It’s after 11 p.m. I have to get up for work in the morning. I don’t want to stop ’cause I’m having too much fun. Let’s see, one more dip into the color palette. Dab that paint. Shade that area. Switch to pencils. Sharpen. Draw. Yes, that’s nice. Omigod… it’s late. Letterman has already read his viewer mail. Quit. Shutdown. I’m off to bed.
Another evening passes and I haven’t written a thing about Painter, except a few notes to myself. I promised to get this article done weeks ago. Oh well. To borrow a phrase from Sigourney Weaver, “Dock me!” I’m not being paid for writing this review anyway.
I have a palette full of excuses though. You see, every time I sit down to write my review, I figure I first must play with the program. That’s where I get into trouble. I can’t seem to go beyond playing and start my writing. You see, Painter is a very absorbing program. One can while away many hours plumbing it’s depths, dabbling in it’s complexities, and exploring its vagaries.
A treasure trove of artist’s utensils
Painter is software — a program that goes to utmost lengths to simulate traditional artist’s media, including water color, oils, chalk, charcoal, pencils (colored and graphite), felt pens, crayons, ink, airbrush and more. These can be applied to a variety of surfaces such as canvas, water color, and other fine to course papers as well as unusual textures. You can create new paper textures and add them to paper libraries. About 48 paper textures come with Painter 1.2, as well as an endless variety of “brushes,” as all the media variations are called.
The big brush off
Brushes are chosen in the Brush palette. Select a brush, and you automatically get a particular Variant or a default setting for that brush. For instance, pick Airbrush and one of the Variants — Thin Stroke — appears on a pop-up menu in the Brush palette. Other built-in variants for Airbrush are Fat Stroke or Feathered Tip. All of the Variants for all of the Brushes are given named that describe how your Brush will work on your document. Names like Large Chalk, Smooth Ink Pen, Soft Charcoal, and, of course, my favorite, 500 Lb. Pencil are a few of the dozens of available Variants for particular Brushes. Where in your document does a 500 Lb. Pencil go? Anywhere it wants! (I had nothing to do with that comment! Ed.)
Even with the variety of Brushes and their Variants, you can still customize the brushes to suit your needs. Change a brush size, it’s Expression, Behavior, Scaling, Penetration, Concentration, Color and Method. These changes can be saved either to override the existing Variants or can be named and recalled later in the Variant pop-up menu. Moreover, you can create new Brush “containers” that can appear in the scrolling menu in the Brush Palette. For each of these new Brushes you can create any number of Variants to suit your needs for that particular medium.
Color me good
The color palette has a Spectrum slider as well as an easy to use Triangle that shows all of the available colors within a predominant hue. These allow color choices to be made easily.
The color palette also has space to display up to 15 colors in a 3 by 5 grid of small color squares. Choices in the Brush Palette and its Variants will alter what colors appear in the grid. Have you changed any of the default colors? Then choose Options>Save Variant. If you don’t save your customized Variant before switching among Brushes, your colors will be gone when you attempt to return to your special Variant.
A strategy one might use in working with color would be to build a color palette document as a companion to your artwork document. This way any of the colors used in your artwork are available to you by merely clicking with the eye-dropper tool in your color palette document. Only problem is, you have to click on the document to make it active before you can click in it with the eye-dropper. Here, Painter should take a cue from Photoshop, where a simple click with the eye-dropper in any open document, active or not, will change your color.
Method acting
During my early play sessions with Painter, my first impulse when starting a fresh canvas was to use the first available brush and simply to start drawing and scribbling. Painter defaults to the Pencils Brush with a Sharp Pencil Variant, a so-called Buildup “Method,” and black color. I changed the color to a dark red, and as I started to scratch at the page, I noticed the red lines becoming black! This was extremely disconcerting and made me feel as if there were a problem. It was no problem at all, but a particular characteristic of the Grainy Hard Buildup Method. I went back to the documentation quickly when I saw that happen!
What did I discover? Methods are the foundation of all the Brushes and their Variants in Painter. They define the particular nature of the Brush, whether its strokes will Buildup on the colors below, making them darker, turning them black with enough layering; or they will Cover the paint below, obliterating it because the strokes are opaque.
And how will the edges of the strokes appear? Flat edges are jagged, not anti-aliased; Soft edges are anti-aliased; and Hard edges are between Flat and Soft in their appearance.
Not enough for you? Add to that the fact that the overall brush stroke can react to the paper grain — Grainy brush strokes do, and Methods without the word “Grainy” in them do not.
Reaching a sort of Satori with this maze of choices is possible when you understand the mix and match nature of it all. With that Sharp Pencil Variant and its Grainy Hard Buildup Method I have a brush that will react to paper grain (Grainy), has a slight anti-aliased edge (Hard), and will layer the color below it (Buildup).
Now, if I am in Grainy Hard Buildup Method and substitute Cover for Buildup (Grainy Hard Cover Method), what happens? The stroke is not nearly as affected by the color below it. It lays down with more of its “true” color with a textured edge. If I take out Grainy and change Hard to Soft (Soft Cover) the stroke is beautifully anti-aliased and lays down almost like a neon light in its true color no matter what color is below it.
