I must be doing something wrong

[Chrisdell]

Hello all,

I'm a Sketchbook Pro user that is being forced to find another sketching program due to Autodesk buying Alias and, in turn, killing off Sketchbook.

So I got the trial version of Painter and have been messing around with it, and even though it seems to be way more then I'll ever need it seems to be the only other freehand type drawing software out there that's anywhere close to Sketchbook quality.

So anyway, I'm having some problems with Painter and I'm hoping someone here can help me with them. One is that when I'm just sketching something with a pencil or pen the line quality looks like hell! Choppy, pixelated and just plain bad, but when I save the drawing as a .jpg and view it via Picturebook the line work looks fine, not choppy at all. There must be a setting somewhere that will control the line quality while I'm drawing. Can anyone help with this?

Second: I'm using a Wacom Cintiq21 that works just beautifully with Sketchbook, Artrage, Photoshop and other pressure sensitive software, but with Painter there's practically no sensitivity. No matter how lightly I'm sketching the line work comes out fully saturated, no greys. The drawing tools I'm using are predominately pencils and pens.

So any help would be greatly appreciated and if anyone has some pointers when it comes to settings for pencil sketching in Painter that would be fantastic too.

Cheers,

Chris

[handrawn]

Hi Chris and welcome to TG

regarding pressure sensitivity - you need to set brush tracking in the menu : edit/preferences/brush tracking
a quick read through the relevant painter help section should set you right on that, but its pretty straightforward.

Pixelation maybe due to too much zoom when viewing in painter?

[RTW1]

try zoom settings of 50%-!00% for a smooth look not say 41%, or your lines go pixelated like a set of bad steps.

[Chrisdell]

Thanks for the replies.

I know enough to check my zoom seetings. At 100% I'm still getting choppy lines.

[handrawn]

you could try resetting to factory default [press shift when starting up program - see help again] will remove any custom made brushes etc but should solve the problem, unless it's an installation or OS problem
PS: - how are your color management settings?

[Chrisdell]

you could try resetting to factory default [press shift when starting up program - see help again] will remove any custom made brushes etc but should solve the problem, unless it's an installation or OS problem

Thanks, I'll try that