever it begins to behave strangely, save your file, close Painter, and delete the "PBF".

If that doesn't help, and sometimes Painter will continue to behave strangely, also reboot.

If you're working with large images and/or lots of Layers, this too can affect Painter's performance as will adding too many custom brush variants to the default Painter brush library or any of the Art Materials libraries, like Papers, Patterns, etc. Learn to create your own custom libraries and store custom items in them, then load your custom libraries as needed, keeping the default libraries in their original condition.

The Painter Scripts library, Painter.ssd (Windows) or Painter Script Data (Mac) can also be a problem and it can be deleted once Painter is closed and Painter will generate a new, empty Scripts library the next time Painter is opened.

In Edit > Preferences > General, lower the number of days Painter Auto-Saves scripts. This will keep your Scripts library smaller.

In Edit > Preferences > Undo, lower the number of Undo's if you have it set to the maximum 32, as that takes up memory too.


Do regular system maintenance:

Run ScanDisk and Defrag at least once a week, more often if necessary. Delete temp files and browser cache frequently.

[jester]

Thank you, Jin, I didn't know about the PBF thing!

Jester

[Jin]

jester,

TIP:

When you talk to people about this file, you'll probably be understood better if you spell it out: Pre-built Brush File and use initial caps so it will look like what people see in their file manager.

I just get tired of typing the whole name over and over in the same message. Thus the "PBF" after I typed the whole name one time.

;)

[jester]

Sure, I was irritated myself when I was looking for a *PBF file :D and only after re-reading your post saw that there was a file with the complete name!

Jester

[Jin]

Oh-oh!

Guess I'd better take my own advice and spell the darned thing out every time.

Glad you figgered it out, jester.