Watercolor cloning P7 versus P6
Jack E White
allows a very nice watercolor version of a photograph by varying the brush
size to produce a range from a broad wash to cloning detail. To do this,
one will frequently brush over the same general area several times. This is
no problem in Painter 6 as the process appears to "cover" rather than
"build".
My copy of Painter 7 would not allow such a process as it acts as if it
"builds" rather than "covers". When I would work on an area in 7 as I would
have in 6, I ended up with dark globs.
For several calls to procreate tech support, they assured me that the
problem I was experiencing must be "settings" on my computer, monitor or
tablet as they didn't experience such problem on their machines.
To spare you the details of all of the conversations, they finally admitted
that the feature I used in 6 was not available in 7.
If you are interested in my findings of the increase in "saturation" and
decrease in "value" with each successive stroke under Painter 7, a table of
my experience can be found at:
http://members.home.net/okiegallery/pages/painter7.html
In general, I was very dissapointed in the procreate tech support and find
it incredible that Corel would allow a product out the door which removes
functionality. Especially when that they are so eager to improve their
image with the digital image community that they create a name "procreate"
to distance themselves from their own name, "Corel".
Another couple of bugs are that the "Lift canvas to watercolor" function
does not exist on my machine, at least not reachable as documented in the
user manual and online help ...... as well as the icons in the upper
righthand corner, tracing paper, etc. are often not visible when opening a
document.
Second worst problem is that an image prepared in Painter 6 using a
watercolor brush w/ "clone color" selected, looks considerably different
when opened in Painter 7.
Bottom line ...... if I want to continue with my primary use of Painter 6
and take advantage of the improved features of 7, I need to go back and
forth between the two versions ..... may not be able to use both on the same
document if all documents appear different under the two versions.
Sorry for the long length of this post but I felt that other purchasers or
prospective purchasers might want to know about this problem.
Matt McElligott
I appreciate the troubles you've been having. VERY frustrating, and I ran
into them as well when I started using version 7.
However, I think it's important to note that the buildup issue you're
talking about is (largely) a result of the new brush settings, and not an
inherent fault in the software.
After an afternoon of playing around with the brush controls I was able to
come up with a watercolor brush that doesn't build up, and fairly closely
mimics the "simple water" variant from Painter 6. I'm sure with some
experimentation you could come up with versions of most of the other brushes
as well.
In other words, Painter 7 CAN do it if it wants to. I think the big problem
here is that Procreate/Corel didn't think to include variants like this in
the release of Painter. (If these had just been included, it would have
saved all many of us hours of aggrivation.)
Again, for anyone who's interested, I've posted my "Simple Water" variant
for all to use. It's free, and all you have to do is drop it in the folder
and play around with it. If you can improve upon it, or have any
suggestions, please let me know!
You can find it at www.mcegraphics.com/illustration/watercolor/
Hope this helps,
Matt
"Jack E White" <okc...@home.com> wrote in message
news:3b855dea$1_3@cnews...
Jinny Brown
I for one thank you for letting us know and I'm doing the same thing..
as you've probably noticed from seeing my two rather lengthy reports of
my findings/experiences with Painter 7.
Tanya Staples is being copied on these messages, by the way. Some of the
things I'm finding are pretty goofy and are things that did work in
Painter 6. (And I haven't even begun to go through everything.)
Patch time is now (or two weeks ago)!
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jack E White
I copied your the file and gave it a try.
The way I use the Painter 6 watercolor brush is such that your version also
exhibits the "build" effect.
To illustrate what I am talking about, I have created some web pages which
contain the image files submitted to Corel/procreate tech support plus the
use of your brush on the same source image.
http://members.home.net/okiegallery/pages/index.html
Also, I have a link to some images I did using Painter 6 and mostly the
simple water brush w/ "clone color" operative.
Hope this properly illustrates my experience with Painter 7
Jack
"Matt McElligott" <matt at mcegraphics.com> wrote in message
news:3b859826$1_3@cnews...
Jack E White
You might take a look at:
http://members.home.net/okiegallery/pages/index.html
where I have placed the images which I sent to Corel/procreate tech support
as well as an image done with Matt's brush and a link to some pieced I have
done with Painter 6 using it's simple water w/ "clone color". Trying to do
those w/ v 7 would be an absolute disaster.
Also, thanks for your contributions to this newsgroup.
Jack
"Jinny Brown" <jinb...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3B85B84D...@mindspring.com...
Jinny Brown
I too have found the Painter 7 Water Color brushes extremely
disappointing now that I'm actually trying to do something with them.
Cloning or painting colors that contain the least amount of black make
my brush strokes hideous as they're sprinkled with black pixels and
nothing subtle about them. Also, if the Subcategory is Grainy Wet
Buildup, pretty much the same thing happens (that is, when we get the
option to choose the Subcategory).
