Technical constraints of photoshop/digital painting

[Marley]

Just wondering if anyone, hopefully professionals also, can answer a few questions about some technical aspects of digital painting?

Sorry if this is the wrong forum [moderators please move] or that it is repeating another thread...however...

When painting, especially with photoshop I tend to get quite fuzzy edges, and the lines aren't crisp like alot of [professional] work.

I believe that resolution plays a big part of this [sorry if i'm being niave], and that these artist will paint pics at a higher res and then once the image is printed or displayed [at a smaller size] all the lines and edges will appear crisp and sharp. So what kind of resolution are we talking?

300ppi? 600ppi? higher?
4200x2900 [a3] or larger than that?

This would explain why my paintings feel very fuzzy around the line edges...even though i use the hardest brushes available[well...unless there is another reason of course]!

However this does bring up another problem. If this is the case then working at 5000x 3000 at 600ppi or even 300ppi then the lag on my brush strokes would be unbearable!! So does this mean an upgrade to my computer is needed?

What would be a typical spec for a professional digital painter?

Mine is amd 3000+ with 1gig of ram and an ati 3d graphics card! But when speaking to a technician he mentioned that these designers/digital painters would probably be using multi-processor motherboards with maybe 2-4 4400+ 64bit dual core-processors, and have about 2-4gig of ram. And they would probably have two harddrives, one about 80 gig which would have the photoshops primary/first scratch disc assigned to, and have the operating system and the photoshop software on the other drive!

Or is this overkill...as it seems a big thing to have 2 dual core processors with 4 gig! .

Cheers

[Marley]

Anyone?

Does no-one use a computer :$ ?

[bumskee]

I think this has very little to do with your computer or the canvas size for that matter.. It's more of technique + skill issue. I am used to use amd 3200 with 1 gb.. seems fine.. canvas size is around 4000px x 3000px.. dpi, ppi is meaningless if we are talking pixels.

[simplejack]

I'm using an old 1gig processor with 1gig ram and a 128 graphics card and 40gig hdd, no problems for me... might be worth posting up a screen grab of your issues, its probably techique and settings like bumskee said, rather than your machine.

[Marley]

There won't be any problems at 3000x1500 because that is A4. However when you come to produce work which is A3> you will struggle. It's inevitable...especially when you begin to use more layers.

You see if you up res an A3 pic to A2 or even 600ppi to work on for a sharp definition and detail...and then downsize this on post production for even cripser lines then you will really be fighting a losing battle with those system setups!

You may be able to interpolate the size up...but think about it...if you make a doc which is 300ppi at 3000 x 1500 then for an A3 print you will in effect be 'doubling' it's size, and thus the computer will add it's own pixels!

I do realise that my technique has a lot to do with it...but so does size! It stands to reason doesn't it? if you work on an image 500x500 at 150ppi and then another image 1000x1000 at 300ppi then the res, and quality will be 'sharper'!!

And when working bigger then you need a fast processor...which boils down to motherboards....graphics cards...and so-on etc etc etc, all to help photoshop think faster and more efficiently...this is why I ask to find out what setups people use.

[Fingers]

One thing you could do is paint in a lower resolution up to some point, then upsample to a larger size before you sharpen up the lines and do final details & texture. This way you won't need to do a lot of work "zoomed out" so that the entire 3000-pixel image is visible. Even with large images PS will run fast at 100% magnification and higher.