Corel is now listening. Post your Painter wishlist here!

[Lunatique]

Thanks to Jinny Brown's referral, I've managed to open up direct dialogue with Corel's Program Manager, and I've got her full attention. She wants to know what the most prolific professionals such as yourselves feel/think about Painter 8, or Painter in general. This is your chance to be heard, by the person that makes decisions. No red tape, no B.S. Step up, the mic is on.

[Jason Manley]

here is some info....

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=50


j

[Lunatique]

Yes, I already forwarded all of them to Corel, and they've heard. But this wishlist should be for everything you've ever wanted in Painter, not just specific to Painter 8.

[Roam]

I think an interesting feature would be if we could somehow scan our own paper into the program, and it gets converted to an actual canvas we can paint on, mimicking the actual paper material scanned in.

[Fozzybar]

...don't know if this already is fixed in Painter 8...but i missed a compability to photoshop's layer-groups (don't know the word...like a directory for your layers)...

[Steve Green]

Well...

OK, a few suggestions from the viewpoint of using Painter to create maps for 3D models. It's more a wishlist for usability rather than the painting side of things, which (speed of large brushes apart) is pretty good.

1. It would be very handy if Painter could save out TGA files with alpha channels (PNG would be useful as well)

At the moment I have to save as PSD, take them into Photoshop and flatten them, then save it. Or paint any alpha in Photoshop.


2. Being able to permanently rotate the canvas 90 degrees for non square canvas.

3. The ability to non-uniform rescale a canvas.


4. I can't find a way to do this, so I'm presuming they've been removed - but please reinstate tear-off custom palettes for brushes/paper etc.

5. The ability to resize dialogues palettes. Dual screens are becoming more affordable, and it would be helpful to be able to make more use of them. The colour wheel seems very small now.

Thanks,

Steve

[sandman]

Here is a suggestion;

The brush creator is okay as it goes, but it currently acts more like a stand alone application. What I would like to see is the brush creator palette leaving as it is, but an extra button adding to the brush selector bar which will open a duplicate drop down of the left hand side of the brush creator palette. The brush controls drop down in the brush selector bar would be opened and closed via clicking the button. This way, brush adjustments can be made more conveniently without having to keep switching from the existing brush creator palette and back to the canvas (and in a similar way to Painter 7's brush controls).

I don't know anything about programming, but I'm assuming that the button would act as an alias to access existing code already incorporated into Painter 8 as part of the brush creator palette. Below is a picture of what I envisage the modified brush selector bar could look like (with controls button pressed once to display the drop down menu);

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.gell/pics/Add_Brush_Controls.jpg

David

[Jin]

Originally posted by Roam
I think an interesting feature would be if we could somehow scan our own paper into the program, and it gets converted to an actual canvas we can paint on, mimicking the actual paper material scanned in.

Roam,

If I understand what you're saying, you can already do that.

Scan the paper and that image can be your Canvas.

or...

Scan the Paper, capture it as a Paper, open a new Canvas, and with the new Paper selected, paint with Grainy brushes or use Effects > Surface Control > Apply Surface Texture.

or...

Scan the Paper, open a new Canvas, in the File > Clone Source menu, check the scanned Paper file name, and using, for instance, the Impasto's Grain Emboss variant set to Draw to: Color and Depth, Depth Method: Original Luminance, paint to add texture to the Canvas or Layer. (You could, alternatively, set Depth Method: Paper, providing you've captured the Paper and it's the current Paper.)

If none of the above address your wish, how about explaining it in more detail, so Tanya willl understand what you mean?

[Steve Green]

A few more suggestions

1.I would like Corel to take a look at Max or Maya and the way they use quad menus when you click and hold down on an icon (or right click in there case)

In Painter, some of the toolbar icons fly out when you click on them, but the shortcuts at the bottom of the bar expand, but then you need to manually scroll down, and pick the paper (or whatever) again.

What would be simpler (IMHO) is to have the pen highlight the selection and auto scroll, since it would be one action rather than two.


2.I would also like them to fix the problem with adjusting brightness and contrast/equalising an image on freehand selection. What happens at the moment is that the bounding box gets adjusted.


3. It would make more sense if the same keyboard shortcut for the canvas (Alt) could be used to pick up colours from the mixing palette.

Thanks,

Steve

[sandman]

I always liked the idea of having a small floating magnified window which displayed the area around the cursor whist painting, rather than having to keep zooming in and out.

Up until recently, I had tried various shareware magnification utilities, but the brush strokes in the magnifying window aways seemed to lag behind the canvas brush stroke. I then found one which exhibited no noticable time lag, so I could view the brush stroke in sync with that on canvas click here (http://www.bubblepop.com/coloristic/)

The above utility sems to have some software conflicts on my Mac (O.S 10.2.5) causing some of the coloristic features not to function. I can however right click over the magnification window to change magnifications on the fly by means of a contextual menu (1,2,4,8,16 and 42x).

My suggestion is to incorporate a feature like this into Painter 8, but with an added extra which will allow the magnification window to automatically convert to a 'floating colour chip' as colours are picked. ie, as the cursor/ eye dropper moves over the standard colour picker palette, mixing palette or colour set, the window is completely filled with the colour under the curser. As soon as the stylus is lifted away and back to the canvas, the floating window reverts back to magnification mode. The colour chip feature would allow an enlarged and direct comparitive view betwen picked colour and adjacent colours already on the canvas. The floating window could also be dragged to a second monitor screen perhaps.

Below is a demo. There would in reality only be one floating window present;

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.gell/pics/Coloristic_Demo.jpg

David

[Dan Milligan]

I like the new interface.

I wish "method" and "sub-catagory" were on the control strip and not just in the Brush Creator. I like to change these settings on the fly and going into the brush creator breaks up the speed and rhythm found in the old interface.(resat,bleed and jitter are. why not these?)

