Resources: Adobe Unveils Photoshop CS5
April 13th, 2010 | Published in Featured, Photoshop, Resources | 7 Comments
Click on the screenshot above to see how painting looks in Photoshop CS5.
As we mentioned last week, Adobe’s CS5 kickoff event was April 12. Photoshop CS5 looks very, very promising, and worth the upgrade. Some of the more amazing new features include the Content-aware Fill, which makes short work of removing people from images, and the Puppet Warp, which will let you reposition arms and legs at will, long after the shutter has clicked. Mind-boggling stuff. Of course, the feature I was most interested in was the rumored improvements to the brush engine in Photoshop, which hasn’t been touched since version 7 (five releases ago). We got just a brief look at how the new brushes work. So this post is a gathering of some further information from various sources, to help us figure out just what has changed. And, to answer the Big Question: does it replace Painter?
This may be a point of little interest to most digital painters. After all, Photoshop is already the most commonly-used software for digital painting, by far. Personally, I use Painter much more for painting. Perhaps that’s because I began my art training years ago using traditional materials. For folks like me, Painter is easier to paint with than Photoshop, since the brushes work like their counterparts in the real world, pretty much. Blending colors on the canvas has always been much better in Painter, though far from perfect. From what I understand, the “brush engine” (picture a tiny motor inside a brush handle pumping out paint) in Painter differs from the one in Photoshop in that the brush interacts with the colors already on the canvas. In Photoshop, the brush simply stamps an image repeatedly to give the illusion of a continuous stroke. You can see the difference here:
Yellow and blue make green...sort of. Painter (on the left) does a fair job of mixing colors on the canvas. Photoshop CS3, on the right, is a bunch of blue circle stamps on top of yellow.
With this in mind, I anxiously awaited yesterday’s kickoff, hoping to see that Photoshop had fixed the brush engine, so that it would truly act like paint on canvas. I probably won’t know for sure until I get my hands on the new version and play with it, but for now it’s looking like Adobe has simply enhanced the Smudge tool. The examples (check out the links which follow) that I’ve found show “paintings” that are nothing more than the ol’ smearing-pixels-around school of painting. True, colors do mix on the canvas now. Yellow and blue seem to create green. But Adobe is calling the new brushes “Natural Media Bristle Tip Brushes,” which sounds like throwing down the gauntlet in Corel’s face, to me. Don’t misunderstand me–I think they’ve made some great improvements here. But I don’t think they’ve released the “Painter Killer” yet.
For one thing, there’s no Color Cloning in CS5. As you look at the examples below, keep in mind that all the artist has done is smear pixels around in an existing photograph. Perhaps they’ve added colors, too, but the point is there is no cloning ability. Without that, I can’t see photographers using the new brushes. In Julianne Kost’s presentation (top), she mentions she’s “not an artist” and seems afraid of actual painting. (Too bad they didn’t hire an artist to show off the new product features.) Photographers use Painter’s cloning technology to create painterly images. I can’t see them switching to Photoshop without something similar.
But these are just my opinions. I’d love to hear your reactions to the new release. Please check out the links which follow, if you’d like to see the new brushes in action.
John Derry paints an apple from scratch and as a smudge painting.
Adobe demonstrates the Mixer Brush and the Bristle Tips.
Tim Shelbourne does a nice job of mimicking a traditional oil portrait.
Some nice examples from photographer Thomas Hawk.
Related Posts
- Resources: CS5 Brushes and Training to Get You Moving
- Resources: Photoshop CS5 and other cool new stuff
- Beginning Digital Painting with Photoshop
- Painter and Photoshop FAQ
- A Collection of Great Photoshop Brushes to Download for Free
- Corel Painter Resources: links to Brushes, Papers, Tutorials
- A Quick and Easy Watercolor with Photoshop’s Art History Brush
April 14th, 2010 at 4:23 am (#)
An interesting article. In actual fact, you do indeed have the opportunity to truly clone colour with the new Mixer Brush in CS5, not merely “push pixels around” as we did with the old Smudge Tool. This cloning ability, or rather the facility to “Sample From All Layers” means that ALL cloning and painting can take place on separate, independent layers, leaving the original background layer entirely untouched and intact. As a result of this, the final image can become in effect a true painting, as the original photographic reference layer can be hidden or even completely discarded once the “painting” is completed.
I too have used Painter for many years, and published many tutorials for Painter users, and of course there is no direct comparison between Painter and CS5, and nor should there be. That being said, as a traditional painter for more years than I care to remember, I can confidently say that CS5 proves to have very adaptable and powerful painting capabilities now.
April 14th, 2010 at 9:32 am (#)
Nice compilation of CS5 information, Bob. I have to agree with Tim that CS5 can “clone”. A bit of history…
When Painter 1.0 was developed (initially by Mark Zimmer), there was no such concept as layers—the user could have a single “floating object” (created by Cut/Copy/Paste) , could reposition it, but had to drop it before establishing a new floating object. In this layerless environment, Mark had the idea to use the concept of cloning—already well-established as a Source/Destination-within-a-document-brush—to utilize a Source document and alter the content as applied to a clone (or Destination) document. This enabled a layer-like behavior in an era in which pixel-based layers did not yet exist (this was largely due to then-current processor and memory restrictions).
