[X] My Assistant

'Kay, been wanting to do this kind of stuff since long but too Lazy...

since these Section have quite many of Artists that having their drawing posted here, why don't we have a thread that give some little overview of what kind of programs and tools we use...yes I know there's another similar thread about someone asking what kind of drawing programs that peoples usually use....fine with me if this thread going to be deleted...so let's start this ranting of mine


Adobe Photoshop
(because Majority use this)

Overview(that I take from wiki)

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop. The CS rebranding also resulted in Adobe offering numerous software packages containing multiple Adobe programs for a reduced price. Adobe Photoshop is released in two editions: Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Photoshop Extended, with the Extended having extra 3D image creation, motion graphics editing, and advanced image analysis features. Adobe Photoshop Extended is included in all of Adobe's Creative Suite offerings except Design Standard, which includes the Adobe Photoshop edition.

Alongside Photoshop and Photoshop Extended, Adobe also publishes Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Lightroom, collectively called "The Adobe Photoshop Family". In 2008, Adobe released Adobe Photoshop Express, a free web-based image editing tool to edit photos directly on blogs and social networking sites; in 2011 a version was released for the Android operating system and the iPhone.

Adobe only supports Windows and Macintosh versions of Photoshop, but using Wine Photoshop CS4 can run on Linux.

Their Official Site :
[www.adobe.com] http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html

Screen Shots(that I also snatched it from Wiki's)



my review/rant:
slow, too much resource consuming for CS4 and CS5.....but still Bad Ass stuff for Noobs...heh
not quite comfort with Photoshop for making a Drawing...but awesome for enhanced it, but then again that was only my opinion...Tons of Peoples are having a great result of drawing using this stuff...take a Look at Brainsuck works...

Do any of you, per chance, have noticed some trouble using a tablet and Photoshop at the same time?

Did you update to cs6 or windows 8, by any chance?

Did you update to cs6 or windows 8, by any chance?

Good point, A lot of knock off brands deliver on plugins late, some have slight issues but a tab from say "Bosto" literally will not run on 8, only recognizes it as 2nd monitor.

If your unsure it's capability, grab a demo of paint tool sai to see if there's a difference, if it still acts up on sai it's your OS. CS6 has much better reaction to wacom then previous installments, so that shouldn't be an issue.

side note... CS2 is free if you join the adobe forums.

I've been using Inkscape vector graphics freeware. And even though I started my latest
project using a Wacom bamboo pad, I kept drifting back to using the mouse.

At first, I thought it was just force of habit, but other Inkscape users have also
mentioned that Inkscape is especially mouse-friendly.

Are there any other art software packages that work especially well with a mouse?

I stumbled upon this sorry if its already been mentioned :3 I tried it with the doodles :3

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[krita.org] http://krita.org/

[krita.org] http://krita.org/features
Krita is a KDE program for sketching and painting, offering an end-to-end solution for creating digital painting files from scratch by masters, is available for Linux and Windows and here you can find all the features that Krita has for you.

Interface and workspace:

Krita has a user-friendly interface. In Settings you can choose the color theme, which toolbars and dockers you want to use and edit the keyboard shortcuts. You can save a given set of dockers as a workspace and switch between them.


File Formats Supported:
Saves to:

.kra, OpenRaster document, PSD image, PPM, PGM, PBM, PNG, JPEG-2000, JPEG, BMP Windows, XBM, TIFF, EXR, PDF.
Import:

.kra, EXR, OpenRaster document, PSD image, Gimp image, PPM, PGM, PBM, PNG, JPEG-2000, PDF, ODG draw, BMP Windows, XPM, GIF, XBM, Krita Flipbook, Adobe DNG negative and Camera RAW.


Painting:

Krita has pixel, smudge, duplicate, filter, hairy, hatching, texture, chalk, color smudge, curve, deform, dyna, experiment (Alchemy), grid, particle, sketch and spray brushes.

Brush settings can be saved as presets and shared. Also, there is a full set of blending modes available when painting

and support for creating seamless textures to Krita (Image offset tool).

Canvas:

The canvas can be easily rotated and mirrored. The OpenGL canvas supports high-bit depth monitors. There is a large set of options available to create a no-distractions canvas-only painting mode.

