Painter Wish List

**feral714** · May 18th, 2010, 11:58 PM

I posted this around on a forum or 2 including the "Painter Factory" in 2007.

Wish List for Painter

Hopefully none of these functions exist already....

Smoother Opacity
It seems like anything above 30-40% for most brushes is nearly the same as 100%. Or at least it seems to get really difficult to control, like the pressure ramps up as you push harder.

Merge layers in one step---think this has been added, I haven't tried Painter since the 11 demo...

Custom Brush Icons.
I want to be able to create a folder for my favorite brushes and create a custom palette from them and be able to tell them apart. Ideally it would be great to make your custom palette, make a bunch of 30x30 pixel images and just drag and drop them on your palette, replacing the image but not affecting the link to the brush. Or make it easier in SOME way.

Include the brush tracking you set up when you save a custom brush.

Real time transforming so we can see what we're doing.--this exists now I think but it's was lagging like crazy when I tried it.

Easier color/value tweaks like using 'Hue/saturation" in PS

and now for my biggest want:
A real perspective tool!
Manga Studio has a great perspective tool...
When you draw on paper you define your vanishing points and hold one end of a ruler on one point and move the other end around your image, drawing all lines back to the vanishing point. On the computer we get a grid we can try to line up our strokes to, like if we couldn't put the ruler on top of the paper but could just light table over top of it and try to draw straight lines freehand. I can't believe neither Adobe or Corel has come up with a way to constrain your stroke to a vanishing point. I envision it something like this image: You zoom way out of your image and then open the perspective palette. The 1st thing you do it define your horizontal and vertical axis/ horizons (have the lines rotate but snap to vertical or horizontal) . Then you click on one of the perspective point buttons (the more the better, I drew 6) and click somewhere on one of the axis and then back on the button to set it. Set as many as you want then zoom back in. Minimize the perspective palette and it should dock somewhere where all you can see are the buttons for the vanishing points. The buttons toggle on and off. Another way to define points, if you were trying to match the perspective in a photo for instance, would be click the little "2 lines" box (or whatever you want to call it) and then click and drag two non-parallel lines and the program will figure out where they cross and set the point.

(Sketchbook Pro has a nice ruler and ellipse tool)
On a similar note is a usable method for confining your stroke to an ellipse. You could click and drag like the circular marquee tool but then it goes right to a transform mode. Transform real quick, double click to set it, draw your strokes, delete the path, continue on.... You should also be able to set the degree, size and angle numerically. An automatic saving of the last few would be useful, like the brush tracker.

Why is the distance between the fibers on a brush called "feature"? How about "fiber spacing"? This is a very useful function, and shouldn't be hidden in the manual, it should be obvious from within the program.

**mafka** · March 6th, 2012, 04:11 PM

well... greyscale mode would be cool. And I could use the grid too.

**Starsky** · April 24th, 2012, 11:32 AM

Does anyone else get a lag (sometimes a massive one, sometimes almost none at all) when using kaleidoscope mode? It doesn't bother me too much since I hardly ever use it for serious work but still. I have all the latest updates and patches that Corel posted on their site, too.

Ah I was just about say how I wanted perspective rulers like they have in Manga Studio! Then saw the post above!

**Jason Ross** · April 24th, 2012, 01:13 PM

Open new window that updates automatically (better than navigator).

Better zoom of impasto effects.

**mdmodeler** · April 28th, 2012, 07:50 AM

I would love the ability to transform paper (more than just scaling) rotate, distort, etc. Then of course a way to return the paper to the default.
This will allow users to allow paper textures to follow forms.

**toad1971** · June 17th, 2012, 06:33 PM

Originally Posted by feral714

I posted this around on a forum or 2 including the "Painter Factory" in 2007.

Wish List for Painter

Smoother Opacity
It seems like anything above 30-40% for most brushes is nearly the same as 100%. Or at least it seems to get really difficult to control, like the pressure ramps up as you push harder.

I know it's been a couple of years since you made this post but I wanted to point out that Painter 12 has a new type of Opacity called Stroke Opacity. You can read about it here:http://painterfactory.com/blogs/chri...s-opacity.aspx

This new feature has great potential but the downside is that there is no way to control it via Pressure sensitivity - which makes it near useless to me. I made a suggestion about this at the PainterFactory website and hopefully we will see this in Painter 13 - hopefully.

**ikken** · June 18th, 2012, 01:26 AM

except stroke opacity is not adding anything new, it's just automating the process of creating new layers with or without different blending modes and flattening them down, thus no opacity control.
I hope they can at least push computed circular brushes further, as in adding pressure-based opacity dynamics and speeding them up. not even hoping for classic painter brushes getting adequate opacity support, since it's been 6 versions of corel development already, to no real success.

**toad1971** · June 18th, 2012, 03:56 PM

Originally Posted by ikken

except stroke opacity is not adding anything new, it's just automating the process of creating new layers with or without different blending modes and flattening them down, thus no opacity control.
I hope they can at least push computed circular brushes further, as in adding pressure-based opacity dynamics and speeding them up. not even hoping for classic painter brushes getting adequate opacity support, since it's been 6 versions of corel development already, to no real success.

