Photosop vs. Paint tool Sai?

[M_Oreilly]

I have used Photoshop in it's many incarnations for several years. I'm learning how to use Illustrator slowly, but it's definitely functions differently. I was thinking of picking up Paint tool Sai, I know it's popular with a lot of Japanese comic artists. I do a lot of fully digital drawing.

Can someone tell me what they think of SAI? How different is it from Photoshop? Advantages/disadvantages comparatively?

[jakobweiq]

SAI.. of course!

Pro:
more light-weight, less resource hungry than Photoshop..
u can do a 10000x10000 painting with no to a tiny lag
can save works as .psd format

Cons:
no much filters except Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation

[Portus]

Good blending, smooth, great for doing line work or other delicate stuff since it's so responsive, it feels like it's the only application that uses the full Intuos pressure levels. Of course the main issue is how barebones SAI is and how it seems to be dead on the development side.

The best thing is to use both SAI and Photoshop, it's a great team, it's pretty much all I use.

[velderia]

I love SAI, with very few dislikes. One of my biggest pet peeves is that the shift tool is different from Photoshop and other programs. It's great in a way because it goes in any direction, but if I want strict horizontal and vertical lines, at least when sketching, I would have to use a rectangular selection and kind of trace along the border of it. So to do panels more neatly I would have to switch to Photoshop or something. I think it's great for getting concepts down without memory-hogging, and some inking if you're doing comics. The coloring side is a bit awkward sometimes but I've seen some people do some great colored pieces in SAI.

[Tikeo]

SAI makes better line art. Nice, crisp and quick.

[Songblade]

I'll throw in my hat for Sai. I've done two paintings on it and love the ease with the program. Definitely less of a resource hog and I find its paint tools to be on par with the simpler tools of Corel Painter without the crazy lag. Sai has ruined me for drawing with Photoshop, I can't stand the lag! Or... I must get a better machine, but there you go.

[jess403]

Hey, does anyone know if Sai supports CMYK mode?
I did a painting in Sai but when I printed it the colours came out different. Any fix for this.
Is there something I can do in Photoshop or another program before/after so that it prints the same as displayed on the monitor? Pretty sure my monitor's colours are accurate.

Other than that I like Sai it seems to have good brush control - although I'm more used to Photoshop still!

[Portus]

Hey, does anyone know if Sai supports CMYK mode?
I did a painting in Sai but when I printed it the colours came out different. Any fix for this.
Is there something I can do in Photoshop or another program before/after so that it prints the same as displayed on the monitor? Pretty sure my monitor's colours are accurate.

Other than that I like Sai it seems to have good brush control - although I'm more used to Photoshop still!

With practice you'll instinctively know what colors print and which don't, you could make a CMYK safe color palette too. Either way colors will always look slightly different in print than they do on the monitor, SAI has little to do with this, unless colors look different than they do in Photoshop, which if that's the case it's a color management issue.

[Vella C Raptor]

I've never actually heard anything super bad about SAI. It's fantastic for painting, lines are super smooth, and yeah it does feel like it's the only program that uses full sensitivity with a tablet, haha. It doesn't have as many filters, but it's PAINT tool sai, not PHOTOshop, so it's to be expected.
Not to mention it's also cheap.

My suggestion would be to get the free trial, see if you like it, and use PS + SAI together for awesome results, since as mentioned SAI can save/open PSD files.

[darkmagistric]

Sai is an incredible program. I was looking for a photoshop substitute program....and I tried everything; Sketchbook pro, Artrage, Painter, Mypaint, Gimp, Manga Studio, etc.....and Paint Tool Sai was the winner. I agree with everyone's comments about how its best to use both Sai and Photoshop.

[hecartha]

I will complete what Portus have said with info about workflow using sai+Photoshop.

Is there something I can do in Photoshop or another program before/after so that it prints the same as displayed on the monitor?

Sai just like any other programs that don't support color management (ArtRage, Sketchbook Pro, MyPaint...) is using your monitor colors instead of a non device dependent color profile (sRGB, Adobe RGB...).
So, you need to convert your work (once you have finished your image) from monitor colors to sRGB since most of monitor are aiming this color space.

Now, using Photoshop for this job, you have two options depending on your Photoshop color settings:

1- If your Photoshop color settings are set in such way (the default settings)

you will need to add your monitor profile to image coming from sai (sai images are untagged since it does not support color management). From the edit menu, Assign Profile:

And you will need to find from the list your monitor profile. Its name can be anything so you need to find it:
-in your Windows Color management Settings

-or from your Photoshop Color Settings (do not change color profile)

Now you know the profile name, you can select it from the list:

The next step is after the 2-

2- If your Photoshop color settings are set for working with non color managed programs, it will be easier:

All untagged images will be seen with your monitor colors (so, they will be identical to what you see in Sai):
You have nothing to do comparing to option 1- and you can directly go to the next step...


>>>> You are coming from option 1- or 2-, you are finally there:

-If you need to print on your home printer, you will need to convert your image to sRGB
from the Photoshop edit menu, choose convert to profile...

and choose as destination profile sRGB

The conversion will modify definitely your image (and your image will not have anymore right colors in Sai)
Of course, keep your original Sai image with a backup of your monitor profile if one day you need to change your monitor
There are techniques also to fix unprintable colors in Photoshop but since it is not specific to Sai or any other non color managed program, I will not post them here...

-if you need to save for web, that's easy, just check the box convert to sRGB in 'Save for Web & Devices' Panel.


Few last words...once converted, the colors will look different if you don't display them in sRGB condition. The usual mistake is to display them with your monitor color. Only few web browser are completely color managed (Firefox and Safari) and none of them are able to display by default untagged image as sRGB...that means if you don't embed a color profile, everyone will see your image with their monitor colors (wrong colors). At the moment, only firefox can be set to display untagged image in the correct way using hidden settings.

[rozer.ben0]

this is the first time that I heard about sai paint tool but I think that photo shop is very good paint other than other paint tool that i had used because other tool don't provide me to directly convert my web layout in html so for my use photo shop is good i don't want any other paint tool so far

[Yulai]

I found that Sai definitely has less of a learning curve than Photoshop. Still, there are definitely more resources (brushes,tutorials, ect.) for Photoshop since it seems to be the program used most by experts.

[wgan]

sai's got an unbelievably fast brush engine the only another engine up to the par is tvpaint in terms of speed

[hyolee123]

I've used SAI paint tool over photoshop because I have trouble with photoshop tools and the lag at times. I've seen some amazing work come out of paint tool SAI and photoshop alike and together. SAI is great for line art and colouring, it's tidy and not a resource hog, so it works well on my laptop.

Photoshop I would use for reworking the colours with filters as such after fully colouring with SAI. This is how I did my photography portfolio this year at school.

[Vielmond]

I love SAI. I use SAI + photoshop, it's like a perfect combo.

I'm hunting new brushes for SAI, I've got some but I'm still after more. If you have a good custom brush set, share the love!

Oh, and I would love to be able to choose SAI from the "Media" category. I just can't find it and I always have to throw "Other...". Also, I guess this category shouldn't be a dropdown, but a selection list, because many artists don't get stuck with only one tool in their workflow. Does anyone else agrees?

[wgan]

is sai still alive, it hasn't been updated since 2008, interestingly, the copyright info on their official site shows 1996-2011, what happen to them, got acquired by Adobe?

[Arshes Nei]

is sai still alive, it hasn't been updated since 2008, interestingly, the copyright info on their official site shows 1996-2011, what happen to them, got acquired by Adobe?

No they were not acquired. It was someone's small project.