Painter 9 again

[Ron C]

Just downloaded trial version with a great deal of optimism but . . . .

Soooo disapointed that nothing (NOTHING I can't believe it) has been done
about the thumbnails issue. Are you all mad at Painter - professional my
ars*!!!

First thing I try, just at random, is digital watercolour. Going along fine
then change the brush and bam! the whole image changes. Change to another
and it changes yet again. Go back to original brush and the picture goes
back to normal. Is this a bug? - of course it's a bug! And please don't say
it works fine on mine, of course it works fine on most or I presume Corel
wouldn't have put it out but it don't work fine on mine.

Not worth trialing it any further, I'll wait for the bug fixes. But
PLEASE!!!! give us normal thumbnail function we want to see what is
contained in all those hundreds of RIFs and dont want to have to keep saving
a tif version of each rif file just so we know.

very fed up painter user

Ron C

[Tom Tilney]

Uh....Ron,

As far as the Digital Water Color Brushes,  this isn't a bug.  If you want to not change the appearance of the previous brush, simply dry the layer. (Ctrl/Command>Shift>L).  I agree with you regarding the thumbnail thing, at least on a PC. I do believe the Mac version has a better thumbnail setup.  I would love to see a Photoshop style file browser but this isn't Photoshop. It's Painter.  I have Photoshop CS and Painter IX and if I had to choose one or the other on a desert island,  it would be Painter, hands down.

 

Play with Painter a bit to give it a fair chance.  I think the time you spend with it will be rewarding.

 

Tom

www.indeptharts.com

 

 

"Ron C" <r...@ronschi.co.uk> wrote in message news:4170ddb9$1_3@cnews...

[Henry Ståhle]

Hi,
I have been using Painter since version and the thumbnail issue is as
old as that. But still, I can see all thumbnails as long as I use
Painter and WinXP, but only from within Painter that is. I just mark
(with a single click) the file and there it is! Isn't yours? If it is
not there, just open the *.rif file and save it again. The thumbnail
will be there for you to see!

And the Watercolour issue. It takes some time to learn how to handle.
The bug is not a bug, it is the way the DWC behaves. Take some time to
read the help files and tutorials on the DWC subject. It will probably
make you understand and make you less hostile to this wonderful Painter
thing...the Digital Water Colour.

Best wishes from Henry

[Ron C]

Tom thanks for your reply, nice to know someone reads these things. I think perhaps the changes I experienced aren't the kind you refer to. Look here if interested to see what I mean http://www.ronschi.co.uk/painter9/ .

 

It may or may not be a bug in Corel as now I have got over my initial anger about the thumbnail thing I spent a little time in checking the problem. The problem does not happen in the file. Saving both the images shown produce identical pix when opened. So the problem l guess is to do with the graphics card (I know next to nothing about these things). The card is a NVidia geforce 2 GTS. I have just downloaded and installed the latest driver and still the problem. So either NVidia are at fault or Corel I suppose. This card has worked fine throughout all the iterations of painter since ver 3 so suspicion still falls on Corel. Should anyone from Corel be interested here is the rest of the info:

win xp home service pack 2

512 mb ram

Athlon x86 956

Intuos tablet

 

Now as for the thumbnail thing. Sure given the choice for painting into the computer Painter for me even if it were back in the earlier versions. Painter though seems not to have made up its mind if it is for kids (splash screen nonsense) or for professionals. Can you really imagine Photoshop using this ridiculous system of thumbnails. I know that most of the people that I speak to about making pictures on computers assume that photoshop is the business regardless of what they want to do. But we know don't we that they are different programs for different purposes. However any professional image maker familiar with photoshop, maybe an illustrator for example, would view Painter with a great deal of suspicion because of things like the thumbnail issue. Professionals want professional software and Painter keeps shooting itself in the foot with jokey nonsense things rather than getting the fundamentals right and building on that. Others in this newsgroup have complained about this problem, why is it always ignored. No spend time on making hundreds more brushes most of which seem no different from many others, produce fancy (?) opening features - what a lark eh! but don't whatever you do spend any time on the basics.

