[Rhocke]

I'm trying to choose between getting Painter8 or openCanvas [I'll probably get both of them eventually, but whatever] and I wanted to know how well Painter8 works with a wacom tablet. If anyone knows, please reply! Thanks.

[Jin]

Wacom tablets and Painter 8 (any Painter version) work beautifully together.

They're designed to take advantage of each products cabilities.

In fact, without a Wacom tablet, we can't take full advantage of Painter's brush controls.

Without Painter, there's limited brush technology, even in Photoshop, though Adobe's tried to improve the brush capabilities in recent versions.

If you already own a Wacom tablet, you might want to download the free 30 day trial version of Painter 8 at:

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel2/Downloads/Home

Copy and Save are disabled in the trial version but everything else works. With the Painter 8.1 patch installed (after you buy the software because I don't think there's a patch to use with the trial version), you'll have Custom Palettes, a great timesaver.

If you paint something you want to keep, you can always make a screen print and open it in another program to crop and save it.


Jinny Brown
Painter Classes at TutorAlley Forums
(new registrations and Painter Classes on hold due to family medical emergency)
Tutorials and Painter Info at PixelAlley

[tayete]

They are the best friends. Open Canvas is a little toy compared with Painter. It is nice for sketching though, but for "professional" works, Painter is the one.
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[Rhocke]

Thanks! I have another question: does Painter8 support cel-shading well? I've heard from various people that Photoshop does a better job with cel-shading and Painter8 is only good for smooth/airbrush type coloring.

[Dekard]

afaik... Cel shading is more of a style then a 'support' feature. You can use a few filters to get a cel shaded look rather quickly in photoshop but anything you can do in one you can do in the other for the most part.

[amichaels]

It depends on how you go about the process of doing the cell shading I think, that determins which program you use for it. I use Photoshop for that to do cel shading and flatting because I like the selection tools in Photoshop better. They're pretty much the same in Painter, but I guess I am just accustomed to doing them in Photoshop. If you're just going to paint in the lines, then it doesn't really matter what you use.

[ceenda]

Imho, Painter's greatest weakness is the inability to flip the canvas including all layers. Doesn't mean I don't use it fanatically though...

I mention that because you may want to use layers to accomplish the cel-shading effect. Even the watercolour layers don't flip properly (and sometimes crash the program as well).

[amichaels]

I just prefer to do it in Photoshop. I am not sure if it is just simpler, or if the Photoshop interface makes me think it is.