The lasso tool can be inaccurate.(hang over from Painter 7

Rotating a layer causes it to soften or blur. (I'm not talking about rotating the canvas.)

P.S.
I'm working in OSX 10.2.6

Thanks for listening

[Aaross]

I agree with Mr Milligan. The interface is much nicer. How about a preview on the distort command so you can see the distort before you commit (like Photoshop). Also, I can't make "restore varient" a customized key like I could in P7- a small point but one I was fond of using.

[sandman]

Originally posted by Aaross
Also, I can't make "restore varient" a customized key like I could in P7- a small point but one I was fond of using.

I'll second that. I always set F2 to 'restore default variant'. This link to a function key is not do-able in Painter 8. I can access restore default variant using the brushes contextual menu (right click) though, but I miss that button click :(

David

[Vin]

I always seem to have a problem with the Painter [7 or 8] program lagging. I have over a gig of ram and dual prossesors, however when I try to use a brush bigger then 4.3 [smooth camel hair/oils] I get a message saying there isn't enough memory to preform...what gives?

[Dan Milligan]

Amen brothers,

Make "restore varient" function key programable! A preview on "distort" would be great also.

[Steve Green]

For those of us using Painter to create textures, it would be useful to be able to separate out the Impasto/Thick variants so that the value used for the impasto look can be saved out as a separate image for use as a bump map in a 3D program.

Thanks,

Steve

[sandman]

In the 'size' section of the brush creator>stroke designer, I would like to see a bounding box around the currently selected brush profile icon.

Also, I would like the option not to treat the canvas colour as a colour for the purposes of blending. i.e, if I lay another colour on a white canvas, I want the applied media colour to thin and become more transparent whilst smudging, not mixing with the white. In other words, for the canvas to be colour fast.

David

[mime]

what i would love to see is :

* fusion mode not only for layers as it is right now (multiply, color, saturation, etc)
but also for single brush, like in photoshop. I know for now we already have buildup, cover, etc ... but some hard light, soft light, color, saturation, etc ... would be lovely

* pattern tools
i love the pattern chalk brush and the variations of it, but i think too bad that pattern brushes only react by following the movement of the strokes (ie : the pattern is always perpendicular to the line of the stroke)
I would LOVE to be able to use pattern chalk like the palette knife for example, to be able to assign the orientation to bearing, tilt, and not only to the stroke direction ...
and also, the circles happening with pattern tools, and brush using the stroke direction is really annoying sometimes, if you slow down your stroke too much, it starts doing those annoying circles ...

*zoom
please fix the ctrl + and ctrl - zoom, i know we can set the % steps of the zoom in the preferences, but it is only linked to the alt+space bare shortcut, not with ctrl + and ctrl -.
Zoom is much more efficient in photoshop, where the values are fixed
12.5% 25% 33% 50% 66% 100% 200% 300%
it is quicker and more time effective, and if you need another zoom value you can always use the ctrl+space bar and select the area where to zoom with a box.
and also i find the quality of the zoom less accurate than in photoshop.

*random paper texture
the option to have the paper texture works at random for every stroke doesnt work with the pattern chalk and some other tools ...
with classic dry medias it works fine (ie location of paper grain moves at every stroke) but with the pattern chalk, even if i check the random option, the paper stay always at the same position ...

*the brush used in the mixer palette
I love this brush ... but i cant at all find how to reproduce it to paint, it is in the mixer palette and only there ... I tried to do experiments with the sargent brush, and other brushes, but no methods or tweak create a brush working similar. Why have you created a new brush for the mixer palette, and not having it usable to simply paint ... ?


thanxs for this wonderful program, but i hope some of this issues will be looked at :)

[Pat Duke]

I'd like to preface my post by saying this is clear and away the best version of Painter yet. Some additions/fixes I'd like to see:

1) Save bug still exists. For instance: if you save a file once, modify it, begin the save dialogue (command s) and then cancel it, the modified file overwrites the previous version. But I cancelled! How does this bug continually make it past beta checkers?

2) Calligraphic brush on/off. Painter automatically assumes that in most brush types the angle of the stroke should follow the angle of the direction of the stroke. Most of the time this is highly desirable, however there are times it is not. For instance: painting with the scratchboard tool at 50% opacity. As you move the brush around, the inside of the stroke displays artifacting from the angle change. If this could be turned off this would answer one of the more pressing needs of Photoshop painters as well: a direct add Photoshop emulating brush.

3) Please bring back the custom palettes. Make them dockable, even! I can live without the other interface tweaks (patterns in my menus, the ability to change the main documents background color) but the custom palettes were a real timesaver. The brush tracker, while cool, is no substitute.

4) Minor interface bugs. There are some minor interface bugs now. The toolbox occasionally renders with a line through the bottom Patterns and Weaves selector, as if the window was supposed to only include the upper two Gradiants and Paper selectors. This happens rarely, and it's merely cosmetic, but I've seen it two or three times. Second: the dockable brush selector in the upper right hand corner disappears occasionally. This also happens rarely, but you miss it dearly because when it's gone work comes to a halt.

5) Smear brushes on layers can produce a shimmering effect when set to default and pick up underlying colors is on. Utterly annoying and possibly uncorrectable. Just FYI.

6) Digital Watercolors can degrade color information. Under certain settings (usually the absense of grain) applying digital watercolors to an image will cause it to develop a posterized look. I like the fact that the digital watercolor information is on it's own watercolor layer and operates similar to the old Painter 6 watercolor brush... but I'm really missing the old "Clear Water Color Layer" menu option. As it stands, if you severely mess something up with Digital Watercolors your only option to remove it is to paint over with white.

