Preset Organization

[johndalton]

We're in the process of looking at reorganizing the factory presets. So i thought i'd open up a discussion about this so that people could comment on how they would like to see us organize the factory presets. It's kind of a challenge because different people have different workflows. And presets that some people might think are magical other people might think are garbage, and vice versa. People who have been using Studio Artist for a long time might want us to leave things the way they are while people just getting started might want things organized very differently.

Some people have asked us to only provide 20 presets that they personally like and throw out the rest. I tend to think that having access to a large range of different presets is a good thing, even if in your daily work you only use a small subset of those.

So feel free to leave your suggestions regarding how you would like to see us reorganize the factory presets. Now is a great time to speak up since your suggestions will directly affect what we are currently doing with reconfiguring the factory preset organization.

[Jean Detheux]

John,
I'm surprised some people suggested throwing out presets!
It's so easy to make one's own selection(s), especially with the Favorites folder in v4.
I guess they could always ditch the ones they have no use for, but to deprive others of what may be magical for them (as you said) is a bit strange.
I can see that reorganizing the presets in ways that would make them easier to explore could be useful, I've been using Studio Artist for about 9 years, and feel like i've only scratched the surface of the presets iceberg (not to mention many many features I have yet to even try).
Maybe having very broad categories like "wet," "dry," "single" and "multi," "quiet," "busy," "active," "passive" and so on would help?
You've been adding so many presets (and more) over the years, I can only imagine what it must be like to come to that vast landscape for the first time.
But please, make it so that it will still be possible to get lost in there!
;-)
I really value the possibility that "anything could happen" when I step outside my usual path(s) in Studio Artist, so am not sure I'd want it to be "too" organized.
This is not (and as far as I am concerned, should not be) Photoshop.

[Paul Perlow]

John,

Presets are not only a significant tool for my creative process. They have also been a cornerstone to my learning process.

They have taught me not only what is possible but also how to use Studio Artist.

Without them, I would have been totally lost. I rely on them and they continue to facilitate my creative process.

[johndalton]

Part of what we're trying to figure out is how to best organize the large number of presets we currently have so that they are easier to find, or more logically organized in collections and categories that serve people's workflows. So if you have any comments about what we could change in the category naming to make that work better for you feel free to comment.

[liveart]

I will give this some more thought.

John, you already know my preference for a non-hierarchical node based system for searching. Properly implemented it would greatly supplement the current method of preset selection. And boy oh boy could Jean ever get lost chasing interconnected ideas.

But for v4 maybe something less ambitious. I suppose that the first place to start is to know your audience. If it is correct that most users coming to SA are familiar with one or more traditional techniques of visual art creation then It makes a lot of sense to continue to describe and categorize the presets by information familiar to the program's potential users.

oil acrylic pen charcoal pastel sumi litho woodblock etc. work where the preset generally resembles the traditional media. This leaves wide gaping holes for the vast territory of SA that honestly resembles nothing traditional but is way cool in its own right. Maybe for these there are some very general categories like geometric, organic, fluid, chaotic etc.

At the very least I believe it is time to combine the various collections into unified categories. So all the "oil" from collection 2 3 3.5 and 4 would be in one place, etc.

Paseq presets and the ImOp presets could likewise do with a uniform reorganization. Generally speaking I find the ImOps the least fractionated most organized aspect of the current set up. Though I never did understand Rancid as a category.


I posted read and am adding a bit more here.

I do think that within the hierarchical or category based model that there is a tension between workflow and memory access.

By this I mean in a workflow model it might be best to have all the "wet" paints together regardless of whether a specific wet look was more "oil" or more "water". In this way one could work an image using a similar effects model.

From a memory recall perspective I think an artist user is going to find a specific look faster by media descriptive category as listed above.. pen, charcoal, pastel etc. Faster recall of the desired preset might improve work through-put as much or more than the simplified work-flow. Certainly it improves the user experience by reducing frustration.

As individual work flows might vary.. improving recall would seem to offer the best chance at increasing productivity.

[johndalton]

One question i have is if all of the presets associated with a particular art tool category should be in one category? There are a ton of 'watercolor' presets for example. So putting them all in one category could lead to an overwhelming experience for some people. I'm more inclined to have a subset of those that are the most potentially useful setting in something like 'Default : Watercolor' and the rest in the 'Vault'.

