Got butter? PaintTool SAI
grand marshal polycounter
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.
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.
Replies
I like how you can have a mirrored copy of the same image open and updating while you work.
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!
Love the mini-canvas paint pallate, too.
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
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.
The stroke stabilizer is a lot like ZB's lazy mouse too, kind of neat to play with.
Seems really nice as a painter but it has a few crippling limitations.
There may be more but that was a quick test.
Adobe should have done this years ago. They have painter and pshop, they just need to bring in the blendy brushes from painter.
Thanks for the awesome find!
Well, they should have still ripped off Painter's artist oils years ago.
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.
Ya but it costs like.. what was it.. $50? less than a game.. prolly worth it
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)
the brushes really do what you expect them too, I may well buy it soon.
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!)