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Hello everybody :)

  I have a very annoying problem with colors ; I can't seem to find how to control them, I mean really control and anticipate how the will behave.  For instance, if I paint with an ochre with the simple airbrush tool, lower the opactiy to 10%, I get greens and pinks getting in the way. The same thing happens with almost any tool set on cover (scratchboard tool, 2B pencil, chalk...). And this has nothing to do with the "mixing" parameter, because I set it on 0%

 I know it is part of corel painter's strength to find colors that you would never have found by yourself, and I'm always prepared to deal with whatever weird color the software suggest, but at times I really need to control what I'm doing...

Anyone has a solution ?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions !

Thomas

 Are you seeing colors from underneath?

What may be happening is that when you reduce opacity you are making the color/layer/selection somewhat transparent allowing you to see whatever is underneath.

Is that the situation? or something different?

Doug.S

Thanks for yuor answer, doug.

 Actually no, this is not a layer problem. Imagine you paint on just one layer, no other (the canvas). Take any cover tool (airbrush for example), here I will take the simple digital airbrush. Let's say I paint with a brown ochre (RGB : 115,88,55), on a very low opactiy (7%), set on pressure. I don't get a very transparent desatured brown, I get a yellowish/green/pink hue. See what I mean ? Having this kind of hue shifts is, I think, what makes color mixing in painter different from color mixing in photoshop. And it's great to find colors randomly. But I would like to know if there is anyway to change that, to have more control on color at times.

How subtle or obvious is this colour variability? I duplicated what you are doing and everything works as expected. With a bit of imagination I could argue that there is a slight hue variability but it is so subtle that I may be tempted to put it down to an optical illusion. It's certainly not annoying. You don't happen to have Color Variability active by any chance?

You're right Joe,

  It is subtle in this case, it becomes obvious when you start mixing colors (by raising the mix pourcentage and lowering the flow). So it becomes annoying, to me, who try to make sutble stuff ;) ( in some areas I just want no color variation whatsoever).

Here's what I get in the lowest opacity of the airbrush : http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/14/subtlevariationspainter.jpg/

 This color variation doesn't happen, for whatever reason, when using the same tool, enabling stroke attributes and putting the mode on "Normal" (but this option is lagging so much I can't really use it).

Yes, I see now that it's quite unacceptably pronounced. I'd have said it was Color Variability but you have it set to 0% so I'm puzzled now.

 I see your cause for concern.

I tried using an airbrush and get nothing like you got...mine has no color variability.

There are other places in brush controls that affect color....did you check them all?  Did you try a brush reset and then paint, then set low opacity and paint again? Any differences in colors?

What exact brush (P12  default) did you use?  Or can you post your brush variant file for others to try and investigate?

I had a similar issue once between 2 brushes, one made from other but one varied the color....I did a file compare of the brushes and panels differences until I found the culprit...no bug, user error...but it was subtle and buried...there are many settings affecting brushes...this one was color AND depth for impasto.....yours likely a different panel but finding the source takes some digging one panel at a time.

Using the latest P12.2 updated version? std P12 brush? reset to default?

Maybe I should try to dig a little deeper tomorrow (it's past midnight here in Paris). But, as I checked quickly, there is no option (related to color variation anyway) that is enabled. I reseted the brush as you suggest, and here are my results :

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/708/painterweirdcolors.jpg/

Oh and yes i have installed the 12.2 months ago, it's a standard brush (in the airbrush category). But it does the same thing with almost any tool set on cover.

looks like classic painter's low opacity rendering fail. gets more pronounced when using low opacity hard edge brushes on separate layers

see also

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?93201-Weird-build-up-painting-on-a-layer

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?85510-Painter-Opacity-vs-Photoshop-Opacity&p=1197689#post1197689

unless corel recode painters approach to opacity, there won't be an easy fix to it.

 Thanks ipetcats,

 Yes I think it is the same problem mentionned in your second link.

 I found a solution that seems to work Ok,  though it eats a lot of ram : enabling "stroke attributes", putting the brush on "Normal" and lower the opacity.

 here's a comparison between this setting and the classic "cover" and "soft" setting with the same default reseted digital airbrush :

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/715/weirdcolorsolution.jpg/

 The only problem of this setting is of course the lag when you work on another layer. So I've set my cursor on "iconic" and it reduces the lag considerably.

 The thing that puzzles me is that they call this stroke attribute "Normal". So 1) They consider it a standard opacity mode  and 2) they DO know how to make a brush behave exactly like a standard (sometimes dull, I agree) photoshop brush... I'm sure they want color to function in a weir additive color mode, because it makes color mixing a little more vibrant in the end. But I don't get why they don't want to leave a "Normal" mode on every tool. I'm sure this would convince a lot of people who use Photoshop by default only because they don't understand how color works in Painter...

^ the layer attribute feature basically adds a new layer of preferred opacity for every stroke you create, which is quickly merged with active layer... thus

(1) you can't have realtime opacity control like in every other painting package

(2) hitting "preserve transparency" checkbox will effectively prevent any strokes with layer attributes enabled to appear

I don't like how slow this feature is, especially on mac...

I mean, it's a somewhat legit workaround, but it doesn't solve the core blending/mixing issue, which should have been looked into many versions ago (it's there since day 1 and got worse somewhere between painter 8 and 9)