Q: Painter 5.5 vs. Painter 6?
Petri Pohjanjoki
like many others, I was more than happy to find "Painter 5.5 Web Edition"
full version from "PC Format" magazine. With that and "WACOM Graphire" I
have been spent hours and hours of GREAT time.
Now I'm thinking of purchasing "Painter 6", but I'm not very assured of
benefits what that product could bring me more? I'm sure that there are
plenty, but I haven't quite figured out that what more "Painter 6" could
offer agains "Painter 5.5 WE". So if you have familiar with both versions,
could you give me some information about new features of "Painter 6"?
And special "THANK YOU" goes to Jinny Brown for her super-active job as a
Painter-user and her great tutorials. Keep up the good work, Jinny. =)
Petri Pohjanjoki
Jinny Brown
Thank you for the special "THANK YOU". ;o)
I just finished putting together a list of Painter 6 features and some
earlier comments I've made about it for a Painter Classic user who asked
a similar question. I'll post that here and maybe you can sort out
what's new from Painter 5.5 to Painter 6. It doesn't cover everything by
far, but some of the highlights.
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A page on the Corel site:
http://www3.corel.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=Corel/GetToKnow/Index
A page on the Corel site with links to more information (with
images) on Painter 6 Impasto, Updated User Interface, Brush Loading,
Text on a Curve, and More Realistic Airbrushes:
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Descriptions written by me for other Painter Classic users who ask
what's different in Painter 6 or to people who debate whether Photoshop
or Painter is the best software:
______________________
Written April 25, 2001
"What is the difference in Painter 6? There's so much to tell.
First, any full Painter version has a huge number of features not
available in Painter Classic. Even old Painter 4 that I started with
did, and that was years ago and three versions back from Painter 6
(Painter 4, 5, and 5.5).
I'll try to list some of the main things new in Painter 6. Many of these
items are new since Painter 5.5 which was the last full version (as
opposed to Painter Classic which is not part of the full Painter series
of versions) and all but a very small handful of brush variants are in
addition to what you have in Painter Classic:
___________________________________________
In the TOOLS PALETTE, there are more tools:
Under the Grabber tool, there's a tool called the ROTATE PAGE tool that
lets you temporarily rotate the image to make it easier to paint or draw
and with a click in the image it snaps back to the normal position.
The MAGIC WAND tool, another tool to make selections.
The PEN tool used to draw vector based bezier curves and Shapes that can
be edited using the SHAPE SELECTION, ADD POINT, REMOVE POINT, and
CONVERT POINT tools.
The QUICK CURVE tool used to draw freehand vector based bezier curves
and Shapes, also editable.
The OVAL and RECTANGULAR SHAPE tools used to draw vector based Shapes
that are editable.
In the BRUSHES PALETTE, there are oodles of new and improved brushes.
Painter's brush technology has advanced considerably in the full
versions and, in addition to the default Painter brush library, there
are many more libraries on the CD. Also, and we can create our own
custum brushes and then create custom libraries to organize them. The
default brushes include (Brush type - number of variants):
Pencils 5
Erasers 4
Brushes 15
Dry Media 10
Impasto 32
Pens 14
Image Hose 20
Felt Pens 3
Liquid 13
Airbrush 9
F/X 10
Photo 9
Artists 6
Cloners 23
Water Color 8
You can take a look at the extra brushes found on the Painter 6 CD at
Jeremy Sutton's website:
http://www.portrayals.com/tipxtrabrshesp6.html
If you can, take some time to explore the rest of Jeremy's site. It's
packed full of wonderful art, resourcs, and Painter tips and that can
give you some idea of what more Painter 6 contains and is capable of
doing.
The Impasto brushes are wonderful and they include the Impasto Pattern
Pen that paints a selected Pattern within the brush stroke itself. This
brush has several additional settings for an even wider variety of brush
stroke effects. The Pen brush also has a Pattern Pen with equal variety
available.
Brushes can be set to paint with more than one color at a time, among
the many other settings available in the Expression section of the Brush
Controls palette.
The PALETTES include:
_______________________
TOOLS (described above)
__________________________________
BRUSHES (brush types listed above)
_____________________________________________
ART MATERIALS, with the following sections...
Colors (pick colors)
Papers (defaults, or created by painting or selecting from any image)
Patterns (defaults or created by painting or selecting from any image)
Gradients
Weaves (plaids, etc.)
RGB Color (set the color precisely)
Color Set (create your own color palettes)
Color Variability (set the brush to paint with multiple colors)
Nozzles (used with the Image Hose to paint a spray of images)
Looks (brush looks)
_______________________________________________
OBJECTS PALETTE, with the following sections...
Layers (including a Layers list and other buttons and settings)
Masks (each Layer has a corresponding mask, edited by painting white or
black)
Scripts (Painter automatically records a script of whatever you do and
saves it for up to 10 days depending on your choice. You can also record
a script and save it for later use.
Dynamic Layers (various features such as Bevel World, Dynamic Text,
Kaleidoscope, Burn, Tear, etc.)
Image Portfolio (default images you can click and drag onto your
image... we can also save our own images here.