7) The new XML definitions are cool, but is having 3 seperate files to define a brush necessary? This means exchanging brushes (the primary reason behind making them XML files to begin with?) more difficult. Why was there no Painter 7->Painter 8 brush importing utility? And for that matter, why do the Painter 7 brushes on the second install CD not function properly in Painter 8? Minor quibbles, to be sure, but annoying ones for people with a large library of custom brushes requiring conversion. Also, there's apparently been an alteration in the Pressure Scale setting under brush tracking. When I finally recreated some of my custom brushes in Painter 8, they didn't function the same. It took a good while to realize why --a heads up in the readme would have been nice and prevented a LOT of frustration to some artists. Thanks for finally making Painter save brush tracking settings between sessions.

8) I rarely mess with it, but friends have been reporting that color managment doesn't always load properly.

9) The new color mixing palette is great. I love the tools. Please include XML files for those brushes so I can use them on the canvas as well!

10) I'm curious as to the reason for the exclusion of third party packaged plug-in support being dropped. Frankly, I rarely used them so I'm not missing the functionality. But for some people it can be an issue.

11) Enhanced animation capabilities. I know this isn't Painter's strongest sell point, but the animation capabilities of Painter have remained unchanged since their inception. How about the ability to dynamically change visible levels of onion-skinning on the fly? Or even updating the frame stack menu a bit so it's consistant with the rest of the floating palettes; I'd love to be able to just turn it off --but it stays open all the time. How about the ability to change the frame preview icon sizes, or even the ability turn them off.

12) Thanks for improving the magic wand tool. I'd like to see the lasso tool with the ability to anchor, much as if I were to push the alt key with Photoshop's lasso tool. I know Painter has other methods to accomplish this (shapes being a good example) but they're all cumbersome.

13) Color Sets palette issues. The last row of color chips on the right side of the color sets palette can literally be covered up by edge of the window without them being forced to realign to the bottom row. Minor annoyance.

14) Ability to move the origin X Y position of paper textures. Right now, this can't be done. The first time I realized you could grab and scroll paper textures I thought this would shift the grain pattern so I could go over the same area and not get the exact same grain. The ability to move this would allow you to get far more mileage out of the same paper textures.

15) LZW compression support for saves. Prepress guys like myself have to save tifs. As it stands, we have to rely on Photoshop to compress them now. I'm guessing the logic behind supporting LZW compression for opening files is tied to Photoshop's annoying tendency to automatically compress certain file types. Would enabling it for saving incure a liscensing issue?

16) Additional file type support. I'd suggest at least the ability to save targa formatted files. Maybe PNG support too?

17) Preservation of Photoshop file comments. Resaving Photoshop files automatically deletes file comments, bylines, copyright info, etc. Giving Painter the ability to read those might be nice too.

That's all I can think off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more; if I think of them I'll append this post.

-Pat

[linK]

I'm playing with the demo now, but I noticed that in Painter 7, the program would save the 5 recently used brushes. I really liked that and wish Painter 8 had it.

[sandman]

In the right hand brush creator 'test' window, I would like a menu option to create a test canvas of two or four different colours (split horizontally and/or vertically down the canvas centre line).

This would enable me to test blending and plugin brushes which do not add colour to the canvas, but rather act upon existing colour.

It is possible to do this by first selecting a cover brush variant and then switching back and forth between the colour palette in order to prepare the test canvas, but this is long winded and as soon as hit the clear button I'm back to a white canvas. I then have to re-colour the canvas before brush trial can recommence.

David

[Philippe]

Originally posted by sandman
I always liked the idea of having a small floating magnified window which displayed the area around the cursor whist painting, rather than having to keep zooming in and out.


If you install the Developer Tools (free from Apple) for MacOSX, there is a utility called "Pixie" that does what you are asking for.

Works great, I use it all the time instead of squinting at the screen when arranging details on the screen.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by linK
I'm playing with the demo now, but I noticed that in Painter 7, the program would save the 5 recently used brushes. I really liked that and wish Painter 8 had it.

The Tracker palette gives you similar functionality, it saves the last 25 brushes.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by Pat Duke

2) Calligraphic brush on/off.

6) Digital Watercolors can degrade color information.

7) The new XML definitions are cool, but is having 3 seperate files to define a brush necessary?

10) I'm curious as to the reason for the exclusion of third party packaged plug-in support being dropped.



2) If I'm not mistaken, you can set how the angle of the pen affects the brush. Check the "Expression" popup menus in the Brush Creator.

6) Painter 6 watercolor was, in fact, its own layer on the canvas. Digital watercolor affects everything on a normal layer (as you have noticed). You can create a new layer and only paint with digital watercolor there, acheiving the same effect. There are commands for drying the digital water on the current layer...

7) Only the XML file is essential to the brush; that's what you can send to others to share your brushes. The ".stk" and ".nib" files are created on the fly, they are the stroke and nib previews, respectively.

10) Packaged plug-ins are not supported because they would require supporting Photoshop 6+ functionality. Painter only supports the Photoshop 3 functions, if I remember correctly. It's a significant job to implement the application-side support for Photoshop plugins...

hth, Philippe

[Philippe]

Originally posted by sandman
In the right hand brush creator 'test' window, I would like a menu option to create a test canvas of two or four different colours (split horizontally and/or vertically down the canvas centre line).


The canvas can only have one color, as you have noticed. I suggest that you create a file with your favorite color smears, and use it as a scratchpad by putting it next to the Brush Creator. When you are done testing your brushes, simply revert the file to start over.

Philippe

[sandman]

Thanks for the work around Philippe ;)

I'll check out that 'Pixie' utiliy you mentioned too.

David

[mun]

thank god painter 8 changed its layout, the old one took up soooo much real estate on the screen.

what I would like to see in a future version is a HSV slider bar. So I can make minute changes incrementally like in Photoshop. I find manipulating the little color picker in the color wheel annoying since it jumps a bit before you actually start dragging.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by mun
what I would like to see in a future version is a HSV slider bar. So I can make minute changes incrementally like in Photoshop. I find manipulating the little color picker in the color wheel annoying since it jumps a bit before you actually start dragging.

