Got butter? PaintTool SAI

pior

Hey guys just found this little app some weeks ago and the recent release addresses the last issues I had with it. Read : better Wacom support.
Just bought it, 50$ well spent! The download is a 30 day trial to unlock with purchase.

PaintTool SAI

Official website
http://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/

Unofficial english pack support site
http://sai.detstwo.com/sai/

It's like :

a barebones Photoshop
+
a fast Painter clone
+
a creamy color blending engine similar to OpenCanvas' (color gets 'dragged' with the stroke)

Some of the cool features :

Most of the shortcuts work just like Photoshops - even ctrl-u brings up hue/saturation.
Rotate canvas (arbitrary or by increments)
PSD support. Careful tho, blending sliders information is not passed and get lost on re-save, as well as the obvious stuff : text layers aso.
Fast brush engine even on large stroke width
The app loads in a flash.

Enjoy!

[edit] update page :
http://www.systemax.jp/ja/sai/devdept.shtml
Didn't try 1.0.3 yet.

peppi

Wow, that's a nice find. The brush strokes are smooth throughout and the colour blending is awesome.The only thing I'm missing is support for custom brushes. I'll definitely be playing around with this a lot. Cheers man!

Snowfly

Pretty neat. The interface is well laid out, and I love the brush handling. For some reason I'm finding it a lot more fun to block in paintings here than in Photoshop. Thanks for the heads up!

I like how you can have a mirrored copy of the same image open and updating while you work.

pior

Peppi, you'll love it.

Damn yes Snowfly - I've been using it as a near complete replacement to Photoshop painting over the last few days. Nothing I can show, but it sure is more fun. Maybe because of the custom tablet driver? If I understand correctly it's different than Wacom's. And that color blending engine is sooo nice too...

Didn't see the mirror thing!

renderhjs

in other words just like silo but for painting, nice

CrazyButcher

I wish it would support color channels like photoshop does. Has adobe patented that kind of color channel operation they do, as I dont know any other app that has nice alpha or multi channel support like they do.

robioto

Holy shit!!! It's like butter on your stylus! Thank you Pior! That pen is so inky I love it.

firestarter

Nice find, likes lots =]

Farfarer

Just had a play, it feels really nice. Ink Pen is awesome

Love the mini-canvas paint pallate, too.

James Edwards

Damn. Nice find Pior. This thing feels slick!

funshark

Pior, i think Snowfly means that you can open a second window for your image and apply a "flip" on it while the first window is unchanged. The two windows are instances of the same image so they refresh the same way when you paint

Peppi, you can do custom brushes although the shape creation isn't accessible from the interface. ( it's in some folder )

1.0.3 seems to have some vista bugs corrected + minor bugs.. and a new HSV selector

pyromania

peppi wrote: »

The only thing I'm missing is support for custom brushes. I'll definitely be playing around with this a lot. Cheers man!

If you go to the install directory for SAI there is a folder called "elemap" There are 63X63 BMPs that represent the brushes. You can draw your brush and save it as a BMP. Then restart SAI and the brush is available.

Mister Sentient

The brush strokes feel amazingly fluid. Moreso than Photoshop.

kary

The brush feel is good and it's surprising how nice the sticky keys are. Switching straight from a pencil to a marker for a few strokes is handy. Thanks for linking.

The stroke stabilizer is a lot like ZB's lazy mouse too, kind of neat to play with.

EarthQuake

feels pretty nice but mine is all in crazy japan talk i dont understand =( =( =(

Kawe

That is pretty cheap if it is a good as it seems. Gotta check it out next week

aesir

yea, I like the color blending. Probably a buy for me since i have some money coming in.

ghib

Giving this a trial over the weeknd.

Seems really nice as a painter but it has a few crippling limitations.

• You cannot paint on or view a layer mask.
• No pen selection tools
• Hue/Saturation Filter not having a Colorize option.
• Can't lock a layer

There may be more but that was a quick test.

Pedro Amorim

EQ: you need to download the english language zip and extrat to the SAI folder

rooster

anyone got any pics then?

doc rob

lovely

Adobe should have done this years ago. They have painter and pshop, they just need to bring in the blendy brushes from painter.

gauss

absolutely checking this out. i like painter and photoshop, but they are some big and bloated programs sometimes when you just want something fast and light. thanks pior.

Mark Dygert

I just got around to trying this out and wow, just wow...

Thanks for the awesome find!

Sarccasmm

Holy hell, this is a fucking rad program. Good job pior.

Michael Knubben

Doc: since when do Adobe have painter? It's owned by Corel, isn't it?

doc rob

Ah, I'm a dope. For some reason I had it in my head that Adobe owned Corel. Nevermind.

Well, they should have still ripped off Painter's artist oils years ago.

Nauh

really nice find, i love it!!!!

arrangemonk

reminds me of artrage a bit

Snowfly

Blasphemy!!!

[Deleted User]

Wow! This program is tops! Awesome awesome find. It's like... Yeah, wow!

And here's another screenshot of it too, with the color mixer up and the layers panel on the right. And Batman, because I did a little Batman sketch with it.

Tumerboy

nice one!

Ged

is this a 30 day trial version or or open source? I downloaded it but I think it says 30 day trial

Kawe

Ged wrote: »

is this a 30 day trial version or or open source? I downloaded it but I think it says 30 day trial

Ya but it costs like.. what was it.. $50? less than a game.. prolly worth it

LoTekK

Oh shit, it's got opencanvas' ctrl-alt-drag brush resize! *purchases*

Weird, once I updated to 1.03 i keep getting the uac dialogue popping up when I try to run it. And running the start-sai.exe from the english pack just bombs out. Still works properly if I just run sai.exe, but the uac thing is weird.

Christ. it's even got vector painting (simple, no custom brushes, but nice interface for adjusting line weight, etc)

Ged

So I downloaded Paint Tool Sai english version and had a go. loved it so much I did my pirate challenge in it and then did some brushes and colour and value correction in PS afterwards.



the brushes really do what you expect them too, I may well buy it soon.

Havok

I love the water brush, this program is great! Thanks for posting, Pior.

Michael Knubben

Doc rob: They should have, yeah!
Now that they've got Lightroom, which caters to photographers exclusively, I think they could do something to make photoshop cater to non-photographers. I know it's called PHOTOshop, but we make pretty extensive use of it, it's time they'd make half-arsed features like the 3d functionality actually err.. work.
More advanced brushes (with backwards compatibility ofcourse, I love my current brushes) could be nice, although I never liked Painter itself much. Pretty slow, and I always hated the interface (although I see that's changed!)