Painter is unusably slow?

**AkaNezumi** · October 27th, 2003, 10:03 AM

Hi all...

I have a question for you veteran Painter users. I'm using Painter 8. I love the program, but for my purposes so far it seems unusable.

When I work at a amall size suitable for web graphics, it functions, but I normally work at 300 DPI. At a large, printable size it is SO SO SLOW. I attempt to use a large brush to fill in a big background and it takes about 7 seconds for the brush to catch up with my stroke.

I have a really fast computer, so this isn't the issue. I have a AMD 2100+ , 1 gig of 333 mhz memory, running on an A7V8X motherboard. I have raid 0 with really fast harddrives. (To put it into persepctive for the Mac users, this setup is roughly as fast as the G5.) I even allowocated nearly all the memory to painter and it had no effect.

I read on the painters site that the program is not optimized for speed, and it didn't sound like they were going to in the future, form the way it was worded. Does anyone have any information about this? I love the program but I just can't use it at this slow speed. I'm a speed demon, and soon upgrading my system to be even faster.

-onezumi-

**Redmond** · October 27th, 2003, 11:35 AM

I stick with brushes size 27px. I upgraded from a p3 555Mhz to a p4 2,4Ghz and not much changed.

**AkaNezumi** · October 27th, 2003, 11:59 AM

How do you fill in backgrounds? I'd think anything less than a 300 pixel diameter would take me all week. Maybe its just not made for making poster-sized images.

**agflash** · October 27th, 2003, 01:35 PM

Originally posted by AkaNezumi
How do you fill in backgrounds? I'd think anything less than a 300 pixel diameter would take me all week. Maybe its just not made for making poster-sized images.

I'd like to know your tools you use for painting.
I've P III 450 and don't have such massive problems you described.

Andrew

**AkaNezumi** · October 27th, 2003, 01:43 PM

Originally posted by agflash

I'd like to know your tools you use for painting.
I've P III 450 and don't have such massive problems you described.

Andrew

You mean my brush? I tried to use a 300px soft brush in simple watercolor mode.

**Jin** · October 27th, 2003, 02:02 PM

Some artists do the following:

Block in large areas of color at smaller dimensions and Resolution (ppi).

Resize upward and paint large detail.

Resize upward again to the final dimensions and Resolution (ppi) to paint small details and clean things up.

You'd need to do some testing first to calculate your smaller brush sizes so when you resize upward for the final, you get the result you want.

Other things:

Close other programs while running Painter.

To help prevent corrupted RIFF files, save Uncompressed. The default is compressed so you'll need to check the Uncompressed box when saving.

Save frequently and save your files in a numbered series so if anything goes wrong, you won't lose everything and can go back to the previous save.

Stop every hour or so, use File > Save As and save the file in RIFF format. Close Painter and go to the following folder and delete the Pre-built Brush File:

Corel > Corel Painter 8 > Brushes

The Pre-built Brush File can grow large very quickly, depending on which brush variants are used and when it's large, it can slow down Painter's performance.

Keep the default Painter 8 Painter Brushes brush library in its original state and create your own custom brush libraries to hold custom brush variants. When a brush library gets too large, it can slow down Painter's performance.

Do the same with art materials libraries as they, too, can slow things down if they become too large.

If you have any special scripts you want to keep, use the Script Mover to create a custom scripts library and move your scripts into your custom scripts library.

In Edit > Preferences General, reduce the number of days Painter Auto Saves scripts if it's currently at the maximum of 10 days. That takes up memory.

Every few days, or more often, when Painter's closed, go to the following folder and delete the Painter.ssd file (Windows) or Painter Script Data file (Mac). The next time Painter is launched, it will generate a new, empty scripts library and begin recording whatever you do in that session.

In Edit > Preferences > Undo, reduce the number of Undo's if it's set to the maximum of 32. That also takes up memory.

Do regular system maintenance, clear out browser cache and temp files, etc.

Just a few things you can try to see if it helps.

Good luck,

**AndyT** · October 27th, 2003, 02:14 PM

Maybe that was different in Painter 7 ... but is there a "Feature Setting" for the brushes?
Or maybe you'll find anything else there!?

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutorial...inter_tips.asp

**AkaNezumi** · October 27th, 2003, 02:46 PM

OMG. You guys are angels!

I'm going to try this out as soon as I get back from work tonight!!!!

**agflash** · October 27th, 2003, 02:52 PM

Originally posted by AkaNezumi

You mean my brush? I tried to use a 300px soft brush in simple watercolor mode.

"Water color" or "digital water color" ?
But anyway i do not use such huge size for my brushes, i do it like Jin suggested.

Btw. what Jin said is very important, i do it also from time to time.

I'd like to suggest you to "play" with those controls:
Start Brush Creator:
Ctrl+B
and try to change values you find in Spacing-Section, wich controls how often painter "drop" the brushstroke.

Andrew