Hi all,
don't want to be painting a very dark picture but where is the 2024 update? Any news on that?
Bernd
I don't think Procreate killed Painter, still solid but not competitive anymore. In the latest updates, they only cared about cloning painters, not for the people that could actually draw and paint. Painter needed more solid tools, not a new set of brushes. People wanted a distortion grid or an improvement in cropping, but they created new brushes like audio brushes...a type of brush that only wastes space...because nobody uses it.
And software like Clipstudio actually hears people that can draw and makes incredible updates. For example, been asking Corel for a better brush tracking system, we need to be able to edit the curve just like the rest of the programs like Procreate or Clipstudio, pen these days uses more levels of pressure, and the brush tracking is outdated, was created when pens had 1024 levels of pressure, brushes are hard to control now.
They add cool features then let them rust and never improve them, perspective tools need polishing, and we need better-looking software for 4k resolution(still the program has weird edges on the sides).
Painter had brilliant ideas like the Android version of Painter, then abandoned it to die, while Clip studio took that idea and cleverly created a cloud system so you can work on pc and on the go with a Samsung tablet.
So I'm hoping they are taking their time to really innovate this time around and think of professionals, and not the people that use cloning for fun. It needs to be competitive, and not to only get a new set of brushes and a couple of new features that will collect dust because no one uses them.
It's baffling actually why they don't listen to professional illustrators, concept artists and the like. Painter has so much going for it but yet is lacking in so many ways that are "common sense." If they are concerned about the bottom line then it really makes no sense because once a popular illustrator or concept artist uses Painter, then so do many students and followers. But once a tool in Photoshop becomes a standard and widely used such as a Warp Transform, then people aren't going to use a software that doesn't have it. The perception is that Corel never seemed to care about getting pros to use their software. They don't seem to want to innovate anymore or stay with the times. I agree with you on everything you wrote. The Perspective Tool is a perfect example - good idea and I use here and there but it is buggy at times and lacks more advanced features. The reference panel also is a good example - good idea but too basic and clunky to be used effectively. Why no tabbed pages after all this time? How hard can it be? Despite UI improvement over the years the UI is still a mess. We can't dock panels horizontally? Palette drawers don't dock either and therefore open on top of the ones below it hiding stuff. Selected brushes in custom palettes don't show as selected. Layer masks need improvements. No clipping layers. Basic tools lacking basic features - example of the paint bucket not having a Contiguous setting like the Magic Wand. So much they could do. Nobody cares about cloning - they could remove it entirely from the program and I would never notice.
Yeah, and what drives me nuts is that they have Corel Draw one of the most brilliant vector programs out there and they still haven't borrowed features from it to incorporate them into Painter. If they just focussed for a couple of years just to tie up all the tools and improve them, the painter update will be huge.
Hope they are not wasting resources on another set of brushes I won't use.
speaking of Corel Draw, I would actually like to see some more Vector features added to Painter - it's certainly not the most critical thing to me but more keyboard shortcuts to use the Pen Tool, more starting vector shapes would be a start. Vector shapes are very useful when painting/designing industrial things like robots and vehicles. The fact that you can snap the brush tool to a vector path in Painter is very useful, but the basic vector tools in Painter make it feel limited
what I mean by "it's not the most critical thing" is that even more than that I need a Warp Transform, Contiguous setting for the Paintbucket, Color Coding for layers to stay organized, a quick fill option such as Alt+Delete in Photoshop, Pre-Feather setting for the selection tools, Layer Mask Improvements, tabbed pages, etc.
Vector tool improvements are important to me but there's many more things that need some improvement.