 

Now I know they still put in nice features like the new oil painting thing (not looked at that yet to comment) but pleeeeeeease do the **$%ing thumbnail thing!!!!!!!!

 

Phew that feels better

 

Cheers Tom

[Henry Ståhle]

Ron,
I know lots of pros using Painter and it's an outstanding program for a
pro. Many people do not like the splash screen. That is a matter of
taste. At least it is not boring, it makes some reaction within YOU for
example.

I think one have to make up ones mind before complaining about
everything. It takes some time to get used to a program like Painter.
Most photoshoppers have the bad habit of making their prog THE software.
But it isn't. Photoshop is one. Deneba Canvas is another. Studio Artist
another and so on. Looks different. Works different. Just like there are
severel kinds of wine. So many tastes, so many different uses. So
interesting!

Making up ones mind and before complaining is to try to find all
benefits in Painter. And doing the same with Photoshop. And Deneba
Canvas. And Studio Artist. And Expressions. And Illustrator.

I never use Photoshop anymore for my work, nor Illustrator. I use
Painter and Expressions, they suite my taste. Just like I found out that
spanish wine, especially from the Navarra region is my favourite. But
there are some from Chile too that are really good.

And the 9-fingers splash: I like it a lot!

Taste Painter some more! Maybe you will learn to like it.

Henry

[Richard Haseltine]

If you are wanting thumbnails in Windows windows, then Photoshop CS has
*removed* this feature as the DLL producing it occasionally locked files,
causing the OS to see them as in use and preventing saving or deletion.

[Bernd Ertl]

Hi,

this is not a new effect: in Painter 6.1 it was just the same when you changed from one watercolor brush that used a wet fringe to one that didnt use it. Try it.

Often I was shocked when I re_opened a ..rif but when I went back to the correct brush everything was displayed correctly.

However, youre right, there isnt a preview in opening window, which is especially annoying since there is no other programme you can use to view RIFFs.

My workaround was always to use RIFFs only as little as possible and then save as PSD. Works for me.

best,

Bernd

 

"Ron C" <r...@ronschi.co.uk> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:41715716_1@cnews...

[Ron C]

Guys, guys, calm down, this is a piece of software we're talking about not
your nearest and dearest. Craig (who emailed me personally) Tom and Henry. I
do thank you for your replies and it would appear, and I do accept, that I
may not have expressed myself clearly enough. There are two issues here the
thumbnail thing and the digital watercolour thing.

The thumbnail thing is this: After using Painter for many, many years the
vast majority of my rif files have lost touch with the preview.pix file. If
the rif file is not in the same folder as the preview.pix file no way can
painter or any other software give you a thumbnail. Simple do I hear you
say? Reopen the file and save it again and voila a new preview.pix file
appears so that when opening a file in Painter it will indeed give a
thumbnail. But I have hundreds of files literally and I do not have the time
or desire to open each and every one in Painter and save it again. That's
just the first part of the problem. The real problem is that I want to and
think it neccessary to be able to browse a folder full of rif files and see
all those lovely thumbnails for my perusal. What I don't understand is why
you guys don't seem to feel the same need. So it's nothing really to do with
photoshop or even bottles of wine but simply what I as a professional artist
need to function well and see no good reason why it shouldn't be there in
the box. Earlier versions of Painter used to provide a browse option in the
file menu but even that disappeared somewhere around ver 7 for PC users. As
I understand it programs like Thumbs plus would be happy to include rifs as
one of their supported file options but Painter seem not to be cooperative.
Why don't you all need it?

Now the water colour issue, which seems even worse to me now than before.
Are you telling me this isn't a bug but a design issue? In the real world I
have paper, half a dozen brushes, pencils, erasers and paint. I take a brush
dip it in the paint and brush it on the paper. Sublimely simple, sublimely
complex and sublimely subtle. What I don't have to do is dry my paper first
before I even pick up, let alone paint with, another brush! Painting is an
intuitive act. Am I making a mistake here? Isn't Painter supposed to be
software to EMULATE NATURAL MEDIA. What about one of the most used of all
techniques in watercolour painting - wet into wet? Drop a dark pigment into
a very wet previous brush stroke and just watch the pigment migrate to the
outer edges producing the most beautiful fringes. Make a brush mark just
glance another whilst still wet and watch the interchange of colours. This
is fundamental watercolour painting. Am I really expected to stop my
creative flow to press CTRL+SHIFT+L each and every time I want to even pick
up another brush. This is not software for artists, its software for nerds,
techies and anoraks. I have asked time and again for Painter to get the
basic functions right first, that I'm sure is what most artists would want.
For me Painter is hardly any better now than when I first bought ver 3.
Perhaps it's a bit more stable and some things easier to use but I'm swamped
by hundreds of brushes, manuals, help files, work arounds, methods to trim
this brush just a smidgen if I take a course in computer usage. It should
work straight out of the box and be useable by artists who are more
interested in painting than computers.

Now don't get me wrong I love Painter. I've shouted its virtues to everyone
interested in computer graphics. This is why I want it to be what it could
and should be. A truly useable artistic tool for artists!

There now I feel better again. Doesn't anyone else feel the need for these
things? If you do please let Corel know or add your voice here.

Ron C

[Henry Ståhle]

Sorry about that Ron,
I just assumed that you were a newbie not having any patience with the
software!

I wrote to Rick Champagne at Corel about the thumbnail issue. Once I
wrote to the fellow making the exxelente XnView browser to includethe
RIF format among the other 400 file formats. He answered that it was
such a tricky thing to do that he did not succeed.

So I wrote to Rick about that. We will have to wait and see. Maybe there
will be a IX patch soon that will solve the thumbnail issue.

Until then I rely on the "opening and resaving old Riffs".

Best wishes (as always)

Henry

[Henry Ståhle]

Hi Ron, good news! This is the answer i just got from Rick C at Corel:

"Regarding browsing RIF files, we are currently in the process of
documenting the format for exactly that reason. It will be another month
before we are complete, however we’re well on our way to having much
wider support for the RIF format...

Best Regards,

Rick"

[Ron C]

Henry well done!! I can't tell you how pleased I am at such good news. Thank
you very much indeed and I hope you enjoy gallons of that Spanish wine
(tempranilla grapes, plenty of oak, doesn't get any better)!

My very best wishes

Ron

[Imaging Dev]

In article <4171390f_3@cnews>, "Tom Tilney" <thomas...@gte.net>
wrote:

> I agree with you regarding the thumbnail thing, at
> least on a PC. I do believe the Mac version has a better thumbnail setup.

That's because there was a de-facto standard for thumbnails on the Mac
(insert a 'pnot' resource in the resource fork). This standard goes back
(at least) to Photoshop v2, which is the first instance we remember of
it.

On Windows there is no such standard, so file browsers had to rely on
either public specs for the format (JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF...) or
reverse-engineering the file format to display it. Painter's file format
is quite difficult to decipher, and it is not as prevalent as (say)
Photoshop, so not a lot of effort has been put into reverse-engineering
it.

We are in the process of documenting the file format for this very
purpose. Things may not be moving as fast as some of you would like (Hi
Ron!) but they are moving.
--
ImagingDev: Creating Imaging Solutions for Corel

[Jin Brown]

Thanks, Imaging Dev.

We can wait. You've done plenty to make Painter IX great, even if some
folks don't realize it... yet. ;o)

And.... there are more important things than thumbnails.. in life, and
using Painter.

Organizing one's work can help, and if thumbnails are so critical, save
a tiny JPG along with each original file and move them together it the
originals need to be moved.

In WinXP, when we use the Open dialog, there's an icon at the top just
like the one at the top in Windows Explorer, where we can choose to view
the files and folders as thumbnails.

Try it folks, you'll like it!

We'll live it it takes a bit longer.

Jinny Brown
_________________