 PD Pro Digital Painter 3.1 is the latest
upgrade from Dogwaffle creator Dan Ritchie. PD Pro is a
serious paint program that also puts the fun back into artistic
creativity. It combines many of the elements of high-end programs
such as Photoshop and Painter, without the excruciating, and often
times frustrating, learning curve. I hate reading manuals, I hate
following most web-based static tutorial. Like most artists, I like
to just jump into a program and see what it can do. I have to
admit, that with PD Pro I was pleasantly surprised when I deviated
from my normal routine for a new product by actually opening the
video tutorial package before attempting to delve into the
program. Dan Ritchie, personally created a package of short, AVI
format, tutorials. The instructions were easy to follow, and
instantly gave me a feeling of familiarity with the program.
Opening PD Pro for the first time gave me the same sense of
excitement that I had not experienced for over ten years, when I
first discovered Photoshop. The WOW factor of PD Pro is
off the scale. This little program packs a wallop of
painterly features. After an hour of viewing and practicing the
24-step tutorial package, I was working with the program like I had
been using it for years. If you have ever worked with Painter,
Photoshop, or even Paint Shop Pro, you will feel right at home with
the familiar layout of the tools, with many interesting time saving
twists. Two of my favorites, located on the floating Tool Bar, are
the Clear Buffer button, which instantly allows you to erase your
work area, and start with a clean canvas. Coupled with the Go Back
button, with its endless step back feature, all within a quick
mouse click.
The above screen grab courtesy of: Renderosity's MarketPlace -
Dan Ritchie The easy to use custom brush
feature, along with a huge array of built-in brushes, is an
artists dream-come-true, making the size and type of paintbrushes
endless, and only limited to the artists imagination. The paper
generator gives you several options of creating a variety of
textured surfaces to apply a large assortment of realistic
cyber-paint medias. In PD Pro, oil feels like oil, and
watercolors flow exactly like watercolors. All that is missing is
the paint-scent but, on the fun-side, cleaning the brushes is a
breeze. Pd Pro is truly a software program designed by an artist,
with the traditional artist in mind. This is most evident with the
Color Mixer feature. Other paint programs allow you to color pick,
but PD Pro actually allows you to mix-paint in a traditional
artistic manner. Several built-in color palettes include a variety
of painters palettes, including; traditional artists colors [Burnt
Siena, Phthalo Green, Yellow Ochre]; and one of my favorites, a
CMYK paint palette, that includes a full range of colors used by
professional printers. The Color Mixer also allows the artist to
create custom palettes. With a quick click, an artist can create a
paint palette from the colors within an image [see example on
left]. Besides being an excellent paint program, PD Pro is also a
fair photo restoration program. As well as a real-time, and
easy to use, animation generator with its own set of animation
brushes. [a complete listing of features can be found on the
PD
Pro website]. What didnt I like? Not much! Two minor
irritations first, although PD Pro supports the familiar formats
[BMP, TIFF, JPG, GIF, etc.], its default format for saving (and
opening) files is the not so well known Targa [TGA] Format. If you
were to just plunge into the program [without reading the
well-written online manual or previewing the video tutorials]
opening a standard file could become very frustrating. By default
only TGA files will appear in the browse window. However, clicking
on the files of type tab, and selecting Automatic (60+ format),
allows access to all your favorite image formats. Secondly, the
otherwise easy to follow video tutorials, are marred by being
generically named [tute_01, tute_02, etc.]. This makes looking for
a specific tutorial rather frustrating and time consuming, however,
this can easily be fixed by renaming the tutorial files after
viewing. Like many CG artist, I started my career in art as a
traditional artist, and although I have only worked with PD Pro for
a short time [compared to ten years of daily Photoshop use], I am
totally in-love with PD Pro Digital Painter 3.1, and would highly
recommend it for any artist yearning to get back to their
traditional painting roots.
 "Lets Talk" with Dee-Marieis a monthly featured column by Dee-Marie: Senior Staff Writer, and Managing Editor of Renderosity's Front Page News June 6, 2005 |
Dogwaffles PD Pro Digital Painter 3.1
Jun 03, 2005 at 12:00 am by deemarie
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