I would like to continue using Painter but...

[arcitek]

I am a new user of Painter and I feel like I just drove an Italian sportscar. The thrill of the possibilities is there but the nagging mechanical issues are making me reconsider. I will list some of the program difficulties I am experiencing and you can let me know if it is the way I am woring with Painter or these are just bugs that are part of being a Painter user and you may want to go back to photoshop.

My computer specs are as follows: Dell XPS M1730 laptop with 4 gigs of ram, 2 80 gig 7200 rpm raid arrayed hardrives, 3.2 duo core processors, 2 1 gig nvidia 9800 video cards, win vista w/ latest updates. Intuos 3 pen. The hardware is there to run almost anything. I am playing with my friend's Painter 10.1 and a downloaded version of Painter 11.017.

1. Using the trial version of Painter 11, I love the added enhancements. However, I am sick of the "cannot open file message" everytime I want to open a riff file. I always have to open any image file first to open a riff file. I am working on a project that is 11x17 inches, 300 dpi, with almost 33 ink and watercolor layers. 120 meg file right now but I have worked on over 1 gig photoshop files and not had this issue.

2. Using Painter 10 or 11, the program gets stuck in the grabber tool mode sometimes or the brushes all of a sudden stop working. Have to shut down and restart.

3. I have never seen such long file saving in my life. Painter 10 or 11, it is ridiculous. We are talking almost 5 minutes at times.

4. The super slow and unpredictable movement of large brushes. This makes them unusable for real work. Smaller brushes are effortless for the most part and a joy to work with.

5. One of my biggest gripes that is pushing me over the edge, I cannot use the color controls under Effects to change the hue or value of a color when doing watercolors. Works sometimes in oils, but never ever in watercolor. I have to export the final layered file to photoshop to do this. What a serious pain. That is suppose to be the part of the power of digital painting. Set up layers, paint, and alter the color properties after if you do not like.

6. There seems to be no memory of what paer texture you set up when closing/ openning painter.

Like I said before, there are many, many positives in this program. As a new user, I love the possibilities. But I need tools that are reliable and consistant for producing work. For 400 dollars, one could say what are you complaining about but money is not my point of focus here. I would spend 1,000 dollars on this program in a heartbeat if it was much more performance reliable. Bells and whistles are great but they do not make up for questionable performance issues. I am hoping that someone out there may point out some of my problems are the way I have my file set up or something I can correct. The only thing I can see is the large DPI or many layers but 300 DPI for print work is normal and I use the same amount of layers in photoshop without a hitch. Maybe it is the pen tablet but Intuous 3 is a great pen.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful to someone else. You will probably see this post on other painter sites as I am trying to get some real feedback prior to making the purchase and switch over to painter for my digital painting needs.

Thanks!

[Soquili]

Hello arcitek,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

Have you contacted Corel with your list?

These forums do not have any affiliation with Corel so we cannot assist you with your list.

[arcitek]

Thank you for the response. Yes, I hav e forwarded it Corel. I was not really expecting help on my list but I thought maybe someone may have experienced the same issues and had a suggestion to deal with it. I am new to Painter and I know that every program has its quirks and long time users ususally find some way to deal with them.

Hopefully, I did not break a forum rule or sound like a ranting lunatic. Just making someobservations as a new user.

Thanks again

Kevin

[handrawn]

'cannot open file' sound like a windows issue to me - have you checked your windows file type associations?

[arcitek]

Could be but it only happens in Painter 11 (trial) and not Painter 10.1. The work around is to open a default painter file after the message, keep it open while openning the desired panter file. I am looking at a new rendering machine and it just may be time to jump over to the Mac Prop 8 core tower. Vista has about killed me with its adminstrative complexity and bugs.

[handrawn]

umm I'm still on XP

you have painter 10 and 11 on the same vista machine? - there may be a conflict here, should not be, but you never know

I run 9 and 11 ok, but skipped over 10 which did play up a lot

have you set the memory allocations in painter[s] - also a good idea to make up small palettes of only those brushes/textures etc you need and only have the ones you actually need loaded at any one time

if you can split your work across more than one RIF, thats worth doing too

painter can be slow - but not as bad as you describe.....

[arcitek]

Thanks for the reply. It is not the two programs loaded as I started first with just a trial version of Painter 11 and had these issues which lead me to borrow a friend's copy of Painter 10 since everyone said they liked it. The idea of the brushes and textrues is a good thought. The memory allocation is set at a default of 80%.

Part of me blames Vista but who knows. I am slowly thinking of moving over to a Mac....never thought I would do this.

[Christine Farrelly]

Not sure what is going on with some of your issues - but the watercolor one is because watercolor uses a special type of layer which allows it to remain 'wet'. If you are saving in Riff format it will take longer because of all the additional information it has to save.

How much video memory do you have - does your card use some of the main memory?

Also do you have any other programs working in the background?

Christine

[arcitek]

HElpful info knowing that about the extra info with watercolor. As far as video memory, I have two 1 gig video cards. I think that should be more then adequate although I am not sure why you need that for non motion applications.

I think the thing that is actually bugging me most is the inability to manipulate color after it is down in watercolor. That alone would make me happy and more able to deal with the other things. Being able to do tonal acontrol under effects would be so nice but it just does not seem to work for me.

thanks!

[handrawn]

I have two 1 gig video cards. I think that should be more then adequate although I am not sure why you need that for non motion applications.

painter is one of those programs that takes a lot of memory to render what you see on screen. One of the reasons that painter brushes can be slow is that they can be very complex which takes a lot of rendering - and incidentally such a brush stroke being made in real time on the screen is a 'motion application' is it not...

anything that takes resource away - eg other programs running as Christine mentions, will not help