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View Full Version : What's your favorite digital program to paint with?

So-naa
April 25th, 2009, 05:32 AM
I knew it was a possibility that people would say " Paint " hehe. So I ask which digital program do you like to paint with? What tools? Do you custom make yours?
Kiera
April 25th, 2009, 07:39 AM
Open canvas 1 for quick line sketches and because of networking
No program does lines like OC 1.

Sai painter because it is small, quick, easy to understand, mixes/blends colors in cool ways with a nice brush engine aaand it has the best hotkeys so that the flow is perfect <3
Dile_
April 25th, 2009, 09:54 AM
art-rage and photoshop :} just work with any program and eventually you'll learn to customize it to your liking... there are a lot of programs

Adobe Elements
Adobe Photoshop
Alias Sketchbook
ArtRage
ArtWeaver
Corel Sketchpad
Corel Painter
Corel Essentials
and more..!


corel painter and Adobe Photoshop are probably the most common used.. but also the most expensive.
jakobweiq
April 25th, 2009, 10:04 AM
seriously... photoshop

but on-and off i will use

painterX
Artrage
OpenCanvas
Twelve
April 25th, 2009, 10:10 AM
Photoshop mainly. But I really want to get into the swing of learning how to use Painter X.
l33t fl33t
April 25th, 2009, 10:28 AM
Just a quick off topic question to those of you who use PS - how do you make up for the lack of a good arbitrary, non-damaging rotate feature in Photoshop?
Farvus
April 25th, 2009, 12:01 PM
Photoshop for painting. OpenCanvas for quick sketches.
Black Spot
April 25th, 2009, 12:14 PM
DrawPlus, PhotoPlus and Dogwaffle.
So-naa
April 26th, 2009, 02:26 AM
art-rage and photoshop :} just work with any program and eventually you'll learn to customize it to your liking... there are a lot of programs

Adobe Elements
Adobe Photoshop
Alias Sketchbook
ArtRage
ArtWeaver
Corel Sketchpad
Corel Painter
Corel Essentials
and more..!


corel painter and Adobe Photoshop are probably the most common used.. but also the most expensive.


There's none that you prefer more over others for certain pieces?
I was asking kind of a personal preference. Also are there any custom brushes you would share? Or important features to tweak for brushes for corel and adobe?
Mostly I haven't really customized that much because I don't know what direction to customize toward?
Dile_
April 26th, 2009, 06:27 AM
yeah i misunderstood the question a bit... i basically just use artrage and photoshop.. i like the simple yet super-cool brush-system in Art-rage.. and i like the speed of photoshop ( a lot of tools, and very customizeable )

but as i said... just use any tools and after using it a long time.. you'll know what you want to customize.. don't just customize for the sake of customizing... ;} for example... in the beginning i used the original layout in photoshop for keyboard shortcuts... Now all the tools i know i use more than the others.. are set close to the left-side of the keyboard so i can get it while i work on the wacom.. :]
Maidith
April 26th, 2009, 07:25 AM
So I ask which digital program do you like to paint with?

Photoshop ftw! :)

What tools?

Brushes, eraser, layers, lasso, colors

Do you custom make yours?

Just brushes. Sometimes.
Lolkatten
April 26th, 2009, 07:37 AM
Just a quick off topic question to those of you who use PS - how do you make up for the lack of a good arbitrary, non-damaging rotate feature in Photoshop?

Oh, there is one, in CS4 at least. You should be able to access it by right clicking on the Hand Tool and selecting Rotate View tool, or with the hotkey R.

First post here, by the way :) . Been lurking.
l33t fl33t
April 26th, 2009, 08:05 AM
Oh, there is one, in CS4 at least. You should be able to access it by right clicking on the Hand Tool and selecting Rotate View tool, or with the hotkey R.


Is it like the one in OpenCanvas? Or is it the damaging type?
Collywobbles
April 26th, 2009, 08:19 AM
I use the Gimp and sometimes Alchemy. The most important tool is the eraser, just like in traditional.
Mischie
April 26th, 2009, 09:27 AM
Photoshop and a bit of alchemy. I mostly do a quick water color comp and scan it , then build up from that scan. I copy some of that texture and brush strokes and warp pieces of it, sometimes I clone stamp it, change the color balance of some of the pieces. Some of my brushes are custom made from scans of straight short water color and acrylic brush strokes.
So-naa
April 26th, 2009, 02:39 PM
What's Alchemy? I couldn't really find it with a general search?
l33t fl33t
April 26th, 2009, 02:59 PM
What's Alchemy? I couldn't really find it with a general search?

I do believe they're referring to this:

http://al.chemy.org/

It's somewhat hard to find it, given that every other software is called Alchemy...

EDIT: You'll need to subscribe to download the software. As a side note, I don't know what the big deal is with this software...
Grief
April 26th, 2009, 03:28 PM
macpaint 1.0
http://www.sapdesignguild.org/community/IMAGES/MacPaint.gif

:^^:
So-naa
April 27th, 2009, 03:06 AM
That alchemy thing has possibilities in jogging the creative muscle :)
Thanks for linking it.
idoru
April 27th, 2009, 01:17 PM
GIMP! It's free, at this point it's actually GOOD (a year or so ago it was just so much garbage) and it'll run on Linux. Yes!
Portus
April 27th, 2009, 03:21 PM
Paint Tool Sai is my favorite, it's not perfect and is missing tons of tools but at least it's light, loads fast, has a great if not the best interface, can rotate and zoom at any level and the quality never degrades, never crashes and it's reliable (never corrupted a file) plus it only costed 32 Euros.
So-naa
April 28th, 2009, 12:45 AM
Paint Tool Sai is my favorite, it's not perfect and is missing tons of tools but at least it's light, loads fast, has a great if not the best interface, can rotate and zoom at any level and the quality never degrades, never crashes and it's reliable (never corrupted a file) plus it only costed 32 Euros.

