Three Things

[IshePlatinum]

when you say to only load certain brushes, that means
Window > Workspace > Customize Workspace...
then 'close-eye' out every Brush/Library/Portfolio I don't use?

[handrawn]

My understanding is that this 'hides' the items from view in order to make it more easy to navigate the workspace.
What I had in mind was building your own custom libraries to replace the default ones, thereby only loading what you really needed in the first place.
You can always reload the default or edit the custom libraries later.

[Doug]

How do I limit the program from loading different things?
Not really sure what you're saying about the memory and scratch option. It doesn't look like I can change much to help.

Go to the memory and scratch option and enter a lower percentage number. If it says 80% now, lower it to say 60%. That way Painter will take up less system resources making more available for the Operating System.

Anything else to improve performance?

Painter X is really not meant for using on a computer that old. An 800mhz pc is ancient by todays standards-like it or not. Do yourself a favour and upgrade as soon as you can.

[Jinny Brown]

How do I limit the program from loading different things?

You can't prevent Painter loading things, but you can limit the size of brush libraries:

When brush libraries and art materials libraries become too large, they can slow down Painter's performance. To avoid that:

Don't add extra brush categories or extra brush variants to the default Painter Brushes brush library. It already contains something like 36 brush categories and well over 800 brush variants.

Instead, create one or more new custom brush libraries and add your extra brush categories and brush variants to those custom brush libraries. (If you don't understand how, it's going to take some instruction before you can do it properly.)

Do the same for art materials libraries. Leave them as they were when Painter was installed. Create new custom libraries and add your custom art materials to those custom libraries.

Not really sure what you're saying about the memory and scratch option. It doesn't look like I can change much to help.
Anything else to improve performance?

One of the original authors of Painter, John Derry (pixlart), wrote a good tutorial explaining how to "hot-rod" your Painter brushes. You'll find it in the CGTalk Corel Painter Forum:

Hot-rodding Your Brushes in Corel Painter

To avoid all of this, painting on a new layer should be a simple solution, but I didn't understand what Jinny Brown said to do.

It's not on Method: Buildup. It's been on Method: Wet.

Method: Wet is used only for Watercolor brush variants.

Composite Method Gel? I've been working on a Watercolor Layer, Gel Ignore. I think that was set by default.

Yes, when we paint with a Watercolor variant, a new Watercolor Layer is automatically created and it's automatically set to Composite Method Gel to produce the intended look of transparent watercolor paint.

Ignore is one of the Composite Depth options, related to painting with Impasto enabled brush variants and doesn't apply to working with Watercolor.

And I haven't been using Digital Watercolor.

The first Watercolor brush had the look I wanted (Bleach - something), but it kept bleeding afterwards, which I didn't want, so I set the Wetness in Brush Controls > Water to 0. Maybe that's causing problems..

If by "it kept bleeding afterwards" you mean that the paint continued to animate after you applied the brush stroke, that's because the brush stroke was not yet completed.

Also, how do I return things completely back to the default settings?

If by "return things" you mean that you want to know how to restore brush variants to their default state:

Single brush variant

Brush Selector menu > Restore Default Variant

All brush variants in the currently loaded brush library

Brush Selector menu > Restore All Default Variants


If you want to know how to restore Painter IX (IX 9.1 or IX.5) or Painter X to its installed state:

Close Painter, then hold down the Shift key while launching Painter the next time.


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