I'm a bit annoyed that we can't access the Angle section to change some
of the flat brushes to rounder ones with the Squeeze slider.. but this
too shall pass to allow for another frustration. <g> (And.. we'll learn
other ways to get what we want.)
Matt... I downloaded and installed your Old Watercolor Brush and all of
a sudden, Painter seems to want to let its Water Color brush variants
behave nicely, or behave better. It did require relaunching Painter 7
again and that may have helped but I'd done that a few times during the
afternoon and early evening and still the brushes were looking hideous
(to put it frankly).
I wonder if your brush is serving the function of a "big sister"
watching over the new kids and making them behave. With this new
version, I am reminded again what a distinct personality Painter has and
how quirky... and almost human.. it can be with it's acting up.
We shall win, however ~湛諂
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jinny Brown
I just came back from looking at your pages. The black you're getting is
a lot like what I'm getting even after fiddling with settings. I was
able to reduce the harshness of the black pixels scattered throughout a
brush stroke but could only get rid of them completely if the color
contained no black at all.. not even a tiny bit of grey. It ain't a
pretty sight! <g>
(I was working at 300 ppi, by the way, and would expect the strokes to
be smoother even at worst.)
Thanks for doing such a nice presentation for Corel to look at. It's
true.. a picture is worth a thousand words!
Your Painter 6 watercolors are lovely! Thanks for giving us a chance to
see them even if it was due to a rather unpleasant situation.
Please show them off more. They're really nice... and inspiring too. :o)
Matt McElligott
also
> exhibits the "build" effect.
Hi Jack,
This is indeed a mystery. While I've experienced the buildup problem with
the default Painter 7 watercolor brushes, the variant I came up with always
seems to work for me. I can't figure out where the heavy blackness is coming
from in your images.
I tried a test this morning. I borrowed your sample image, cloned it, made a
new watercolor layer, set the color to "clone color", and started cloning
with my "Old watercolor" variant. The results are really rough, and they
certainly lack some of the subtleties of the old "simple water" variant, but
they're so much closer than what you experienced. I wonder why it's not
working for you? Is there a setting somewhere we're missing?
Here are my results. (Pretty ugly, but I consider this something of a
scientific experiment!)
www.mcegraphics.com/illustration/watercolor/test.htm
The mystery deepens...
-Matt
Jack E White
Thanks!
It is a shame that, instead of adding what may turn out to be very nice
watercolor features, Corel/procreate decided to exchange one feature with a
dissimilar one. Maybe the use of "pro" in procreate is a bit of an
exaggeration.
Maybe they were smoking funny cigarettes when they made that decision.
For the record, I am only commenting of a specific feature and tech support
with respect to this one issue. I am in not way trying to reflect on the
product as a whole. That said, what they did to the v 6 watercolor
capabilities "SUCKS" big time, in my opinion.
Jack
"Jinny Brown" <jinb...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3B85DBBD...@mindspring.com...
Jack E White
The example pages have been updated to reflect my application of Old water
color. You can see that I spent a bit more time than I did on the v6
example.
Great work and a big thank you!
A message to Corel/procreate, if you "have your ears on" ..... learn
something from Matt and the experience of your users ..... and do a better
job of training your tech support.
"Matt McElligott" <matt at mcegraphics.com> wrote in message
news:3b86606d$1_2@cnews...
Matt McElligott
My pleasure, Jack! I'm so happy to hear it worked for you!
-Matt
Jinny Brown
I just posted a link to your "black watercolor" examples at In Depth
Discussions so people could see what's happening and not feel alone in
their frustration. In addition, I posted a link to Matt's page and his
brush download.
I'll post another message explaining that Matt's brush worked for you
and you added new sample images.
Thanks to you both for sharing all of this process with us. It's very
helpful.
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jinny Brown
I'm hoping that (though I agree the exaggerated and crude look of the
default Painter 7 watercolor brushes is disappointing), we'll pretty
quickly learn to use the settings to make them all the developers
intended and we'll all be happy campers again.
It does rather stink that some of the things we've come to know and love
have disappeared.. but let's remember that our old brushes can be loaded
into Painter 7 and used. I've only done this with a couple of my custom
brush libraries so far and they seem to work fairly well. It'll take me
some time to check everything though.
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jack E White wrote:
>
> Ain't you one very nice person, Jinny;
>
> Thanks!
>
> It is a shame that, instead of adding what may turn out to be very nice
> watercolor features, Corel/procreate decided to exchange one feature with a
> dissimilar one. Maybe the use of "pro" in procreate is a bit of an
> exaggeration.
>
> Maybe they were smoking funny cigarettes when they made that decision.