With all of these possibilities there are even more Methods. There are Editing Methods that act like erasers, bleaches, paint thickeners, colorizers and distorters. And there are Cloning Methods that allow you to use an image such as a photograph or any picture as a starting point and re-render it as if it were created in another medium. This can be done automatically or by using individual brushes on selective areas. Almost every Method can be applied to any Variant. These Variants can be saved and reused any time.
It has an elephant’s memory — almost
Not only can Painter remember all of your brush permutations, it remembers what palettes were opened during your last session, and where they were located. This is a real convenience and allows an individual to customize their work space. I would like, however, to be able to click anywhere on a palette window, not have to click on its title bar only, to bring it forward. And while there are command key equivalents for opening and closing each palette (there are 10 of them), I would also like to be able to hide all palettes with a Command-Spacebar hot key so I could view my document alone on a small screen without the clutter of all the open palettes. The next time the Command-Spacebar hot key is selected should return to their former position only the palettes that had been open.
Labor in a closed (Photo)shop
Photoshop plug-ins that reside in the Plug-ins folder for Photoshop can be used in Painter. Those that have been developed by third-parties, like Aldus with their “Gallery Effects,” or those available from online services such as America Online, can be accessed within Painter to apply any number of special effects to your image. The plug-ins that are built into the Photoshop application are not accessible, however.
In a real boost to productivity, Photoshop documents saved in RGB format can be opened directly in Painter. In addition to saving files in Photoshop format, Painter supports RIFF, TIFF, PICT, BMP, PCX and Targa formats. On my wish list for the future is the ability to open and save Photoshop CMYK documents.
Wacom a long way, Baby
Painter also provides extensive support for pressure-sensitive digitizing tablets such as the Wacom. In fact, with the Set Scaling command you can program how Painter reacts to your individual brush stroke with the stylus including it’s velocity and pressure.
If you paint yourself into a corner
With Painter it is very difficult to have an intuitive understanding of how something will work on the first try. With practice and experimentation it becomes easier. For this reason the casual user might have difficulty. It is hard to remember the myriad of permutations for all of the tools. Reacquainting oneself with the program after an absence can be difficult.
Give me an automatic manual!
Painter should have a tutorial. Various tips covering customization, color, penetration, concentration, methods and more are peppered throughout the manual. It is difficult, however, to pull together all of these into a homogeneous entity. The program is vastly complex and does a great job of simulating traditional art tools. So, it’s as if a “painter” has dual needs: the skills of controlling water colors, handling oils, conceptualizing with markers etc., just as with traditional media; and the know-how to find those tools in Painter and make them work like one would expect from the real thing. Fractal can’t make artists out of amateurs, but it should go the extra mile to provide clear demonstrations of how the tools work within the program. On this latter part, Painter documentation is like dry paint on a palette — it’s there alright, but don’t look to it for too much help.
The manual is a small, 7.5 by 4.5 inches, in an album-style format that doesn’t sit on the shelf well, but fits neatly on the desktop where it needs to be for easy reference. It is full color throughout. This is a must, and Fractal has shown many color images to highlight explanations in the text. But with a program as complex as this it needs visual examples for many of the techniques described. Painter’s manual could use additional screen dumps to illuminate the material. (Ask for a video tape, Marty. Ed.)
On the other hand, the balloon help, although limited as is all balloon help, is well implemented and useful. For example, the Brush Behavior window offers no less than 11 arcane adjustments. Balloon help gives a brief, helpful explanation of each. In addition, a help button on the window can provide more detailed explanations of each adjustment. Online help is conspicuously lacking elsewhere.
There is a host of new features in version 1.2. Unfortunately, they are not described separately, either as a read-me file on disk or in any printed sheet enclosed with the upgrade. Rather, Fractal decided to include completely new documentation with the upgrade, and the new features are buried within the text in the manual.
The little program that could
To say that Painter is well conceived and endowed with more options for digital painting than any previous software of its kind is an understatement. It’s tantamount to calling a bullet train a mere rail line and a Porsche a nice car. It does get you there, but fast, and in a stylish manner unlike most earthbound travel. And the ride is really fun.
The developers of the highly respected ColorStudio are the same ones who bring you Painter — Mark Zimmer and Tom Hedges of Fractal Design. Fractal recently re-acquired the rights from LetraSet to market ColorStudio in the U.S. While the size and style of Painter’s documentation is interesting (to use a safe word), let’s hope that the docs for the next version of ColorStudio don’t follow the standards established with Painter.
Paint by the numbers
Its price is very fair — $349 list. Mail order houses charge around $285. It sets a new price/performance standard. The nearest competitor, Oasis, lists for $795 and has not been upgraded since version 1.0.1 appeared about a year ago. Furthermore, to paraphrase Fractal’s advertising, Oasis’ feature list pales in comparison to Painter’s.
The party’s over…
Well, that’s it. I finally did it. I took the time to commit these words to paper, er… word processor. I was able to do it by using the utmost restraint — I didn’t launch Painter once while actually writing this review. But now I’m at a point where I’d like to verify a few of the facts I’ve put forth in this article. I must go into the application…
Let’s see… I’m in Word… Let’s Save. Go to MultiMaster. Choose Painter 1.2… Ah, here we are. Choose New from File menu and… yeah, this is fun. Paint this, sketch that, filter this. Oh, no! Where has the time gone? It must be peak infomercial hour on television. Should I go see the latest hair grower sales show? Nah, I’ve got to get some sleep… I don’t want to be tired when I boot up Painter tomorrow!
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