Of course 'potentially useful' is potentially very personal.

Are you happy with the way the v4 'CD_hand_drawn_media' collection is organized? It seems much more attuned to what you are saying, which is categories that resemble traditional natural media tools. And that entire collection is setup for hand drawing, it's not really put together to exploit action drawing (although they all will action draw if you press the action button).

Image Operations currently has a low number of presets, at least as compared to paint synthesizer or msg where there are thousands of them. So that could be why it seems to be better organized, there's just not as much to wade through. It makes sense to me that the 'Bad Print' preset would be in the Rancid category, which means radically change the image in a kind of gross or distorting manor.

[liveart]

Rancid - I associate with spoiled meat. Your "Bad Print" might be Jean's Gem. But I was mostly joking with that comment.

I think putting all the watercolor effects into a single category is far less overwhelming than having to seek them over 5 or 6 disjointed categories. The preset box holds 72 icons without scrolling (at least on my screen set up) So I suppose if you wanted to you could do a Watercolor 1 and Watercolor 2 etc with each having 72 presets in the collection to avoid scrolling. This would still be simpler than having to select and scroll the current collections.

[johndalton]

I'm working on that Spoiled Meat image operation preset now to add to the Rancid category. A last minute version 4 feature.

[Jean Detheux]

Francis Bacon talked about "beautiful wounds."
Soutine spent weeks painting a rotting carcass of beef, it's his downstairs neighbors' complaints that forced him to get rid of it, the maggots were falling down through the cracks in the floor.
Both Bacon and Soutine did marvelous work.
At least John's new presets won't have any smell associated with it, at least for now!
By the way, I have been a vegetarian since 1978.
;-)

[liveart]

can we have a rotting fruit self-animating MSG too, please please pretty please.

[craig deeley]

This is really an interesting area of discussion.

Sorting thru and then eventually creating Presets was the one thing that really set SA apart from other applications for me. Both in its frustrating complexity and its personal expansion possibility. A really big added dimension.

In the past and now...
I have found categorizing by "user" (creator) very helpful.
I have dug thru many of the factory Presets over the years and snagged a few for favorites and altered a few along the way... And marveled at the variations - but my particular use for most is very limited. A lot of the natural media labels seemed misleading to me - because the way I used SA was almost exclusively hand drawn... Almost no "action" button or auto features.
A huge majority of the factory Presets in the past with natural media names were Action Button or Auto Draw related and acted more as filters for manipulating photos... When used as hand drawing tools they didn't really look like "watercolor" or "chalk" or the like.
They did do some fun things when on automatic tho!!

I found "user" collections a good way to encounter and recall Presets.
I recall the Nagel series (collected them all) and occasionally dig in them looking for something I think might be in there I could use. Same with a couple other "user" sets. The user collections gave me a starting point for looking... Easy to recall.
I also found Presets that were collected or designed as a toolkit - were great kept in a toolkit folder. Or themed folder. "Erasers" or "Tilt" examples... or the like

The "CD_hand_drawn_media" collection really is about using the Presets like they were (something like real/natural/non digital) pigment on a surface (not the monitor;).
Media like effects that are the result of the action button might not fit in with "hand drawn" effects.

I have created hundreds and hundreds of custom Presets - looking for (most of the time) a very commercial application of the Presets. I started giving them names that matched the intent I was after. My first attempts were looking to create natural media - like - Presets. I gave the Presets natural media like names. Many of those presets really only had some natural media like attributes - like surface effects that had "oiliness" or wet watery looking effects. Very common and easily recognizable effects.
I had a lot of early efforts that used numbers on the end of the name that the Presets started from (seemed like many names were personal and arbitrary)... I had hundreds of "recursive..." variations for instance. I never did know what "recursive" was...
I ended up with series of Presets that were born of a single preset - and started naming the series after the mother Preset... That at least helped me harken back to a preset based on its family type. But number 15 might resemble number 02 in name only...
Then I started adding "cd" to every Preset - because I was loosing my creations in the many zillions of factory presets if I didnt tag them. That helped mark mine... Tagged them at least for me to spot in a crowd.
Recently - in the last few years I have been collecting fun hand drawn presets that are categorized by natural media emulation labels. These are not really emulations... Tho many do create a "look" a lot like some forms of natural media... And my intent was to make Presets that did look a lot like natural media so I could use SA as my ART tool and still create with commercially familiar looking art techniques...

