In response to Page 5 of Ars Reviews Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended, “aidenn” writes:
> No impasto effects and Z-plane/wetness info. In this sense, the awesome little program Artrage even
> has CS5 beat. In a program like Painter or Artrage, wetness and surface paint load are saved in the
> canvas.Oh, but they are so there. In fact, this feature has been advertised prominently in the promotional vid released awhile ago.
It’s called Mixer Brush Tool. Hold LMB (left mouse button) over the brush button and voila. Manipulate you impasto needs without limits, wet, slightly wet, dry, how much paint there is on the tip, do you want it to refill after a stroke and so on. You can also set it up to act as a knife if you like.
This was one of my most awaited features in the new Photoshop, the other one being 3D brushes.
> Photoshop CS5 isn’t going to replace Painter XI for deep, natural-media painting and illustration. Adobe
> would be the first to tell you that—it has a long way to go before it will threaten to displace the king of
> digital painting.This is also false. Only a minuscule number of digital painters actually use Painter, most use Photoshop. Why? Because the last three releases of Painter are an abomination unto digital painting world. They’re slow, unresponsive and crash every 15 minutes, even XI has some serious unpatched bugs that roam free since day one of the release and Corel simply doesn’t care. Also, the only thing they do better than Photoshop is water based painting (and impasto and brush simulation, but now Photoshop does that too). Not to mention that the interface is extremely clunky and basically unchanged for ten years and anything other than emulating natural media flat out sucks.
If you know how, you can emulate natural media in Photoshop too, it takes longer to set up, because there are no presets, but once you build your perfect set of brushes, there is simply no reason to use Painter other than a touch of water here or there. Photoshop is faster, better, more intuitive and everyone in the digital painting world (I’m talking mostly about concept art makers and illustrators, because graphic designers rarely need natural media) uses Photoshop. That’s the real king of pro digital painting and it’s been that way for a couple of years now, even without impasto or 3D brushes.