Tools:

Krita has raster graphics and vector tools.

Vector tools: path, selection, text, artistic text, calligraphy, fill and gradient.

Raster tools: freehand, line, rectangle, ellipse, polygon, polyline, star, path, dynamic movement, multihand, crop, move, transform and warp, measure, fill, gradient, color picker, assistants, perspective grid, grid, select rectangle, select ellipse, freehand selection, select polygon, select outline, fill select, select similar colors, path select, zoom and pan.


Dockers:

Dockers or palettes are basic gui building blocks. Krita has the following dockers availables: preset selector, layer management, channel management, various color selectors, tool options, shape selector, composition docker, undo history, pattern selector, task sets, scripts and various dockers for working with vector objects.
Filters:

Filters can be used directly on a layer, or as filter masks or layers. The effect of a filter is previewed on the image itself. New filters can be written in the OpenShiva language.

Krita has the following filters: levels, color adjustment curves, brightness/contrast curve, desaturate, invert, auto contrast, HSV adjustment, pixelize, raindrops, oil paint, gaussian blur, motion blur, blur, lens blur, color to alpha, color transfer, minimize channel, maximize channel, top/left/bottom/right edge detection, sobel, sharpen, mean removal, unsharp mask, gaussian noise removal, wavelet noise reducer, emboss horizontal only/in all directions/(laplacian)/vertical only/with variable depth/horizontal and vertical, small tiles, round corners, phong bumpmap, rotative blur, zigzag, mosaic, ray, wave expansion, seamlesser, planes, central absorption, mirror impose, random noise, anti bullify, tunel2, caleidoscope, slices, sphere, stereographic projection, contraction, sectorize, sea, lens correction, roundify, hipno, tunnel, bullify, random pick, droste, ripples.


Layers:

Krita has raster layers, vector layers, filter layers, programmatically generated layers, group layers and file-backed layers. Layers can have transparency, filter and local selection masks. Layers can be dragged and dropped within Krita, between instances of Krita or as images to and from other applications.
Vector layers support text, vector shapes and filters on vector shapes.

The layers can be rotated, scaled, converted, sheared, and you can mirror all layers in an image.


Generators:

Generators create pixels and can be used in generator layers. Krita has the following generators: checkerboard, concentric circles, disco, fractal explorer, metaball, moire, perlin noise, plasma, radial gradient, singleball, sun ray and supernova.

Generators are written in the OpenShiva language, which makes easier extending the set of available generators.


Color management, Color models and Channel depths:

Krita supports the following color models for creating and editing images:
RGBA, Gray, CMYKA, Law, YCbCr, XYZ in 8 bits integer, 16 bits integer, 16 bits floating point, 32 bits floating point.
Krita always uses color management. On Linux, if the monitor is correctly setup with colord or oyranos (gui settings applications available for GNOME and KDE), the display calibration will be used automatically.

it's somehow looks familiar...
the brush presets remind me of MyPaint
this worth to try, who knows maybe this one have the raster drawing quality like corel painter

Inkscape - I dislike this one to draw, but it's awesome for editing.

OpenCanvas - A very good program, high customizable, the feeling is good when I used it. I got the last version (5.5), I'll definitely take a further look in this one later.

Mangá Studio - I have the full version of 5 EX with me, it's an almost perfect program. The bad things are: interface and low customization, the tones can piss you off.

Chibi Paint - DON'T USE THIS.

My Paint - It's A.W.E.S.O.M.E! It's like drawing on a paper, it's really good, but for mangá I can't use it well, still good for sketches, paintings... Obs.: The interface is horrible.

Pixia - Simply bad.

Krita - This one surprised me, really. The interface lacks a little, but nothing that some time changing hotkeys don't resolve. The perspective tools are awesome. The hatch and screentone brush are useful, and the pens are good. Don't have high brush customization, but still a fair amount to it. I'm going to test this more when I have time.

My suggestions based on this are:

Mangá Studio - I use it for some time already and it's perfect for almost all my mangá needs.

OpenCanvas - Haven't tried too much, but I can say it's good just from these minutes I tested it.