That feature already exists in Painter 8: just open the "Color Info" window (if you haven't already done so), and click on the black triangle in the top-left. Select "Display as HSV" in the popup menu, and voilà! HSV sliders :)

Philippe

[mun]

phillipe, oops.

I wuz hasty. Thanks a bunch for pointng that out. I like it even more now. U da man!!

[Jack]

I'd like to see the return of the custom palettes.
Also, in the brush tracker, I'd like to see the brushes
retain the color used with each one. As it is now, if I change colors with different brushes, and then go back to a previous brush, it uses the current color instead of the color used originally.

[mun]

Painter 8 potential problems

1. No Polygon lasso selection tool. hmm
yes there is a pen tool that can convert to selection but making selections with interior cutouts is a pain. YOu have to save the selcetions then minus tehm individually.
Also, there is no option to have no fill when drawing with the pen. makes it difficult to adjust the shape when you can't see the artwork underneath.

2, when painting with oils or whatever within a selection, it still pickes up color outside the mask. Its a mask. shouldn't it block it?

3. when painting on a new layer, why is the background color mixing in as wet paint with the brush strokes? The background should be dry. Is there a workaround?

[Paulo]

I don't know you guys, but I wish that Painter gave me the option (as Photoshop gives me) to hide the title bar and even the menu bar, to save working space. Every pixel counts, doesn't it? I don't think this is a request that requires too much reprogramming!

While it doesn't happen, do someone know any tweak software that let me hide the title bar of a given application in Windows? I've been looking for it for some time now, but can't find one.

always liked the idea of having a small floating magnified window which displayed the area around the cursor whist painting, rather than having to keep zooming in and out.

If you install the Developer Tools (free from Apple) for MacOSX, there is a utility called "Pixie" that does what you are asking for.

Anyone know of a similar utility for Windows? I love the concept.

Peace and cheers,

Paulo

Cool thread, by the way.

[sandman]

always liked the idea of having a small floating magnified window which displayed the area around the cursor whist painting, rather than having to keep zooming in and out.

If you install the Developer Tools (free from Apple) for MacOSX, there is a utility called "Pixie" that does what you are asking for.


Anyone know of a similar utility for Windows? I love the concept.

Peace and cheers,

Paulo

There are five Windows magnifier apps. listed here (http://www.versiontracker.com/mp/new_search.m?productDB=win&mode=Quick&OS_Filter=Windows&search=magnifier&x=13&y=8) Paulo.

I currently use the Mac version of Coloristic, which works without noticeable time lag, but can freeze if I try to change some of the magnifier settings whilst running in conjunction with Painter 8. I normally leave it set at 2X magnification.

Obviously, if you want to follow your brush stroke via the magnified window in 'real time', then you don't want noticeable update differences between the canvas and magnifier window image. That is not to mention brush stroke lagging between stylus and canvas.

David

[Pat Duke]

Phillipe, you're not following me buddy.

2) Calligraphic brushes just can't be turned off, hence the internal stroke artifacting on certain brushes. (see diagram) No expression setting can change this.

6) Digital Watercolors degrade color information when applied at less than 100% pressure. (see diagram) You can get extreme color banding. This is especially noticable when the grain setting is set to 0. Despite what you claim, digital watercolors tools CAN'T can't be used on a seperate layer. You'll get a "Only watercolor brushes can be used on a Water Color layers." error message. Digital Watercolor tools apply on the background layer only, but they exist on a seperate Mystery layer which can't be accessed in the layer menu and is independent from the normal watercolor layers.

http://www.patduke.com/images/painterproblems.jpg

This is only a quick example of the banding; it can be a lot more severe.

The only 2 controls you have over the digital watercolor layer are Dry/Diffuse Digital Watercolors. That's it. The entire background can be LIFTED to a watercolor layer, but not the independent digital watercolor layer by itself. Sadly, if you lift the entire background onto its own watercolor layer it automatically drys the Mystery watercolor layer onto the background BEFORE it lifts. A dialog box warning might be nice there, or better yet the ability to let the Mystery layer remain discreet and undried.

You also say there are commands to dry digital watercolors on a layer. As I pointed out earlier, digital watercolor tools can't even be used on a layer, let alone dried there. You can dry normal watercolor tools on the watercolor layer, but I'm not refering to them. The re-mplementation of digital watercolor tools is a welcome feature in Painter 9, but still not fully realized.

7) [cut and paste from the Painter 8 readme file] If you create custom brushes and wish to share them with other users, you must provide them with the .xml file, the .jpeg file (if it is a captured dab brush only), the .nib file, and the .stk file. For example, if you wish to share the Pencil variant, you must provide users with the Pencil.xml file, Pencil.jpg (if it is a captured dab brush only), Pencil.nib, and Pencil.stk.

8) As for plug-in support, I know WHY Painter can't support them, I'm curious as to Corel's logic in not making this an version 8 priority. This is going to cause some users a severe problem. Industry standard plug-in support is necessary for future expansion and, in some cases, basic functionality. For instance, on the Mac, my scanner requires plug-in support to scan images. Web users rely heavily in plug-in architecture to use 3rd party jpeg compressors (with far more efficient Huffman encoders) for smaller files. The list goes on and on. If you rely on just one plug-in in your workflow, this move DRIVES those users back to Photoshop.

-Pat

[sandman]

Originally posted by Pat Duke
Phillipe, you're not following me buddy.

Despite what you claim, digital watercolors tools CAN'T can't be used on a separate layer. You'll get a "Only watercolor brushes can be used on a Water Color layers." error message. Digital Watercolor tools apply on the background layer only, but they exist on a separate Mystery layer which can't be accessed in the layer menu and is independent from the normal watercolor layers.

