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!
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