Intuos 3 and Painter IX: Pressure?

[Dr. Tyrell]

Hello everyone,

I just bought an Intuos 3 6x8, as I am just getting into digital painting. Now the tablet is advertised to have 1024 levels of pressure sense. However, it seems that I have to slighty press on the tablet to make the pen pick up a line/brushstroke. Now in real life, you could simply drag a pencil without putting any pressure on it to make it draw a very faint line.

Is it normal to have to slightly press to get the pen to engage?

Also, I was playing with the wacom control panel, and when I do the pressure test, I can't get the pressure to gradually increase. It sort of skips, never goes in a fluid motion.

Thanks for your time.

[rogfa]

Try setting up the the brush tracking in Painter. Also I set my pressure sensitivity on the wacom to as low as possible too avoid scratching it. I trained myself to press really light. You may find you will need to lower the opacity on some tools to get the desired effect you need.

[Lord Edwin]

I have a question that will fit under this same heading. I'm learning the ropes of Painter IX using an Intuos3 6x8 and I've been trying to get settings similar to how I use them in Photoshop, using the pen pressure for opacity purposes. In Photoshop I had no problems setting it up and so the lighter I press the lighter and narrower the line. Great! In Painter, though, when I apply the pressure setting in the brush creator, it seems to perform in reverse of how the Photoshop settings work. I press lightly and get a thin, full opacity line, and it becomes more transparent as I press harder instead of how it would appear naturally. If I press down hard, there is no line at all. Is there a way to get the Painter settings to read the pen input in the same way as Photoshop so that it reacts with light pressure to create transparent marks?

[PeterO]

I press lightly and get a thin, full opacity line, and it becomes more transparent as I press harder instead of how it would appear naturally. If I press down hard, there is no line at all.
To me it sound as if you have the Invert opacity expression box checked.
To get a less sensitive behaviour from your stylus pen where you actually get a thin transparent line when applying light pressure, increasing in with and opacity with increasing pressure you need to set Size Expression to Pressure in the Brush Creator and adjust min size to your liking. This along with Opacity Expression set to Pressure should serve you well. If you when you set up Brush Tracking apply extra pressure you will further increase the gap between a thin transparent line to a thick opac line while working.

[Lord Edwin]

Ah wow. Because the only name for the box appears on the mouseover, I had assumed that box was simply to engage whatever Expression option I chose. Silly me! Thanks for the help!

Greg