I also have collections of really oddball Presets that have no commercial/media counterpart... I have had no way to categorize those outside of "oddball" or "crazy" or "fun"... They take some really stretching of the imagination to fit into a more standard style of representational art.

I am not sure I would want to see a consolidation of Presets into vast collective categories like "Wet" or Dry" or wild or calm, or whatever. I would definitely like to see at least a thousand Presets come with the application as factory Presets...
I think that something like that vast amount really does lend itself to eye opening!
I could see something like additional packages offered - sort of like "skins" for applications, "third party add ons" or "themes" made available as downloads - with some documentation - visual and how to (use) - as a great way to both offer an expanded Preset "library" and a way of demonstrating what SA can do. The V4 help area is already going to be html based - it would make a lot of sense to remaster that html as a web based reference/resource. Maybe a smaller base collection of factory Presets with the option to freely expand would make a good alternative.

It might help to categorize by work flow - in the sense of wether a thing happens as a result of Action or is freehand applied... Tho I think even that would be better served thru some naming code or tagging than being collected into folders...

This is beginning to sound a bit rambling...
My first experience with SA was - take the time to dig in the Presets and experiment... I was looking for natural media like tools because those would be what I would use commercially. Digging was a blast - if at times befuddling.
I would encourage the experimentation and leave the locations of Presets in sometimes messy collections with sometimes messy "gut" reference categories... keep the categories named with quick and more universal reference words like "Wet" or "Dry" or "ink"... Maybe come up with some names for oddball categories... Keep the Presets scattered about a little - Assuming the serious user will make their own folders of favorites - and encourage "favorites" creation.

Let the tool (and Presets selection) remain a little imprecise that way.
IF the Presets themselves are not precise.

Craig

[Jean Detheux]

I find that making reference to specific natural media categories does not do justice to natural media, nor to what Studio Artist can do.
It seems to me that Studio Artist has taken the work possibilities beyond natural media emulation, while it can still do that if one wishes it to.
Also, one can take a preset and tweak it to a point of no resemblance to its original name as well, so maybe my idea of broad categories (wet, dry,, etc.) may be more "accurate?"
(Note the "?")
I also find that, time and again, I would try a new preset and would be surprised to see it jump all over the place as I put down a stroke, while others would "behave."
Hence the idea of two broad categories such as "passive" and "active."
Again, not married to any of that, just thinking off the top of my head.
And yes, there's nothing I like better than getting lost in the process, it seems that my work is at its best when it still goes on while I no longer know what to do (but give it care and attention).
;-)

[liveart]

Jean, I completely agree with "making reference to specific natural media categories does not do justice to natural media, nor to what Studio Artist can do."

Frankly, if John wanted to label the presets as "pressure modulated computational with random displacement" it would suit me as I tend to understand them like this. But I imagine the concept is the best method for the largest number of users. I do like the possibilities present by Wet Dry type categories. But linguistically we might run out of easy categories before we run out of preset types.

Further words like Active and Passive can mean different things inside of SA and inside of people heads. A passive preset might be one that I have to hand draw with as it does not actively auto draw, or it might be one where all I do is click the action button once and it does the rest leaving me the passive participant.

Complaint and Unruly might be fun and even accurate descriptors but they don't say much about how the pixels are going to be colored. You and I are old hats here with SA. This familiarity allows us some freedom in how we might like to see categories that might be overly opaque to the new user.

I am aware that people come to a digital art program looking to "paint." Many either want to grasp the analogue to the analog world or have used Corel painter Photoshop, ArtRage or some such. SA is a big step up in complexity. Providing a common syntax even if flawed might help with the introduction.

After all we are talking stock presets. As soon as you modify it, it is no longer what it was labeled. And once the user is comfortable enough to modify the preset on their own they probably have understood that the label applied is just a convenience.

On the other hand I can see value in breaking expectations fostered by the traditional methods. Maybe the syntax of SA could change the way the artist thinks about his interactions with media. A laudable goal.

Though generally to be a commercial success the tool should fit the users hand, as it were. Requiring the user to change to fit the tool is usually a losing proposition.