However, I am still finding limitations on a few realms for my work style that I am hoping can be modified in SA6.
I always need high resolution images, up to 40x40 at 250-300 dpi.
That being said, I love the looser look of the output images at the lower resolutions, but I cannot scale them up enough to look good in archival prints. Therefore, I am bound to create the images at half the size, try to rescale the brushes to emulate the lower resolution output, and carefully rescale over and over and hope that I do not lose too much integrity.
My wish would be this: that the canvas dpi can be set to a higher resolution, but not effect the way that SA lays down the "paint".
For instance, a canvas set at size 8x10 at 72 DPI with a paint preset would look exactly the same as a canvas set at size 8x10 at 1200 DPI, giving the outputted file the needed resolution. I am not sure this is possible but it's been on my wish list since I discovered SA.
Another wish would be for a set category for only vector outputs. As I went through all of the PAS, I did try to output some as vector art...it was hit and miss with the PAS as there were some actions in the PAS that were vector and some were rastor, and no way for me to tell which were able to be exported as vector or not. My outputted images looked very different than what was on the screen in most cases.
I LOVE the search function. Thank you for adding that. I also love that the PAS is front and center now, opening up a whole new realm for me. There are some cool new things there. I would love to be able to know what those PAS names are though (for instance, in PAS its just called "autopaint",) it would be nice to know what it is under the hood, unless I am missing something, which is entirely possible.
Looking forward to SA6. Im sure it will be amazing!
Replies
Heather...Hehehehe.... give us all a chance to become familiar with V5 before looking forward to the next version.... It's mind boggling and having me rethink my entire approach to creating art using it.
Have you tied using OnoOne Software for resizing. It's an excellent program and the resizing function appears Lossless.
HI Paul, yes, I suppose I am getting ahead of myself! I am excited to see what is in store though. ;
I have tried most-I will give this one a whirl...given that I am trying to rescale an image that is 8x10 at 72 DPI to a 30x40 at 250-300 DPI is a big leap, I am asking a lot of the resizer program, and something I have been struggling with since I discovered SA. ; )
I wish I could come up with a solution.
OnOne claims you can resize up to 1000%. Hopefully it will help you.
Thank you for the suggestion-I will give it a go!
Actually, I realized that ONone is Supersize rescaler, which I already have. I have not had good results with this program either.
If the effects you are working with are vector effects, then you can work at a lower canvas resolution, recording what you do into a PASeq, then run something like action : generate svg : from paseq menu command to output a svg vector file. The svg vector file can then be re-rendered to a higher res raster image for printing or moving to some other program.
Photoshop will import eps vector files, but not svg i believe. Eps has the limitation that it can't deal with partial transparency. Which means it's not going to correctly touput most of the new SA 5 vector effects, only vector effects that use solid colored regions. Svg output can capture everything Sa 5 is drawing if it's drawing with vector effects.
SA 5 has a new import svg to canvas option that lets you set the size and resolution of the canvas you want to render the svg file into. So you could work at a low res canvas for speed, save as svg, then re-render it to a higher res canvas for final output.
Mac users have the option of working with the 64 bit application build of V5, so that gives you the option to work with larger canvas sizes, or to re-render your svg output to larger canvas sizes if you are working with vector effects.
Hello Mr. Dalton:
I have had the same problem. If you have advice about this, I am interested to hear it.
My desired workflow for this is:
- capture a high-rez image using a DSLR; maybe 3000x4000
- shrink it to web size; maybe 4x6 150 DPI
- run it through SA; find a version I like
- then run it against the high-rez image
- print it on a big piece of paper
- sell it or give it as a gift
Most of the time this does not work to satisfaction.
Is this achievable? Is the OnOne offering the way to go. Does this mean only using the vectorizer?
Basically, the question is: if a paint stroke goes 3/4ths of the way across the small image, you want it to go 3/4ths of the way across the large image. Otherwise I must always run against the large images, which is very time-consuming.
TIA.
Regards..
If you output something as a svg vector file, then you can rerender it to whatever resolution you want for your final print. That could be vectorizer output, or vector paint effects recorded in a PASeq. Some of the vector ip op effects will output as svg, but not all of them. That's something we're looking into fixing over time. Vector based MSG effects will also output to svg in V5.
As far as rescaling something you've built at lower res to run on a higher res canvas, you can try the 'ReScale PASeq' or 'ReScale History' options in the Resize Canvas dialog. That will rescale the characteristics of the recorded action steps. So the brush size gets bigger, auto-paint path lengths get scaled accordingly, internal procedural textures get scaled, etc.
Depending on what is going on with the editing for your particular paint presets, this re-scaling might work well, or be less than desirable. So it's worth experimenting to find or build presets that scale to your satisfaction if you are going to take this approach.
There are 2 editable parameters in the Miscellaneous control panel of the paint synthesizer that you can modify to have some control over what is going on with rescaling for a given paint effect.
When Studio Artist first started out, the rescaling process was fairly straightforward, because all of the paint presets were following the same basic design, individual raster brush nibs laid out along a vector path. So the vector path would be interpolated to the high resolution, and the brush nibs expanded accordingly.
But as the paint synthesizer became more sophisticated, and people started to bend it in unusual ways as well to derive more esoteric paint effects, things got more complicated. One example would be a virtual brush, that to a user might appear to be a single brush nib, but is actually a cloud of much smaller nib particles, or vector paint effects that are really just based on a path that then gets filled in. So these controls give you more control over what does or does not happen in the rescaling process.
We're always interested in feedback about particular paint presets that don't rescale well, because sometimes we can modify the rescaling code to correct the problem.
Many (but not all) MSG effects do scale automatically.
The 64 bit application build on the mac should give you more options as far as working with larger canvas sizes than you could in the past. But i agree that it's faster and more fluid to work with smaller canvas sizes when trying out ideas.
Good day John.
Is the 64 bit version of SA5 for windows will be available, sooner or later? I'm normally use SA for manual painting. For today the max resolution without memory issues for me is 6k x 5k. And it would be a nice to work on a little larger canvas.
Thanks for the feedback.
We're looking into ways to improve the virtual memory performance on windows.
In the short term, make sure you have your undo store preference set to disk rather than memory.
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next