>
> For the record, I am only commenting of a specific feature and tech support
> with respect to this one issue. I am in not way trying to reflect on the
> product as a whole. That said, what they did to the v 6 watercolor
> capabilities "SUCKS" big time, in my opinion.
>
> Jack
<SNIP>
Jo Ann Snover
> into Painter 7 and used. I've only done this with a couple of my custom
> brush libraries so far and they seem to work fairly well.
I'm so glad I found this thread as I was beginning to think I was losing
my touch with the work I was producing! I recently upgraded to P7 and
was having terrible trouble with the new watercolors - the problem
described in this thread.
I just did a watercolor of a baby and redid the face 4 times as the
first three it looked like he had 3rd degree burns all over his face!
I've loaded Matt's old watercolor brush and also loaded the old P6
brushes, and while I can see some big differences versus the P7 brushes,
I don't think I'm getting what I saw in P6. Specifically, with the P6
brushes, even if I set Grainy Wet Abraisive, I still get some buildup -
it's not as fast (bad!) as Grainy Wet Buildup, but it does darken the
color beyond the one you're trying to match.
With Matt's old brush, I can't seem to get the diffusion to work without
selecting some Wetness and once I have even a small amount of wetness,
the horrible color buildup starts.
I deleted Painter 6 when I installed P7, but I think I may try
installing it again so I can compare what I get with the two versions
without relying on (possibly faulty) memory.
I'm tempted to rant about what I think of Corel for doing this, but it
would be nice if someone from the development team could help out here.
How about helping those of us trying to figure out how to get the P6
behavior with watercolor brushes and clone color? And if they do that,
could they also say how you can choose Abraisive or Buildup for the P7
brushes that don't let you choose (can one edit an XML file somewhere)?
I like a number of the new features, but I don't want to give up some
very useful P6 functionality to get them.
Jo Ann
Jinny Brown
I just opened the Water Color's Bleach Runny.xml file in WordPad. If you
decide to try editing it, might be good to back up the original file
somewhere and work on a copy. I don't want to be responsible if there's
a disaster <g>.
Let us know how it goes?
I couldn't agree more that it would help a lot if one of the developers,
Mark Zimmer, John Derry, or Tom Hedges.. whichever one is the
appropriate one.. stepped in and worked with us a while to help us learn
how to use these brushes. Some of them really are pretty awful in their
default state and I can't believe they were meant to be that way.
Glad you joined us here. :o)
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jinny Brown
Painter list at Topica.com (paraphrased):
The buildup (only) settings of Painter 7 Watercolor brushes is similar
to traditional watercolor painting because it's not possible in real
watercolor painting to paint over an already painted area and get the
same results as in the first paint strokes. Some build-up always occurs,
unlike oil painting where the same area can be covered with lighter
tones.
Response from one of the beta testers, posted to the Painter list at
Topica.com (paraphrased):
Adjusting the Feature slider to a higher number results in lighter color
and a faster brush. Adjusting the Paper's Contrast slider to 50% and
using the "Medium Tooth" paper worked better. Play with the brush
strokes while adjusting the Feature slider up and down to get a feel for
what happens.
I didn't have time to check Matt's "Old water color" brush to see if
these settings were already included so forgive me if this is not new
info. Maybe someone will benefit from it.. hopefully.
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jo Ann Snover
Jinny,
After playing around a little with P7 and going back to P6 to check
things out there, I've spent my time working with the P7 watercolor
brushes to get the results I want - essentially developing new
techniques that work with P7 and forgetting the way I used to work in
P6.
I've produced one watercolor so far that looks good, although I had to
redo several faces several times until I got rid of the "blowtorched"
effects of excessive buildup. I think I'm going to focus on this
approach rather than trying to get back to P6 behavior. I don't exactly
see a rush of Corel folks here offering information to try and help out
with the upgrade blues :-). I figured I have only one realistic option -
move forward.
I think I've got lots more to work on, but with adjusting Opacity
(generally very low to allow for multiple strokes over an area to get
just the level of color I want), Feature (raising that number calms down
the rapid buildup with several of the brushes), Dry Rate and Pickup (to
make a water blender that lets me smooth out areas without adding much
color), I've come up with several brush variants that work for me. I
don't think I've found one watercolor brush whose setting is useful (to
me) as shipped - I do wonder about the choice of default brush states
and how those were intended to be used.