-Pat

Pat,

I've just tried digital watercolor on a layer the Mac (Painter 8), and they do seem to work. You may have been trying to use the digital watercolor brushes on a watercolor layer as opposed to a default layer. It is perhaps a poor choice of terminology on Corel's part, as all the watercolor brushes in Painter 8 are technically digital. Only brushes from the 'water color' category though, can be used on the 'water color layer'. Digital watercolor brushes have two options in the layers menu, to either dry or diffuse 'digital' water color.

What happened was that many users requested the return of the Painter 6 water colors which were changed in Painter 7. In version 8, the version 7 water color engine remains (a little speeded up perhaps), and a new 'digital' water color brush engine was added similar (but not exactly the same) as Painter 6's.

As you say, the digital water colors form a sort of 'mystery' layer over the canvas or a default layer. I assume that as soon as the option is taken to dry the digital layer, then it is 'bonded' to the default layer or canvas. This can be demonstrated by first painting with the digital water color on the canvas or default layer, then choosing select all>edit>clear>select none. The canvas/layer will appear cleared, but when you re-commence painting with your digital water color again, artifacts will appear. To completely clear the layer or canvas, simply dry the water color first before selecting.

I imagine you should be able to first dry a 'digital watercolor layer, drop it to canvas and then choose 'lift canvas to water color layer'. Once there, you can use brushes from the 'water color' category and also wet and dry entire watercolor layer. Definately scope for experimentation methinks.

David

[Philippe]

Originally posted by Pat Duke

6) Despite what you claim, digital watercolors tools CAN'T can't be used on a seperate layer. You'll get a "Only watercolor brushes can be used on a Water Color layers." error message.

[...]

The re-mplementation of digital watercolor tools is a welcome feature in Painter 9, but still not fully realized.

7) If you create custom brushes and wish to share them with other users, you must provide them with the .xml file, the .jpeg file (if it is a captured dab brush only), the .nib file, and the .stk file.

8) As for plug-in support, I know WHY Painter can't support them, I'm curious as to Corel's logic in not making this an version 8 priority.


2) No comment, I was just trying to help.

6) Digital Watercolor can be used on a new *default* layer (not Watercolor, not Liquid Ink, just default). It's not working on a mystery layer, that was the case in P6. In P8 it interacts with the default layer contents automatically.

I agree that DWC is, in some cases, not as good as P6. However, it seems good enough for the kind of use that was mostly done in P6 (large, pale washes), for which the Tinting brushes were introduced in P7. For some reason, the effect given by Tinting is not as "good" as P6 watercolor.

7) The .jpg is essential in the case of a captured dab brush (and is referred to in the XML file), agreed. But try this: delete every .stk and .nib file in a brush folder. Launch Painter 8. It will recreate all the missing .stk and .nib as soon as you select the brush category. Ergo, the .stk and .nib files can be created from scratch and do not need to be sent along with the XML (and maybe jpg if captured dab).

8) From personal experience, implementing the back-end for plug-ins takes a long, long time because it's essentially reverse-engineered. Corel could have spent that time on plug-ins, or on other features (resources being limited). So I guess they went for the most "bang for the buck".

Philippe

[Philippe]

Originally posted by sandman

As you say, the digital water colors form a sort of 'mystery' layer over the canvas or a default layer.

It's not a mystery layer, it's the default layer. Paint with an Acrylic brush, then with a Digital Watercolor brush. The DWC brush will interact with the previously-deposited Acrylic, in the same manner as it interacts with dried Digital Watercolor. This would not happen if DWC was on a separate layer.

If this effect bothers you, create a new Default layer and do your DWC painting there...

Philippe

[sandman]

Originally posted by Philippe


It's not a mystery layer, it's the default layer. Paint with an Acrylic brush, then with a Digital Watercolor brush. The DWC brush will interact with the previously-deposited Acrylic, in the same manner as it interacts with dried Digital Watercolor. This would not happen if DWC was on a separate layer.

If this effect bothers you, create a new Default layer and do your DWC painting there...

Philippe

I realise that the digital watercolor is not on a seperate layer that is visible to the user, but I would argue that until the digital watercolor is actually dried, then it is not truly 'bonded' to a default layer/canvas, otherwise when I select all>edit>clear>select none, the layer would be completely cleared, but as my experiments revealed, there is still something remaining on the canvas/layer which reveals itself when I recommence painting.

The effect doesn't bother me at all, I just like to try and visualise what is happening so that I can avoid potential problems in the first instance, even though I may not use the correct terminology or be technically correct in my assumptions.

Thanks for the heads up re the .stk and .nib file deletion/auto rebuild. If this is the case, then it is going to save me a lot of server space when I provide version 8 brushes for download. :)

I also noticed that when I delete a variant via the brush selector bar menu, only the .xml file is deleted. The asociated .stk and .nib files (and possibly any associated captured dab jpg) remain behind as orphans. I then have to go and manually delete all these unwanted files from the category folder, which seems very unproductive. :confused:

David

[Markuss]

I would love to have fully user configurable hotkeys. Because I use a norwegian keyboard layout, some of the most important hotkeys doesn't work for me.

For example if you want [ and ] (increase/decrease brushsize) you need to press Alt-Gr on norwegian keyboards, but that brings up the eyedropper tool.

I had the same problem in Photoshop 7, but I actually got a fix from one of Adobe's programmers after nagging them about it on their web board...

[sandman]

Originally posted by Markuss
I would love to have fully user configurable hotkeys. Because I use a norwegian keyboard layout, some of the most important hotkeys doesn't work for me.

For example if you want [ and ] (increase/decrease brushsize) you need to press Alt-Gr on norwegian keyboards, but that brings up the eyedropper tool.

I had the same problem in Photoshop 7, but I actually got a fix from one of Adobe's programmers after nagging them about it on their web board...

Hi Markuss,

I don't have specific single key answers to your brush resizing problems, but below are some work arounds discussed by 'German' keyboard users on Corel's newsgroup server, which may work for you;

alt Gr + 8 is equivalent to [
alt Gr + 9 is equivalent to ]

ctrl/cmd +alt + shift may be used to dynamically resize the brush by dragging a circle on the canvas.