My Paint - For non-comic/mangá it's a very good option.

Krita - Give it a try, I can't say much, but still promising.

Photoshop - It's an all-round program. I personally dislike it, but it's good and some people learn how to use it well.

Gimp - This don't work for me, I simply dislike almost all the things this software have, but still a photoshop-like program that is getting more fans lately.

This post has been edited by Jikimitsuji: Apr 9 2014, 22:08

I'm on a Mac but Pixelmator is a good, affordable (if watered-down) alternative to Photoshop. In some ways it's actually better -- in PS, using the blur tool or gigantic brushes always slowed everything down to a crawl but that never happens with Pixelmator.

Hello, is that right topic to ask for tips?

Hello, is that right topic to ask for tips?

Here.

is it Wacom PTH-651 good? or just overpriced?

For me, my Bamboo tablet by Wacom, along with SAI works well enough for me.

Going through the tread i was actually kinda surprised i didn't see anyone mention IllustStudio.

Their Official Site : [www.illuststudio.net] http://www.illuststudio.net/

[s180.photobucket.com]

It has your usual layer system, very much like PS with effects. Selection system is also more up font and needs less fumbling around to use effectively.
Menus are pretty standard, nothing ground braking there.
Now the tool settings are actually pretty extensive as you can see. Mainly in the stability and two way correction. It also interestingly has a border system, meaning you can set up tools to act differently when they come in contact with a contrasting color.
Toolbar is pretty much completely open so you can mix and match different tools or same ones with different profiles, as you can see from my extra 2 pen and 2 eraser tools there.
Max canvas is 10000x10000@600 which is good but here comes the problem. It can't really use it. The program in it self is not that heavy and it works smoothly but that size canvas usually means you are doing detailed work and it's a 32bit arc. Which is way i use it for small things like that chibi wolf for example and for that it's great. On full scale illustrations i still turn to PS.

As for personal tools i use Intuos 4XL (488 x 305 mm active area)
For programs i dent to cycle alot depending on what needs to be done. Lion share in PS tho.

That sayd the SAI 2 is in practical beta so good news there

Thanks for the info. Great stuff everyone, and thanks, reyman.

I saw no one mentioned this,
[www.clipstudio.net] clipstudio(en)
[www.clipstudio.net] clipstudio

I bought a Wacom Intuos in Japan and they offer this official software for 2 years (jap ver.).
Too bad I'm not good at using its special functions. If just for basic drawing, my friend said that SAI is easier to use.

I saw no one mentioned this,
[www.clipstudio.net] clipstudio(en)
[www.clipstudio.net] clipstudio

I bought a Wacom Intuos in Japan and they offer this official software for 2 years (jap ver.).
Too bad I'm not good at using its special functions. If just for basic drawing, my friend said that SAI is easier to use.

It's true that it has a higher learning curve than SAI, because with SAI you can literally start drawing once you have installed the software. Clip Studio Paint needs a bit of tuning beforehand to get used to it, because, for example, the smoothing system is different and so, but CSP offers more possibilities, it's like a lightweight Photoshop, while SAI is a kind of upgraded Paint.

I use both of them just because of the possibilities one and other can offer. For if anyone interested in purchasing CSP, if you follow them on Twitter or visit their homepage regularly, there are some days in which they offer it for a greatly discounted price. I bought mine for ~16€.

[stickman3d.blogspot.gr] Zor_3d_animator
3d skeleton animator.Good for fights

[terawell.net] http://terawell.net/terawell/
if we are gonna go into 3d refs this one is free and pretty neat, worth checking out. its called designdoll easy to figure out and use.

Just saw this one ...

[www.paintstormstudio.com] http://www.paintstormstudio.com/

Thank for all sharing.
I use Illust studio as my main CG program and Mangastudio EX5 as my B&W work program.
I will try Paintstrom later.

Gah, don't know if anyone comes to this thread anymore but here goes:

Say, do you guys have anything that works great for anime style art with mouse and keyboard?

I don't know but I think I would be comfortable with something that works like in 3d modeling apps where you can start off with some primitive shapes and manipulate them into the object you want instead of trying to mimic real pen and paper.