Painter 9.5 and OSX conflict

[Double-L]

I'm relatively new to Painter. I have a Mac G4, dual 1 gig processors, 1 GB RAM, running OS 10.4.3. I also have an Intuos3 tablet. When Ifirst installed Painter I seemed to recognize some slowdown in my system overall, but didn't think much aout it. I downloaded and installed the Painter 9.1 and Painter 9.5 updates and everything went to heck in a handbasket. The most consistent problem was when I made a stroke with the FX-Glow brush, the program quit "unexpectedly." At the same time, my scanner quit working, slowdowns became epidemic in all programs, not just Painter. I tried Corel's online support and they suggest I call in, but my computer is at home and I've been working most of the hours the Corel line is open. Today I trashed all the Corel files I could find (I only lost a couple of custom brushes, and they were just experiments anyway) and reinstalled the app from the CD. Haven't had time to check it out, but has anyone else had such general problems with 9.5? Do I really need the update? Could I just get by with 9.1?

[Thelonious]

...running OS 10.4.3.

Why? For starters you should upgrade to 10.4.6 if the problem persists we can look at other areas.

First you need the combo updater to update from 10.4.3 to 10.4.5 Then once that is done you need the Delta updater to take it to 10.4.6

[Double-L]

One good reason for not updating OS 10.4.3 is that my computer is very stable now, and I don't care to experience some of the issues associated with 10.4.6 as per the MacFixIt forum. And I can't see why that alone would be an issue with Painter 9 or 9.5, as the Corel product was available long beforre Tiger was. I haven't had too many problems with my reinstall of Painter 9, so maybe I should just skip the Painter updates for now. I need a product that works more than I need the latest version.

[Thelonious]

I would have been using 10.4.3 with Painter 9 which was fine (that's relatively fine of course as we are talkinng Painter the most buggy professional app ever) and I was alread using 10.4.6 when I updated to 9.5 and I'm not having any probs.

Further as far as I understand 10.4.6 is excellent. I've heard of no issues. You can check this out on the macrumors.com forums.

But if you don't want to update, (which I still think is a good idea) then do you have the latest Wacom Drivers? I'm using an intuos 3 and the current driver is 4.9.6-3

I wonder if the scanner is the problem. I can't run my scanner through painter as it doesn't seem to use twain.

I'm using a 1.42 Ghz eMac G4 with 1.5gig of ram.

[Jinny Brown]

Thelonious,

I've been able to scan things directly into Painter through several versions.

Read the following:

Painter IX Help > Help Topics > Contents tab > The Basics

On the right panel, click the link named "Working with Documents".

On the next page, read the first paragraph. Then under the heading [b]Creating and Opening Documents, scroll down to the sub section named "Acquiring Images".

Once you've have things set up, launch Painter IX and use File > Select TWAIN Source..., highlight the scanner name, and click the Select button.

Turn on your scanner and position the photo or image.

To scan your photo or other image, use File > TWAIN Acquire... Your scanner software should open and you can continue from there. I use an Epson Perfection 3170 and that's how it works for me on my newer computer using WinXP and Painter 5, Painter 6, Painter 7, Painter 8, and Painter IX (and did with my previous scanner on my older computers using Windows 3.1 and Win98 and Painter 5, Painter 6, Painter 7, and Painter 8).

[Double-L]

I've gotten all my information about 10.4.6 from the MacFixit forums, where there are enough issues for me to steer clear of it for the time being. And I still think Painter should be working properly, even with 10.4.3. I find that many of my brushes fail to work as described in the manual. For instance, the blender brushes don't work at all (at first they only didn't work on the canvas. I understand that there has to be some color there to blend, and that you can't blend outside a selection. But when I take a blender to a layer, I might as well be rubbing my finger on the screen. I've taken to saving the file as a PSD, opening it in Photoshop and doing the blurring there, but that's obviously a ridiculous long term workaround. And I can't seem to get much use out of brushtracking. I've tried a brush or two from every category and with the exception of the pencils, I can't get the sensitivity of stroke that is indicated in the manual and the ads.