I've also found that painting with white works better than using any of
the erasers (and it leaves my colors unchanged too :-)) when I want to
scale back some color a little.
regards,
Jo Ann
Jinny Brown
Your decision to explore Painter 7 brushes and varying their settings is
shared by those of use who have found the default brushes not to be as
we'd like them.. yet. There's been some good and fruitful discussion..
along with posted examples on both the Painter list at Topica.com and in
the Painter Forum at In Depth Discussions. You're most welcome to join
in and partake of whatever knowledge we come up with. Your own
experiments and findings would also be of benefit to us if you'd care to
share more of them and also allow us to see some samples (they don't
have to be masterpieces as what we're looking for is how the brushes
paint strokes.
Thanks for writing and I'll try out your settings to see how they work.
Painter list at Topica.com
http://www.topica.com/lists/painter-list/
Painter Forum at In Depth Discussions
http://www.critical-depth.com/cgi-bin/idd/
Also, you might find it helpful to check this page periodically for
Painter information, bugs, solutions, how-to's, etc. (some having to do
with Painter 7 Water Color Layers and Erasers):
http://www.pixelalley.com/tutorials/painter7-findings.html
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jo Ann Snover
> Your own
> experiments and findings would also be of benefit to us ... (they don't
> have to be masterpieces
Well that's good, as they aren't! There's a zoomed in fragment of the
watercolor at:
http://digital.bristles.home.att.net/AboutPaintings2.html
and an image showing all three faces at:
http://digital.bristles.home.att.net/children/KerriBlues.html
If you explore this site (it isn't really operational yet - I'm building
it as I plan to turn what I'm doing into a business) all the other
paintings were done with Painter6, but the one above was P7.
I output the watercolors onto Arches Cold Press (with a 1270) which has
a nice texture to it - obviously you can't get that slightly 3D feel
with the web version of the painting, but it's close.
> Painter Forum at In Depth Discussions
> http://www.critical-depth.com/cgi-bin/idd/
I knew about the Topica list, but not this one, and found several
helpful items there (and a helpful question, even though there's no
answer yet - where is a water blender for the water color layer? I've
been working on trying to make something like this with a low opacity
brush with some pickup, lots of wet and diffusion to try to get there).
I've downloaded the PDFs from the developer and will have a read to see
if that gives some clues as to how best to proceed.
regards,
Jo Ann
Jinny Brown
I tried to view your site but wasn't able to get to any of the pages
except the links you sent. What a cute bunch those kids are. Did you
paint from scratch or use Painter's cloning feature somehow? In any
case, it's a great picture.
About a water blender.. I haven't had time to do enough with Painter 7
to tell you. Hopefully John Derry's Water Color guide plus what he wrote
that I posted on my website will help us to understand things better.
It's going to take some getting used to for all of us, especially those
who are used to painting with certain tools (digital or traditional) and
want the same things.
Thanks for sharing your painting and I hope that some other day I'll be
able to see the rest of your site.
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jo Ann Snover
> I tried to view your site but wasn't able to get to any of the pages
> except the links you sent. What a cute bunch those kids are. Did you
> paint from scratch or use Painter's cloning feature somehow? In any
> case, it's a great picture.
Thanks. Here's the home page, from which you can get to the rest of the
site:
http://digital.bristles.home.att.net/
I did not paint from scratch, but used a photograph I took as the basis.
I made and outline one a separate layer, then used some wash-like
watercolor brushes with clone colors enabled to get the bulk of the
image. I sometimes pick a color and turn off clone color to "improve on
nature" a little - it's so nice that you can pick up colors from the
watercolor layer now (couldn't in P6).
The baby is my daughter and the two boys her cousins who were with us
for a visit - and I'm biased, but yes they are cute!
> About a water blender..
I've read John Derry's PDF on watercolors with great interest - _why_
didn't Corel put all of this useful information in the manual (instead
of editing it down and changing the examples to much less useful ones
than John's. The manual's examples don't illuminate at all, but John's
make things much more clear)?
There was one tantalizing comment in John Derry's document regarding
Pickup "High values produce much leaching (particularly when painting
with pure water)." He doesn't say _how_ to paint with pure water, but
seems to imply that you can!
I'm going to do some more experimenting based on the better information
from Derry's PDF.
thanks,
Jo Ann
Jinny Brown
Thanks for the link. I'm visiting the site now. Also thanks for sharing
your technique.
Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_________________________
Jo Ann Snover wrote:
<SNIP>
> Thanks. Here's the home page, from which you can get to the rest of the
> site:
>
> http://digital.bristles.home.att.net/
>
> I did not paint from scratch, but used a photograph I took as the basis.
> I made and outline one a separate layer, then used some wash-like
> watercolor brushes with clone colors enabled to get the bulk of the
> image. I sometimes pick a color and turn off clone color to "improve on
> nature" a little - it's so nice that you can pick up colors from the
> watercolor layer now (couldn't in P6).
>
> The baby is my daughter and the two boys her cousins who were with us
> for a visit - and I'm biased, but yes they are cute!
<SNIP>