At least we can get a good transparent effect by using a Pen like the Scratchboard Tool and turning on Pressure Expression - you just have to deal with that weird rotating auto-correcting mark it first makes. It works well for many things but I would prefer a Circular dab with no weird marks going with it.

**My57** · October 21st, 2012, 01:32 PM

Could always set the angle to bearing instead of none. That way the pen won't do that turn thing when you go up and down. I personally like using that weird turn thing when I'm doing thumbnails and stuff. Makes interesting stuff sometimes.

**charge** · December 15th, 2012, 02:26 PM

Improve the animation feature, shouldn't be a big deal. ATM it only half works, I'd love to use all those great brushes for animation.

**ninjabean** · December 19th, 2012, 05:35 PM

is painter a new version of corel's photopaint? i googled it and even saw some mention of paint shop pro, which i used 10+ years ago...
i've been away from art for awhile

**Elwell** · December 19th, 2012, 07:31 PM

Originally Posted by ninjabean

is painter a new version of corel's photopaint?

No, totally different software.

**My57** · December 24th, 2012, 03:17 PM

I just had a really cool idea, what would be cool is to be able to instantly transfer your file into photoshop and vice versa. Have a plugin for photoshop so you can just click a button and it'll open painter and allow painter to use it. When you want to use photoshop just click a button in painter and bam! In photoshop. It would be really awesome for workflow. I got the idea from GoZ which is used in Zbrush. Gonna probably pitch this idea at painter factory as well. If it hasn't been done already.

**ikken** · December 25th, 2012, 12:10 AM

^ that's a really cool idea, actually.
I'm not sure if corel would consider implementing it tho, especially since temptation not to leave PS might be too strong after quitting painter lol.

**My57** · December 26th, 2012, 01:32 PM

Originally Posted by ikken

^ that's a really cool idea, actually.
I'm not sure if corel would consider implementing it tho, especially since temptation not to leave PS might be too strong after quitting painter lol.

lol so mean, I only use photoshop when I need to inject photos into stuff and I would like to use the warp tool in it. I made brushes act like photoshop in painter pretty easily so it's more or less using photoshop for little tweaks. Saving my painting and opening it in photoshop breaks my work-flow and is kind of annoying when all I want to do is just make little adjustments that painter doesn't do as well >.<

I think they really should consider this idea. Some people actually like using painter for painting and detailing

**Cerasela** · January 3rd, 2013, 01:13 PM

Don´t need more tools or brushes , just a bit more stable would be nice. It often crashes on me when changing tools or effects. And sometimes rif. files go corrupt . I always save twice rif and pds because of that.

**Tangential** · January 9th, 2013, 10:04 PM

Better handling of multiple alpha channels.

**overvision** · January 27th, 2013, 04:53 PM

Speaking of watercolors. Does anyone have any idea why the color picker defaults to WHITE sometimes while in watercolor mode. No matter what color I try to pick, I only get WHITE!!
Very frustrating. Wondering if there's a fix??

**Portus** · January 29th, 2013, 01:20 PM

Originally Posted by overvision

Speaking of watercolors. Does anyone have any idea why the color picker defaults to WHITE sometimes while in watercolor mode. No matter what color I try to pick, I only get WHITE!!
Very frustrating. Wondering if there's a fix??

Used to be a bug but who knows maybe it's a feature now and you have to set some setting up. It made Painter unusable for me, happened in all the recent Corel versions that I tried, I'm stuck with Painter 6.1.

**overvision** · January 30th, 2013, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by Portus

Used to be a bug but who knows maybe it's a feature now and you have to set some setting up. It made Painter unusable for me, happened in all the recent Corel versions that I tried, I'm stuck with Painter 6.1.

I agree, it makes Painter extremely difficult to use. It will be working fine and all of a sudden prevent you from color picking a color from your image. What a nightmare!

**HugeBlack** · February 21st, 2013, 04:45 PM

Originally Posted by My57

I just had a really cool idea, what would be cool is to be able to instantly transfer your file into photoshop and vice versa. Have a plugin for photoshop so you can just click a button and it'll open painter and allow painter to use it. When you want to use photoshop just click a button in painter and bam! In photoshop. It would be really awesome for workflow. I got the idea from GoZ which is used in Zbrush. Gonna probably pitch this idea at painter factory as well. If it hasn't been done already.

Actually you can do this somewhat to an extent. Turn on Auto Update in Photoshop's Preferences and keep your file open there. Open the same file in Painter and whenever you save in painter it is instantly updated in Photoshop. Painter is where this method falls flat. You have to close and open the file (use recent file open) after your changes in Photoshop. All painter needs is an Auto update function. I have a theory that i haven't tried yet and that is with Painter's scripts (cause i'm not familiar with them) i don't know if i can create a script that opens the top recently opened file.

So yeah an Auto Update option in Painter would be nice.

**joeparis** · February 22nd, 2013, 04:10 AM

Yeah, I'm constantly back and forth with Painter and Photoshop with the same file. It's irritating on the Painter side having to close and re-open to get updates.

**My57** · February 28th, 2013, 08:16 PM

Oh interesting but not very useful. I mean I suppose it does save some time but I will need to close and open the image up again in painter. Maybe Corel thinks it's an awesome idea and will use it for 13.