In Win2K + WinXP, press the Alt+Shift keys once to set your keyboard to US layout. Press again to return to German layout. If this doesn't work, set it up in control panel>regional language options (add English USA) settings and try all the keys in a word processor to find where the [ and ] keys are on the keyboard.

David

[Markuss]

I found a better solution today, but thanks anyway David! It's a nifty little app called "hotkey master". It lets me define different keyboard macros to different keys, and I can enable them for specific programs only! Perfect for Painter and photoshop (if you have a foreign language keyboard like me). :)

Here's a link if anyones interested:
http://www.core-project.com/hotkeymaster/

It's really excellent! :chug:

[sandman]

Originally posted by Markuss
I found a better solution today, but thanks anyway David! It's a nifty little app called "hotkey master". It lets me define different keyboard macros to different keys, and I can enable them for specific programs only! Perfect for Painter and photoshop (if you have a foreign language keyboard like me). :)

Here's a link if anyones interested:
http://www.core-project.com/hotkeymaster/

It's really excellent! :chug:

I'm please you finally got fixed up Markuss. I'll post the software link on the Corel Painter newsgroup for those with foreign language keyboards.

David

[afimisf]

Originally posted by Steve Green
For those of us using Painter to create textures, it would be useful to be able to separate out the Impasto/Thick variants so that the value used for the impasto look can be saved out as a separate image for use as a bump map in a 3D program.

Thanks,

Steve

Yes this would definately be useful. Good one Steve.

[Jin]

Originally posted by mun
Painter 8 potential problems

<SNIP>

Also, there is no option to have no fill when drawing with the pen. makes it difficult to adjust the shape when you can't see the artwork underneath.

Yep, there is: Activate the Pen tool, then use Shapes > Set Shape Attributes, and uncheck either Stroke or Fill, or both. Now use the Pen or Quick Curve tool.

<SNIP>

3. when painting on a new layer, why is the background color mixing in as wet paint with the brush strokes? The background should be dry. Is there a workaround?

Try unchecking the Pick Up Underlying Colors box in the Layers palette and see if that helps.

[Gezstar]

Is there a way to get a color dodge effect, either in layer properties, or in the brush itself?

This is the one thing I really need from Pshop.

[Nate Owens]

I've been putzing around with 8 for a few days and today am starting on my first job (a greeting card project) for a client using the new version.

These are for starters - sure I'll be back with more as I think of them....

+ Can we have back the customized palatte - where I tear off a particular tool I use often and make my own set of tools. The recent brushes is ok, but not the same as this.

+ I was really fond of the Brush Controller for one thing... where I could fiddle with the brush size, min, max, etc. on the fly. Please...?

I gotta get back to my project, but I'll be back (like Arnie)

Thanks for this cool thread - I really hope Corel is listening!:cool:

[Nate Owens]

And then there's that gradient doohickey.

I've never liked the one in Painter. That is one thing I wish they would mimic from PhotoShop - in PhotoShop you drag your cursor in the direction you want the gradient to go, it starts where you start draging and reaches the other color where you stop draging.

And... in PhotoShop you can tell your fills or gradients to multiply, etc. the same sort of options you have for layer effects. - Likewise, telling a brush effect to fill or cover and all that other is a lot simpler in PhotoShop....

What's frustrating is that Painter is like right on the edge - just one little more "grunt" and whammo, baby! :bash:

[Madness]

Hi!

I picked up that one of many bugs are allready exist in Painter 8 Eng/Win Version. (more Bugs coming later, if wanted in the forum)

Draw a Shape with the Shapetool and close it. Please disable stroke, just create Shape with Filling only. Now flip the shape manually or automatically with the flip tools vertical or horizontal.

Now the Shape has funky antialiased borderlines or no more antialiasing. In Painter 6 this Bug doesnt exist, since Painter 7 the Bug is there, and now in Painter 8 anyhow.

It will be fine to fix this in the next update. THX!!

And please Corel, dont try to emulate Photoshop Style based Menus. The old Painter based menus are really good. I was really shocked, what Painter 8 looks like now. :eek: Some stuffs are nice, some not.

I really dont like the new way to create a brush, or the new layer system. :( Where is the automatically create layermask? :eek: :confused:

Other wishes for a new painter version or update.
Stay clear the course and dont changing a perfekt working UI system, like painter 7, the new one dont fits at its best.

Dual processor board support. like to see, painter using both cpus.

The bug i talk about at the beginning, appears on my homemachine and companymachine.

For the technical support:

Home machine:
Pentium4 2.6GHZ, 1GB Ram, GF4 4800Ti 8xAGP, Windows 2000/Servicepack 3

Company machine:
Athlon 1900+, Dual Board, 2GB Ram, GF4 4800Ti 8xAGP, Windows 2000/Servicepack 3

----

Best Regards,
Maddy

[Madness]

What u thinking about a painting aligned on shape path feature? I missing something like this.

I really often paint my textures for 3D Models from Sketch, means no using of any photosources. And if i paint fibre stuff, i often painting seperate bumpmaps for seams and many other stuff. I build my own brushes for then struktures, gains, holes and so on, and sometimes a want to draw really 100% curved lines, like a compasses. But there is no feature to draw this style with my own brushes or the allready existing brushes.

The Stroke Selection Feature is not the perfekt solutions for that what I want. Because the drawed brush gets a hard edge from the selection. selection feather dont makes it better. its the same result.

Whats the idea do manage this in the code?

1. Drawing a shape with the shape tool (only stroke no filling)
2. With hold Shift or something else i can draw at the shape curve with my selected brush.

This will be really amazing, to find this feature in the next Version or an update.

thx guys and best regards,
madness

p.s. or is there a hidden feature i had not found in the manual. :)

[Jin]

Originally posted by Madness


<SNIP>

The Stroke Selection Feature is not the perfekt solutions for that what I want. Because the drawed brush gets a hard edge from the selection. selection feather dont makes it better. its the same result.

