Art Rage is nice, and cheap. I owned a license for Windows, and found it to be a decent application. It's not terribly feature rich, and I'm not the biggest fan of its materials selection (since it's a natural media emulator, it applies texture to nearly everything, which can sometimes result in unnecessarily shiny/bumpy drawings).
Sketchbook Pro is awesome. I love it, I use it all the time. It has, by far, the best tablet-based interface of any application I've ever used. It has a few limitations as a painting application when compared to Photoshop, but you can find a workaround for most of them (and they don't bother me too much since I do most of my painting in a single layer).
Photoshop is the grand daddy, of course, but is also rather pricey. That said, Photoshop Essentials contains almost the full brush engine and is quite adequate for digital painting purposes, though its interface is horrid.
I've never used Painter. Pencil is inappropriate here; it's a cel-based animation utility with limited drawing tools, but quite nice for its stated purpose (and free!). The GIMP is capable, but you have to acclimate to its interface and idiosyncrasies. Personally, I don't find the effort worth the price.
Buy ArtRage. It's so cheap, you might as well, even if you ultimately abandon it (like me). Then buy Sketchbook Pro. For sketching purposes, nothing else comes close.
Sketching art programs: suggestions?
I've already made up my mind to buy ArtRage, but I'll demo the free starter edition first in my journal roundup. It's definitely good value.
I've been demoing Sketchbook Pro due to your recommendation earlier. It's also a bit sparse in features (it's technically only got one tool, just lots of setting presets), but I like the algorithm they use for the sketches. It's got a good smoothing process for each stroke.
There is however one possibly fatal flaw with Sketchbook Pro - Autodesk doesn't seem to want to sell it to Australians [sad]. Their online store will only sell to the U.S. and Canada. Australians are directed to their affiliate seller partners, every single one of which has a spartan website, showing all the "solutions" they have on offer. And every single one of them never, ever bothers to tell you trivial details like, say, the price. It looks like they only deal with business customers, so for a single license I suspect it will be the old price (US$179), plus shipping and tax, plus the affiliate markup, equal triple the price on the Autoesk store. So I'm a little disinclined to want to send Autodesk any of my Aussie dollars, given that they don't seem to be interested in them.
I've been demoing Sketchbook Pro due to your recommendation earlier. It's also a bit sparse in features (it's technically only got one tool, just lots of setting presets), but I like the algorithm they use for the sketches. It's got a good smoothing process for each stroke.
There is however one possibly fatal flaw with Sketchbook Pro - Autodesk doesn't seem to want to sell it to Australians [sad]. Their online store will only sell to the U.S. and Canada. Australians are directed to their affiliate seller partners, every single one of which has a spartan website, showing all the "solutions" they have on offer. And every single one of them never, ever bothers to tell you trivial details like, say, the price. It looks like they only deal with business customers, so for a single license I suspect it will be the old price (US$179), plus shipping and tax, plus the affiliate markup, equal triple the price on the Autoesk store. So I'm a little disinclined to want to send Autodesk any of my Aussie dollars, given that they don't seem to be interested in them.
Quote:
Original post by Trapper Zoid
There is however one possibly fatal flaw with Sketchbook Pro - Autodesk doesn't seem to want to sell it to Australians [sad]. Their online store will only sell to the U.S. and Canada. Australians are directed to their affiliate seller partners, every single one of which has a spartan website, showing all the "solutions" they have on offer. And every single one of them never, ever bothers to tell you trivial details like, say, the price. It looks like they only deal with business customers, so for a single license I suspect it will be the old price (US$179), plus shipping and tax, plus the affiliate markup, equal triple the price on the Autoesk store. So I'm a little disinclined to want to send Autodesk any of my Aussie dollars, given that they don't seem to be interested in them.
Damn. [sad]
Quote:
Original post by Trapper Zoid
$40?! Is it legit? I've checked the listing and it doesn't say where the seller got it from. I'm a bit wary of buying software from eBay, especially when they're apparently just shipping you a CD and a registration key.
Well, you made me doubt now. the disk, as I said, seems to be OEM, the kind that comes bundled with a tablet or something like that in a paper sleeve, if it is a dupe, is one that took effort, the serial worked both to install and register Corel's website too, I am doubting it because I just took it out and make sure and the readable side looks suspiciously similar to a burned disk, but still not quite the same.
Picture:
If anyone can verify this is what the real thing looks like, let us know.
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