:) OH I like it too. I like the simpleness too.
So-naa
April 28th, 2009, 12:47 AM
Photoshop and a bit of alchemy. I mostly do a quick water color comp and scan it , then build up from that scan. I copy some of that texture and brush strokes and warp pieces of it, sometimes I clone stamp it, change the color balance of some of the pieces. Some of my brushes are custom made from scans of straight short water color and acrylic brush strokes.

Ah that's pretty awsome to take scans of your brush strokes:)
Jovian M
April 28th, 2009, 10:00 AM
Photoshop. Painter, once in awhile. Open Canvas is good for jamming with friends. Mm.
So-naa
April 29th, 2009, 10:57 AM
Thanks!
Jason Ross
April 29th, 2009, 02:14 PM
I use the Gimp and sometimes Alchemy. The most important tool is the eraser, just like in traditional.

I love Alchemy...Thanks a lot!

Oh and I use Painter and Photoshop...and now Alchemy...man that program is awesome.
Nickillus
April 30th, 2009, 01:40 PM
Sketchbook Pro 2010 is great for sketching, and much improved by the new abillity to make custom brushes from dab samples. It has a really fluid workflow and lovely touch.
Much more possible to take an image to full colour all the way now, so long as you don't miss layer blending modes (which it still lacks)

ArtRage is about to launch its version3. It's in Beta2 at the moment. I like and use version 2.5 a lot already and the new tools and interface bump ups purported to be in the pipeline are only likely to make that more the case. An amazing bit of kit for the paltry pricetag. Really nice bunch to deal with if you talk to them on their Ambient forums too.

Painter is my fall back position. I love its soft oil pastels, tinting brushes and 'just add water'. Version 11 has a bunch of new 'dry media' brushes that are reputedly pretty damned good, but I've not had the chance to test that one out yet? Still better than ArtRage by a country mile at handling large, multi layered files. Just avoid the infuruatingly slow watercolour and bristled brushes and you won't have to tear any hair out at all.

Photoshop holds no joy for me as a painting tool, but boy is it indispensible for any reliable layer management and processing.
That said, I refuse to sell the house to afford an upgrade to any of the bloated CS versions (I'm a UK dweller and Adobe sting us doubley hard - ouch) Version 7 does for me.
PhotoPlus lurks on my machine with PhotoZoom tied into it - And Sumo lurks online for free.

DrawPlusX2 handles any of the rare bits of vector I may need. Never did develop a liking for Illustrator. Found it very unintuitive.

Yup, I have looked at Dogwaffle, Open Canvas, Artweaver and Twisted Brush. Software like RealDraw is pretty cool too. Just happier with the above selelction for the moment.
So-naa
May 2nd, 2009, 05:06 PM
Hm dab samples? I've heard of that but never really knew the whole scoop on that. Is there any thread on that?

I guess the cs version ( which i'm learning now) has made a short cut out of a lot of the old processes, where you had to do 5-6 things. Like the patch tool and healing brush, which used to be selecting, copy and past, then some adjustments and then copying the surrounding area to blend it in.. So it's kinda neat but now I feel like I'm cheating LOL.

What's Sumo?
Nickillus
May 2nd, 2009, 06:21 PM
Sumo Paint (http://www.sumopaint.com/web/#/home/)

It's an online photo/editor/paint software - Free, woohoo. I've heard good things about it, but never had the time to really try it out.
AdventDawn
May 2nd, 2009, 06:32 PM
anybody hear anything or have tried this pixelmator?

http://www.pixelmator.com
FLenG
May 2nd, 2009, 07:59 PM
Paint Tool Sai, OpenCanvas 1.0 (too bad it don't work properly when you're on dual screen) Photoshop CS , and CS2 (CS4 aint got image ready no more what da fudgeeeeee) and of course Painter IX.5 until I recently changed to Painter X.5 , can't live without it :(.
So-naa
May 2nd, 2009, 08:02 PM
Ah! Thanks Nick, Sumo is pretty neat!! I'll have to try it some more!

Dawn, Not sure. it does have a try it before you buy demo?
So-naa
May 2nd, 2009, 08:03 PM
FLEn♥ I didn't notices that.. No image ready?? I wonder why?!
Strela
May 6th, 2009, 10:14 AM
Photoshop. I really like the brushes in Painter but I don't really have a good workflow in it and I get the feeling it's not as polished as pshop. My style is basically an airbrush/frisket cutting style, or a marker sketching style, and pshop is better for both of those.

Maybe I can figure out a way to integrate the two, alt-tabbing and loading/saving a document.
So-naa
May 6th, 2009, 02:25 PM
Painter seems to take more to get comfortable in I think.. So many options..
I see it do incredible things, but I see a lot of people doing photoshop a lot because of more simple controls when it comes to brushes.
Nickillus
May 6th, 2009, 03:04 PM
That's odd So-Naa. I find it the other way round. Photoshop feels all techy to me, while Painter feels more real media, and I find it much more responsive. Bet that has a lot to do with finding it first though. I've just never got on with PS as a painting tool. Great for other stuff, which Painter sucks at though.

You want simple - Have a look at the new Sketchbook Pro. It's no competition for Photoshop's power, but if you just want a straightforward drawing and painting tool that's really responsive and has a great workflow . . . . . . Superb for sketching at the very least. OK, I'll admit to liking it. Using it every single day at the moment.