Selection Portfolio (default selections we can click and drag onto the
image.. we can also save our own selections here)
Net Painter (allows us to connect to a host computer, that of any of the
participants, and do online collaborative painting with multiple
participants)
_______________________________________________________________________
CONTROLS PALETTE (changes with each tool picked from the TOOLS palette,
and provides appropriate options to set that tool)
______________________________________________________
BRUSH CONTROLS PALETTE, with the following sections...
General (sets the Dab Type, Stroke Type, Method, and Subcategory as well
as Opacity)
(There are too many settings in the folowing sections to describe here.)
Size
Spacing
Angle
Bristle
Impasto
Expression
Well
Airbrush
Rake
Random
Water
Cloning
Mouse
In the Art Materials palette, we can also create our own Patterns,
Papers, Gradients, Weaves, Nozzles, etc., and then create custom
libraries to organize them.
Layers are automatically transparent and can be stacked one above the
other, reordered in heirarchy, grouped, collapsed to a single layer,
duplicated, and selections can be made on them (unlike earlier versions
where you could only make a selection on the canvas).
These are only highlights that come to mind and there's much more to
discover. I do hope you decide to buy Painter 6 because it's a marvelous
program that will keep you delighted and surprised for a long time. I've
been using it since December 1999 and still learn something new each
day."
_____________________
Written April 5, 2001:
"First of all, Painter doesn't have any serious competition when it
comes
to it's most distinctive and beloved feature.. that is, Painter's
Natural Media Brushes that simulate what else? .. natural media oil and
watercolor brushes, pens, felt tip markers, chalk, charcoal, crayons,
pencils... and **great Painter 6 Impasto brush variants including the
Pattern Pens **... and on and on it goes. Painter allows us to create
endless numbers of custom brush variants.. in addition to the very large
number and variety of default brushes and variants and this makes its
brush technology even more exciting and useful.
Painter is "made in heaven" for artists, though it can be used to do
almost anything else you want, including a good deal of what Photoshop
does. In addition to Painter's Natural Media Brushes, it can be used to
create movies/animations, web graphics and image maps, do photo
retouching and other manipulation, clone painting, Dynamic Text (can be
edited over and over until it's committed to an image layer) that gives
us a lot of freedom to create neat text effects, vector-based objects
(Painter Shapes) made with the Shape tools (Pen, Quick Curve, Oval,
Rectangular) and edited (with the Scissors, Add Point, Remove Point, and
Convert Point tools)... to name a few things (not to mention Net Painter
that allows us to do online collaborative painting).
I've heard it put as simply as "Painter is for artists. Photoshop is for
photo manipulation.", but that's not the whole story by far. Both are
powerful programs. Personally, I find Painter much more suited to my
nature and my needs. For me, it's far more intuitive than Photoshop
which I find too technical and unresponsive to say nothing of far too
limited when it comes to spontaneous creativity. But then that's not how
people who love Photoshop feel. I guess it's good that there's more than
one option for different people's needs and natures."
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There's more to tell and far more to experience using Painter 6 but I
hope this has helped a bit and you understand some more about what full
Painter versions contain.
Happy Painting!
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
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bph...@earthlink.net
that unless lettering on a curve or a few other arcane features were
needed, a person was just as well off with Painter 5, which I used. I do
not recall any raves about Painter 6. In fact, all I read here was about
the problems, and the bug releases, and the difficulty of installation.
Recently I decided to upgrade to Painter 6, and I was absolutely amazed
at the vastly improved interface, and many of the features. I was sorry I
had not upgraded long ago. I don't know how much of a leap it is from 5.5
to 6, so I can't comment directly to you.
When a software product is used so as to be a prominent part of one's
life, you don't save money by waiting to upgrade. If you miss a version
and buy the next, you are likely to have to pay more than if you had the
previous version, so nothing is saved. On the other hand, a new release
is usually a little buggy, so waiting a few months until the bugs have
been taken care of may be prudent.
Think of software as a rental, U-Use. The more you use it, the less you
pay. When you pay a couple of hundred dollars for an upgrade, and use it
for 4000 hours over the next several years, your rental cost is a nickel
an hour, 40 cents a day. If you only use it for 1000 hours, your cost
quadruples. Think of the cost as permitting you to attractively display a
piece of real estate that cinches a sale, or perhaps brings you fame and
fortune as an artist. In these cases, the cost of rental is very low,
negligible. The more that creativity abounds, the less the real cost.
Uprading depends upon the individual and how the software is used. BPH
On Tue, 8 May 2001 00:01:22 +0300, "Petri Pohjanjoki" <lo...@kolumbus.fi>
wrote:
Jinny Brown
You must have missed many, many posts raving about Painter 6. There have
been many, including ones I post regularly.
I also skipped past Painter 5.5, from Painter 5 to Painter 6 and was
equally amazed and delighted. It was a good choice to wait until the
bugs were cleared up. I waited until the 6.0.1 patch that cleared up the
worst of them and 6.0.3 has made Painter 6 pretty stable. I avoided the
6.1 patch since it was such a mess, though it seems to be fairly good
now (still haven't installed it).
It's great to hear that you like it and finally own Painter 6.
Happy Painting! :o)
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
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