In fact, Painter’s document cloning trick is a bit obtuse in today’s layer-capable environment—the user must understand the concept of an image from another location being funneled through a brush to the current document. Yes, it is a bit of a cool parlor trick to paint with a brush that seems to magically create an image from the ether, but it can also confuse new users. Today, layers now provide the same mechanism as a clone source have in the past with the benefit that the source imagery is visible in registration (or not) directly underneath the destination layer.
I find that the ability to create multiple layers over a source image and selectively build up a painting by using my brush (Painter and now CS5 included) to pick up the underlying color with an expressive bristle-based brush is exactly like dipping a paintbrush into a photograph and treating the image like wet oil paint. There is none of the “where is the color coming from” mystery associated with clone source documents—the imagery is immediately visible. Furthermore, I can choose to intermingle paint and photograph in any visible ratio I desire, and I can cross into adding my own color and strokes, thereby taking the resulting image even further away from the original source. Finally, the “clone source” in this case is merely the bottom canvas of the document and is saved with the image—eliminating the need to keep track of an external source document.
In my mind, document cloning is old school. Non-destructive layer painting offers a much larger safety net, enabling the artist to feel free to explore and experiment—which can ultimately lead to a richer finished artwork.
Now to the other question…is CS5 a Painter Killer? Adobe has fired a warning shot over Corel’s bow with the introduction of the Mixer Brush and Bristle Tips, but Painter’s depth of media types offers far more expressive range than CS5 alone can muster. On the other hand, CS5 (now on the Mac, already on Win) is a 64-bit application, opening it up to much larger memory allocation. Additionally, painting in 16-bit color depth must be experienced to be appreciated. The use of higher color depth enables incredible overhead when mixing and blending color. You don’t see more color—you feel it. Color just mixes in a manner I can only describe as “creamy”. CS5 also significantly takes advantage of today’s multi-core processor, intelligently dividing up tasks onto separate cores. This parallelism is manifested as a more muscular approach to compute-intensive tasks, which digital painting is in spades.
CS5 is not a Painter Killer…yet. Corel must engineer Painter into the 21st century in order to maintain it’s shrinking dominance as the natural-media painting application. Many users have given up on Painter due to long-existing crashes and quirks. CS5 come into the light with a solid track record as a stable application and continues to be. Some component of Painter users will most likely find that CS5 offers everything they desire and will migrate. Others will cherish Painter’s broad range of media types and stay with it.
I’ve stated it elsewhere, and I’ll say it here: In the end, the winner is the user. Competition raises the bar of user expectations, inspires developers to improve their offerings, and offers more choices.
I’m certainly for that!
-john
April 14th, 2010 at 9:54 am (#)
Tim and John –
Thank you both for taking time to respond, and to set the record straight. I didn’t realize the new Mixer brush had a “Sample All Layers” checkbox. I’ve gotten so used to using the “neat parlor trick” of Painter’s cloning, I hadn’t thought beyond it. When you think about it, though, you’re absolutely right, John: it makes little sense to have a part of the document “over here” in this other image file. Very cool! Never thought about it that way!
I’m really looking forward to using CS5. I bought a Mac Pro “octo-core” three years ago, and now I’ll finally have an app that uses all 8 processors and my 6GB of RAM.
16 bit color depth, eh? Wow. Painter is only 8 bit…
Again, thanks to you both for sharing your “insider” info.
-Bob
April 14th, 2010 at 5:23 pm (#)
I think the most serious users of Painter will not be swayed by Photoshop’s new painting features. However, while it may not be a Painter killer yet, I’m afraid that for many people, it will be “good enough” and really hurt sales of Painter.
April 16th, 2010 at 5:28 am (#)
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April 19th, 2010 at 11:18 am (#)
The Ball is in Corel’s court now, if they want to keep their customer base they are going to have to come up to the plate and listen to their customers who have been begging for a 64 bit version for at least several years.
If CS5 hurts Painter’s sales it is not Adobe’s fault it is Corel’s for not listening to it’s customers.
I have read many posts from long time Painter users who expected Painter 11 to be 64 bit and who were more than disappointed that it wasn’t.
I love Painter and will stay with it for now but I will also have CS5. I love painting with watercolors which CS5 does not address at this time, but who knows I may give Art Rage a try, I understand it does watercolors quite nicely.
Quoting(Darrel says:
April 14th, 2010 at 5:23 pm (#)
I think the most serious users of Painter will not be swayed by Photoshop’s new painting features. However, while it may not be a Painter killer yet, I’m afraid that for many people, it will be “good enough” and really hurt sales of Painter.)
April 28th, 2010 at 1:20 pm (#)
I think John’s nailed it. While I still consider Painter to be more robust when it comes to actual painting, the constant battle against application failure at the worse possible moment do get annoying. Having it as a 64bit app and the ability to take advantage of significantly greater memory make CS5 a very interesting opportunity.
Looking at the price tag is still the biggest kabosh on Adobe’s products, in my opinion.