<SNIP>

p.s. or is there a hidden feature i had not found in the manual. :)

The feature's not hidden, it's right there at the lower left corner of the image window. Click the brown icon (left icon) and three more icons are displayed.

To paint or otherwise treat the selection:

Both inside and outside, click the left icon;

Only outside, click the middle icon;

Only inside, click the right icon.

If you want a normal edge on both sides of your brushstroke when using Select > Stroke Selection, check the left icon so the stroke appears both inside and outside the selection.

Two things you should know:

1. Select > Stroke Selection doesn't work well with all brush variants.

2. You'll often see a gap where the stroke begins and ends when Select > Stroke Selection is used. If you don't intend to use the entire stroked selection this may not be a problem. Also, you can use Offset Cloning to pick areas of color near the gap and fill in the gap.

Experiment to see if it helps, and when it works best.

Good luck,

[Aaross]

Please make the layers window expandable. The scroll button itself doesn't work smoothly and when you've got 6 or more layers to navigate it gets very annoying.

[Madness]

Originally posted by Jin
The feature's not hidden, it's right there at the lower left corner of the image window. Click the brown icon (left icon) and three more icons are displayed.

Arrghh. Thx Jin. How I can forget this feature. Work with Painter since version 4, but the problem is that I never needed this feature really.

A little bit stupid in my opinion. :bash:

one more thx jin,
madness

[mime]

we need the mixer brush from the mixer palette as a real brush !!! =)

and i noticed some other things in painter 8

when using a pattern chalk with bleed set to pressure, the "pick up underlying colors" doesnt work. I mean, if you create a new emply layer, and start drawing with a pattern chalk with bleed set on pressure, you wont bleed from the underlying colors, but it will bleed from black (and the pick up underlying color is checked). If i unlink the bleed parameter from pressure, it works like it should.

the random brush stroke grain option is not working with pattern chalk tools, even if i set the brush to grainy hard (or soft) cover, and i check the random brush stroke grain option, the grain is always at the same place in the picture, for every strokes.

there should be a polygonal lasso tool, and not only a freehand lasso tool.

the zoom is still really annoying, when using ctrl + and - shortcut, we hould have predefinite zoom steps, like in photoshop : 25% 50% 75% 100% 200% 300% etc ...
i know we can set the zoom steps for the ctrl+space bar shortcut, but it has a lot of flaws, if i set the step to 25% and i zoom out (by mistake) when i am at 25% already, i go back to 1% and if i zoom in again, then i am at 26% and i have to manually set back the zoom to 25% if i want to keep my usual steps (where there is less zoom distorsion)

a new "pigment" engine would be great, where we could really mix paints like real pigments ... but maybe it is just not possible

plugin support would be great also


thanxs for listening, and thanxs for this awesome program (even if i sound a bit negative with my issues, the good points are overwhelming the bad ones :) )

[Oblio]

uh.. i only had a few minutes with the new painter so i might be out of the bush with this but:

- brush controls (size, opac, etc) would be lovely to pop-up at the cursor on 2-nd button or any button combination you wand.
I'm using two 21' monitors and since i like changint the size very quick it's a long way to that bar to drag those sliders.
And the Ctrl-Alt-Shift was too crapy (it doesn't display the real size of the brush and is too sensitive - i hardly can get a small variation with it. Maybe displaying the current size AND the new size with 2 circles - so i can have an ideea what i'm doing)
Then again... i would document before ask but i definitely lack the time (the deadline is uppon me)

Ob

[Jin]

Originally posted by Oblio
uh.. i only had a few minutes with the new painter so i might be out of the bush with this but:

- brush controls (size, opac, etc) would be lovely to pop-up at the cursor on 2-nd button or any button combination you wand.
I'm using two 21' monitors and since i like changint the size very quick it's a long way to that bar to drag those sliders.
And the Ctrl-Alt-Shift was too crapy (it doesn't display the real size of the brush and is too sensitive - i hardly can get a small variation with it. Maybe displaying the current size AND the new size with 2 circles - so i can have an ideea what i'm doing)
Then again... i would document before ask but i definitely lack the time (the deadline is uppon me)

Ob

Oblio,

You can right click (Windows) Control-click (Mac) to bring up a contextual menu and right at the top you can choose Increase Size or Decrease Size.

It's a lot faster, though, to use the ] key to increase brush size and the [ key to decrease size. Tap the key to change brush size one increment at a time or hold down the key to continuously increase or decrease brush size. Tapping on the keys allows you to see the brush ghost change size (where there is a brush ghost display available).

To quickly change opacity in 10% increments, click the 1 through 0 keys, 1 being 10%, 0 being 100%.

That's at least some help, if not perfect help.

[Jin]

Originally posted by Aaross
Please make the layers window expandable. The scroll button itself doesn't work smoothly and when you've got 6 or more layers to navigate it gets very annoying.

Aaross,

Using unsupported Win98 SE, I'm able to expand the Painter 8 Layers palette to cover the width and height my entire maximized Painter window except for the main menu bar at the top of the screen.

In addition, I can pack in 40 Layers and still see enough of Canvas at the bottom of the Layers palette to click and highlight it.

If your Layers palette is docked with other palettes, first close the Layers palette, then click and hold the Layers palette name bar and drag it away from the other palettes. Now it's a stand alone palette and you can make it almost any size you want.

