Ok, I've been a casual user of Painter the last few years, but I've spent the last month reading the entire User Guide. I took notes and everything in an effort to really understand how the brushes work, how they are structured, etc. I found many things that made sense and were logical about how brushes are structured, but whenever I thought I had it figured out, I would run across something that didn't fit the plan.
I would like to see the Brush Control palettes organized better in a more logical hierarchy. For example, the Brush Profiles are not consistently located in terms of where you find them: the Artist Oils brush Profiles are in the Size Palette with the other default Brush Profiles, yet the RealBristle brush profiles are found in the RealBristle palette. There should be consistency to where you find things.
Some controls in the Artists Oils Palette control the Real Bristle brushes, why the need for two different names for these two different categories? I don't understand the relationship, since Artists Oils brushes use Artists Oils brush dabs, and Real Bristle brushes don't. If I pick an Artists Oils brush dab, the RealBristle palette is greyed out, yet if I pick a Blend Camel Hair brush dab, not only can I use the RealBristle palette, I can use the Artists Oils palette as well! This is just so confusing. I get the feeling that elements of this program are just "tacked on" with each new realease without being firmly integrated into the existing structure. For example, why create a new category called RealBristle? Why not just create a better Bristle palette to incorporate new features to work with existing computed dab-type brushes (the existing Bristle controls only works with the Static Bristle dab-type, which is a "dab-based" dab type)?
Why are some brush dabs in Painter 11, the Blend Camel Hair dab and the Blend Flat dab are not even mentioned in the User Guide!
What's the deal with using the word "Real" to describe brushes outside of the RealBristle Brush category? For example, a Real variant of a Digital Watercolor brush - when this brush is selected the RealBristle palette is greyed out and the Hard Media palette is available. In the User Guide, many "brushes" like the Real Digital Watercolor variants are listed as HardMedia variants! I don't get it at all.
This is so confusing it makes my head spin.
So one thing I would like to see is a more clear organized hierarchy of brush controls.
Another idea would be a "Brush Expressions Summary" Palette. In an effort to better understand what stylus controls are active when picking a variant brush, how about a palette that lists every Expression control that is turned on for that brush located in one place? So immediately when you pick a brush you can see what Expression controls are already turned on without having to open every single Brush Control palette? For example "oh, this brush has Opacity set to Pressure, Size set to Pressure, Impasto set to Bearing, etc, etc." And you'd see this all in one easy "summary palette". If an Expression control isn't being used, then it wouldn't appear in the "summary palette," unless you turned it on in one of the other palettes, then perhaps it could appear in the summary list.
Any comments?