As for the Wacom driver, that could be an issue. I will check when I get home. I just bought the Intuos3 9x12 and installed it the first of April, but that doesn't guarantee that the driver on the CD was the latest. I will check and get back to you.

[Thelonious]

Jinny, I haven't tried using a scanner yet with P9 but I had reason to recently seeing as it now supports TWAIN. However I copied the twain plug in from photoshop into the corel plug-ins folder and I do get the Twain Acquire menu appear in the Painter File menu but it just causes Painter to instantly quit. Realise that you have not had a problem with pc but painter has only recently supported twain for mac. Because we are all well aware that macs are not used in the graphics industry. (rolls eyes)

I have posted a support request on the corel website, they suggested I place the twain driver into the plug-ins folder but since I updated my message saying that it crashes Painter they have not responded. Surprise surprise.

btw Jinny, can brushes be saved and exported in P9? I couldn't find a library mover for brushes.

Double-L You are correct in that 10.4.3 should be fine as should any old wacom drivers as i have had no problem with either.

The glow brush issue could just be a corrupted cache file or preference file. To test this you should have a spare admin account set up just for this purpose in order to isolate problem to either your user folder or the system. If the problem with the glow brush quitting does not happen in your spare test account you can be fairly confident that the problem is in a corrupted cache file (or maybe pref file) in your home/library folder. It is safe to delete the contents of any cache file.

[Jinny Brown]

.... But when I take a blender to a layer, I might as well be rubbing my finger on the screen.

On the chance this might help:

If you try to use one of the Blenders variants to blend Digital Watercolor paint, you won't have any luck until you dry the Digital Watercolor piant by:

• Using Layers palette menu > Dry Digital Watercolor
• Using Layers main menu > Dry Digital Watercolor
• Using Ctrl/Command+Shift+L
• Grouping and Collapsing two or more Layers (with DWC wet paint).
• Dropping the Layer, or Layers (with DWC wet paint) to the Canvas.
• Using File > Clone then blending on the Clone or the Clone copied to a Layer above your working image
• Saving the file in any other format than RIFF, closing the file, then reopening it in Painter
• Or maybe another method or two I'm not thinking of right now

Remember that some other brush category brush variants' brushstrokes can't be blended with Blenders variants until their Layers are converted to Default Layers. For instance:

• Watercolor
• Liquid Ink

Also, when we try to blend brushstrokes painted with Impasto enabled variants, only color in the brushstroke is blended and the Impasto depth and lighting in the strokes remains untouched. There are variants in the Impasto category that can be used to edit Impasto depth and lighting in the brushstrokes, or the Impasto work can be disconnected from Painter IX Impasto depth and lighting controls by saving to another format than RIFF or by using File > Clone and blending on the Clone or a copy of the Clone pasted as a Layer above the working image.


If your problem applies to other situations and the info above doesn't help, try restoring all brush variants in the currently loaded brush library to their default state, then see if you can blend on a Layer:

Brush Selector menu > Restore All Default Variants > click the OK button

[Double-L]

Jinny, Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You

When I read your first sentence of explanation, I just knew that had to be the issue and it was; the canvas had been blocked in with Digital Watercolor. It never occured to me to "dry" it, as I thought that was only necessary with Watercolor and Liquid Ink. I'm printing out your email to put in the book with the Wacom Manual - I printed out all 395 pages of it and have honestly read it front to back, but only once thus far. Perhaps because I am just not familiar with Painter yet, the manual seems a little obtuse to me. (My favorite, which is obviously a mistake, is on page 45, under, I believe, floating Objects, where the text refers you back to that same page and heading for more reference - but tells you nothing about the effect!)

Anyway, thanks again.

Thelonius- As for the Wacom driver, I have 4.9.3-3. Thanks for your help, too.

[Thelonious]

How did you go with all the original problems? Painter quitting with glow brush and System slowdowns and so forth. I'm particularly interested in your scanner quitting issue as I'm having that problem at the moment. Is your scanner still making painter quit?