[Oblio]

Thanks Jin.
Yet, if they are realy looking forward to improve i think they should alter these methods.
The "2 clicks away" method - meaning i can obtain what i want with only 2 clicks - should be applied. The draging slidebar in photoshop has few slight advantages:
1 - better precision (since it's bigger)
2 - reference - i can see right there the current size before i change it and i have the scale perception working better.
3 - dragging feels more... analogue - i increse/decrease without thinking numbers, and it's INSTANT : i can chance from the smalles to the biggest in one slide (click)

I've alwais got more confortable with these controls - might be a personal thing - yet, after starting Deep Paint 3D i got used with the brush controls (size and opac) in 2 seccons - and it felt intuitive. Maybe they should check it out.
Holding out Crtl-Alt (if i remember right) and draggin horizontaly - you chance size - dragging verticaly - change the opacity.

- on the opacity thing - true - those work and i've ben using them - yet, you can't enter 2digit values like in Photoshop - right? It should't be THAT hard.

Thank you again.

Oblio

[lokki]

I'd really like to see a way to use custom shortcuts, not just hotkeys. Between using Flash, Photoshop and now Painter 8 (still doing a happy dance about that last one), I get a little hung up when trying to get any work done in Painter. More to the point, I'm lazy, and I only have so many brain cells to devote to shortcut keys :D

[neuro]

I just got my copy of Painter - and I really like it so far. However I was surprised to see that there was no way to extract the impasto layer or edit it directly as with Deep Paint. That's assuming that it's a grey-scale channel similar to that of a typical bump-map in a 3D application which seems to be the case.

I want direct access to this channel for use in a 3D application as a bump-map. I tried adjusting the canvas lighting by placing it directly in the center of the canvas in order to get something like a bump map, but that doesn't quite do the trick. ;/

Please make this improvement. Would make Painter even more useful for texture map creation.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by neuro

I want direct access to this channel for use in a 3D application as a bump-map. I tried adjusting the canvas lighting by placing it directly in the center of the canvas in order to get something like a bump map, but that doesn't quite do the trick. ;/


I have been toying with writing a plug-in that would extract such information from a layer. Could you give me an idea of what format you'd want the data in? Would you be satisfied with a straight dump of the height info into a text file?

[neuro]

Philippe,

wow.... what can I say... That'd be so amazingly cool if you could create such a tool. I'd be very greatful - I'm sure many others would too once they see the potential for such a thing.

Regarding the format - a dump to text. To be honest, I don't have the technical ability to translate that into a format I'd be able to use in a 3D app... such as a bitmap. I am actually learning C++ at the moment, so maybe with a bit of research I could figure something out to translate such a text file into a basic bitmap.

Really - saving out could be handled by Painter, if you could extract directly to an 8bit/256-greyscale image right into Painter.... or the windows clip-board, that'd be the most practical thing I could imagine.

Thanks for the interest! Gives me hope!

[Philippe]

Originally posted by neuro

Really - saving out could be handled by Painter, if you could extract directly to an 8bit/256-greyscale image right into Painter.... or the windows clip-board, that'd be the most practical thing I could imagine.


So, what you really want is a 8-bit greyscale image of the bump map used for impasto, right? For one given layer or all of them (or the currently-visible ones)? I'm not making any promises, just trying to get a handle on the problem.

[neuro]

Interesting question...

I hadn't thought of how to treat multiple layers.

Being able to grab the entire 'result' of all of the layers would probably be best. Though, even having the ability to grab the information from a single layer would be great.

Impasto appears to be like any other channel - there are options to have the layer add, subtract, replace and ignore - all of which are options that can be processed by the user manually. So again, getting the information from a particular layer would probably be more than enough.

Heh - no promises, i hear ya! I can't help but feel hope though. Either way, thanks for the interest!

[Erik]

Dual monitor support like Photoshop has.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by Erik
Dual monitor support like Photoshop has.

It does... On the Mac ;)

[Erik]

On PC i can only get 'dual monitor' by stretching the main window over two screens and then moving my panels over there but this is certainly not optimal.

[sandman]

Originally posted by Philippe


I have been toying with writing a plug-in that would extract such information from a layer. Could you give me an idea of what format you'd want the data in? Would you be satisfied with a straight dump of the height info into a text file?

Philippe,

There is a plug-in for the Mac, which, among other things can convert a 2D image into a height map or 3D terrain. It may not be exactly what you want, but may give you some ideas. The plug-in works in 'Mac' Painter 6,7 and 8 (in OS 9.2.2 at least). Below is the URL;

http://members.aol.com/Callisto3d/CallistoDLpage.html

David

[John P.]

I have only just opened Painter 8, and tried some brushes. And I have no experience with previous Painter versions either. I've been working with Photoshop 7, and there are a couple of things I miss from there, that would make things simpler. -Could be just a matter of getting used to how Painter works though. But I'd like:



¤ A History window like in PS, so that you at any time can go back to any point in your project - back and forth if you want to - even back to the very first frame after opening the new drawing, regardless of how far you've come. It also lets you easily compare the way the drawing looks now, compared to how it looked before you made certain changes. You can just click between two thumbnails of then/now.

I miss that feature a lot. Having to click Undo/Redo umpteen times seems awkward when I'm used to the above.


¤ Easier/faster switching of brush size/type. In PS I just righclick, and there's the brush type/size box.

This could just be a preference from what I'm used to though, and may "fix itself" when I get used to using Painter 8.


Well. Back to the manual I go. Gotta learn how this thing works. :)

[HardCoil]

Originally posted by sandman

ctrl/cmd +alt + shift may be used to dynamically resize the brush by dragging a circle on the canvas.

In Win2K + WinXP, press the Alt+Shift keys once to set your keyboard to US layout. Press again to return to German layout.

And how annoying is the combination of these two features ?

Oh how I wish for simply pressing SHIFT and dragging to change size of the brush like in PhotoPaint. The CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+DRAG+CLICK thing is ultra cumbersome. I'll give that macro program a shot. I guess I could program F1 to function as CTRL+ALT+SHIFT....

Another thing that would be nice would be a bigger colour palette. When working with very desaturated colours it's hard to pick the accurate shade I want, and since I'm using a limited part of the palette it's important to pick the right one. I hope that made sense :rolleyes: