Painter and Illustrator
Dave Drews
>
> I've made room on my hard-drive, and am hankering to try some
> new software. So which one? How is Painter different from Fantastic
> Machine's Paint Engine? I've been hearing great things about it,
> and also POV-Ray, but I don't have the mental energy to tackle that
> one just yet. And I know nothing of Illustrator; is it also a good raster
> program?
Painter is a full-blown program for creating graphics like PSP is.
Paint Engine is a filter which takes an existing image and adds paint
like effects to it such as brush strokes, etc. Paint Engine is free,
btw and Painter is, well, a commercial program. I bought a copy of
Painter Classic from Egghead, but haven't had time to really try it out.
POV-Ray is a raytracing rendering engine for 3D. Pretty involved as
there is a full programming language for it so you can do just about
anything you can imagine. You need a modeler to build the objects for
it to render. It is free, but is definitely not for the novice, IMHO.
Something like Simply 3D (Egghead has v2 for less than $50) is probably
a better place to start with 3D. Or Bryce if you want to do
landscapes. You can do other things, too, but it takes some work.
Never used Illustrator, so someone else will have to comment on it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Dave Drews -=- Da...@ThomasCreek.com
http://www.thomascreek.com
Opus (:>
new
software. So which one? How is Painter different from Fantastic
Machine's Paint Engine? I've been hearing great things about it,
and
also POV-Ray, but I don't have the mental energy to tackle that
one just
yet. And I know nothing of Illustrator; is it also a good raster
program?
--
Opus (:>
http://www.telalink.net/~fizzy/graphicsindex.html
http://www.telalink.net/~fizzy/carla.html
"Bobby, if you weren't my son, I'd hug you."-- Hank Hill
Ronald Vick
>I've made room on my hard-drive, and am hankering to try some
>new
>software. So which one? How is Painter different from Fantastic
>Machine's Paint Engine? I've been hearing great things about it,
>and
>also POV-Ray, but I don't have the mental energy to tackle that
>one just
>yet. And I know nothing of Illustrator; is it also a good raster
>program?
Whew! Don't take little bites, do you?
I have a love/hate relationship with Painter. I love the effects I get
from it, but it's a real pain to use. Little of the experience you have
with PSP or PI will help you with it. (although it does use floaters)
It's one of those 'Pat your head and rub your tummy' programs that requires
strange sequences of operations to do simple things. At the same time, the
artistic effects you can get from it are very unique. If you've ever
worked with the real art tools, such as water color, oil, palette knife,
etc. You'll love the things you can do.
Fantastic Machine's Paint Engine is a plug-in that may give you some
effects, but it's always disappointed me. I've always wanted more from it
than it was able to give. Others seem to like some of the available
effects it gives, but I find that I'll use other programs.
I can't say anything about POV. I'm still working on mastering Bryce. So
far, Poser 3 has mastered me. All I can create with that one is mutants
with arms growing from the hips, heads that sprout from the middle of the
back and so on. It's a program that I have installed and deleted many
times! Bryce on the other hand, is fun. Lots of study required, but even
the mistakes are usually great looking.
Illustrator isn't a raster program. It's much like a vector program for
graphic artists. You define the information for a line, color, width,
shape, then make the stroke. (with graphic tablet, the width is variable
during the stroke.) You can edit the Bezier functions of the line at any
time after creating it. While it's a good program for a graphics artist,
unless you're heavy into creating posters and newspaper art, I'd recommend
something else.
Ron
PSP Terrorist - D'Lanok de Caresk chapter, Executive Officer.
Before posting your questions, please read the FAQs at
http://www.alphageo.com/psp/faq.html
R. Joanne Johnson
a long time learning the interface. The reason it is such a long, difficult
learning process is because it is such a rich program with just about every
possibility for painting in every way aas you could find in reality. Water
colors, oil paint, air brush, carcols, chalk, pen, pencil, crayon, oil
crayon, just water, fire, glow, metal, glass!!, and then you can use all
diffent brushes and ther are filters for bevels, text, lighting, texture,
papers.
I have hardly begun to describe what is available in Painter and so you
would know that to learn and find all these would be an incredible journey
of learning....but well worth it if you just want to create 'natural' art.
Also, one needs a good deal of RAM ( I upped from 64 to 128) to support
Painter.
Take a look at paintings I have done with it and uses of different brushes,
etc.
At the site listed in my signature, there are new Painter 5 Paintings,
Images and Ideas, Herbed Vinegar, Books Old an New and then a whole section
with Painter 5 paintings. With many of the paintings there is an
explanation about the different brushes etc and so will give you some idea
of what can be done with Painter 5.
I have struggled these past months learning Painter, and only love it more
and more. I love PSP as well and find it as the best background tiler and
text enhancer, better than Painter 5 for those things! so, between the 2
programs I could not be happier!!!
--
Joanne
My Home page: http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/6736/
R.J. Lacey
wrote:
>I've made room on my hard-drive, and am hankering to try some
>new
>software. So which one? How is Painter different from Fantastic
>Machine's Paint Engine? I've been hearing great things about it,
>and
>also POV-Ray, but I don't have the mental energy to tackle that
>one just
>yet. And I know nothing of Illustrator; is it also a good raster
>program?
Haven't used Painter or Povray but I use and like Illustrator, which
isn't a raster program but rather a vector graphics program. It is
expensive (it's Adobe after all :->) and has a bit of a learning curve
(Sam's publishes a pretty good book on Illustrator). I particularly
like to use it to draw freehand with my tablet, it's superior to
raster software in this respect imho. As well it supports PS plugins
when an image is converted to a bitmap.
Take care
Ron
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Ron Lacey Murillo Ont. ronald at ibm dot net
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Alice Gless
before. You see, I used your background as my desktop theme for spring - with
peach-colored labels. My daughter and granddaughter really like it, too. I
think the reason it was so appealing to me, simple though it is in design, is
that it has the water-color look about it. You have achieved some awesome
effects with all your different resources. Sometimes when I look at these
digital paintings, which are in a class all by themselves, I think it would be
easier just to get out paper, canvas, paints and brushes and do it the
old-fashioned way! To me, digital art is so unique in that often you experiment
and end up with the neatest effects that you might not have conceived in your
own imagination. More often than not, I end up with messes.