Photoshop/painter/tvpaint Brushes comparison

[isd]

I often use Painter and Photoshop, and while painter has nice out of the box natural brushes, photoshop has a lot of options for customization.
I would like to ask a question to people who know painter and photoshop very well.
What TV paint has to offer in comparison?
I am not interested in special effects, just in being able to customize quickly and easily brushes to obtain the texture I want. For example in painter you can draw with oil pastels and smear with your finger or add water to obtain very different results. I have the impression that tvpaint has a paper texture completely flat that doesn't allow to have a good rendering of the volume of the paint (as you have out of the box in ArtRage).
I'd like to hear experienced users on the goods and bads of the "natural media" simulation in TV paint, and your workarounds.

[slowtiger]

I'm not that much after "natural media simulation", after all, if I need watercolour, I use watercolour. On paper.

I have weeded out my brushes both in PS and TVP to just a minimum set which I found useful for me. I don't use the more processor-heavy brushes because my PPC is old and coughing.

PS advantages:
- better blending of wet brushes
- always visible outline of brush!
PS fail:
- slow response while drawing.
TVP advantages:
- animated brushes (the chinese ink is great!)
- fast response
- tiny bit better reaction to "direction" input
TVP fail:
- missing visible outline
- missing "darken only" drawing mode

In all other aspects they're on par, I'd say. Both fail miserably when it comes to brush management, IMO. Both make equal good use of all the input parameters of the stylus.

[idragosani]

To add to what slowtiger said, I think Painter also suffers from poor performance, especially for larger projects. It gets very jerky. I don't have this problem at all with TVPaint. I wish there were 64-bit versions of all of these programs! The outline mode of PS is ok, but TVPaint's animated brushes far outweigh this lack

I think TVPaint pencil brushes are the best also, PS and Painter pencils just don't have the right look or feel for me.

I will add that for out of the box painting with really excellent brushes, MyPaint is a good choice. It doesn't do anything except natural media painting, but does it quite well. A 64-bit version under Linux provides very smooth painting and it runs rings around Painter and PhotoShop. TVP under Linux rocks also... hope they produce a 64-bit version for Linux!

[Sewie]

... hope they produce a 64-bit version for Linux!

And Windows!

[Byron]

Yes, as far as pencils go, I think TVP wins hands down. With the felt nib in my stylus and a piece of card stuck to my tablet, on more than one occasion I've found myself about to blow away the eraser dust when sketching and erasing with the TVP pencils! I tend to use Photoshop for painting, and haven't really explored the TVP brushes further than the pencils yet. Painter, I find, is a bit of a novelty act... It has some amazing brushes and options, but it somehow seems to be missing the point of creating artwork on a computer.

[isd]

MyPaint is a good choice.

I have tried mypaint and it's pretty impressive. It works better than painter out of the box lol.
But there is a big problem, the curves are not smooth when you draw quickly, so I don't think I will use it (>_<)
But the brushes are better than TVPaint out the box. It seems it is not impossible to create these brushes in TVPaint so why noone has done it until now? Maybe it is impossible in fact? ^^;

[Sewie]

There are some pretty decent brushes scattered over the "Contents Sharing" thread. TVP has great tools and options for creating good real-media brushes but I just haven't come around to doing it yet.
What sort of brushes are you looking for, exactly?

[isd]

There are some pretty decent brushes scattered over the "Contents Sharing" thread. TVP has great tools and options for creating good real-media brushes but I just haven't come around to doing it yet.
What sort of brushes are you looking for, exactly?

I am very fond of the following brushes(in painter)
-pastel
-oil pastel
-oils (artists oils, normal oils, and the knife tools)
-smear (like when you use your finger)

It would be nice to be able to configure the brushes with all the possible parameters (For example the light parameter is only possible with the oilbrush)

[isd]

I created a not perfect but not so bad pastel brush.
Unfortunately I am still testing the soft with the demo version and can't export it.

[Fabrice]

- missing visible outline

The outline is not visible only when the size is connected with something (most often the "pressure"). How could we know the exact size in this case ? or maybe should we always keep the highest size for the outline ?
Please let us know

- missing "darken only" drawing mode

Isn't it the "shade" mode ? if not, please can you post an exemple ?

)of Topic( ... ISD, don't miss the next coming update, it should be great for drawing cleaners

[ZigOtto]

- missing visible outline

The outline is not visible only when the size is connected with something (most often the "pressure"). How could we know the exact size in this case ? or maybe should we always keep the highest size for the outline ?

... imo, when tip position detected but before contact, the outline should keep its real size (100%), but taking in account the other settings/connections (angle, direction, speed, ratio, anim, ...), then, with contact, the brush fits the size regarding its connection (pressure, for ex.).

- missing "darken only" drawing mode

Isn't it the "shade" mode ? if not, please can you post an exemple ?

not the same, "shade" adds black, "darken only" looks at both colors (already existing, and the brush's ones), and use the darkest color only,
that means when the brush's color is lighter, it doesn't paint/modify over the already applied colors.
you can see the difference playing with the layers merge modes.

[slowtiger]

From some Gimp manual:

Darken only mode compares each component of each pixel in the upper layer [brush] with the corresponding one in the lower layer and uses the smaller value in the resulting image. Completely white layers have no effect on the final image and completely black layers result in a black image.
The equation is: E = min(M, I) The mode is commutative; the order of the two layers doesn't matter.

Size of outline: just the size at 100% pressure would be good enough (in PS it doesn't change with pressure).

[Sewie]

Yes, I agree.