some ideas

[ninja-usagi]

Hi,
There are some things (tools,options)i would like to see in Artrage but i can understand that adding huge amounts of options may overdo what it is you are trying to achieve with the program, which i assume is the simplicity of it?
but there again, if you hope to convert or at least pull some people away from the other art software out there then i think some extra stuff is needed.

theres a program available on the net that is now free as the company stopped to make it. it also has 'real' media style effects. now, im not gonna give the name of it as i think people should use artrage instead even though their program is quite Deep:) in options. Basically what im babbling on about is that i think you should have a look at some of the stuff that software can do, and see if any of its options would benifit artrage users.

anyway, it would be great if a future version of artrage had maybe some the following:

thicker pencil lines
(maybe around the same size as 13% of the brush)

watercolours

wet paintbrush option
(just holds water so i could paint on the canvas then paint on top of it)

paintcils (water colour pencils, you can get a nice pencil into water colour effect)

masking tape! (a tool that stops you being able to paint out side the area of colour so you dont mess up the white bits of your paper)

lasso (er, pretty much what i meant by the above but was trying had not to say it as its such a standard tool, i wondered if it was maybe left out on purpose?)

oriental brush (for chinese,japanese caligraphy and drawing)


extra drawer (where i can hide the glitter pen!...sorry but fun that it can be, i think it is the one item that just gives artrage that kids software look,i would rather you exchange it for another tool and maybe put another window/drawer for 'art craft' 'tools....glitter, glue,stampers etc)

just popped into my head last minute,
a graph (useful for doing portrait and landscape style pics, maybe it could be added as a layer?)


hope these suggestions arent too cheeky, and sorry for not liking the glitter pen (although if i could get the glitter to be more rounded...just for stars) :D

[AndyRage]

Hi Ninja-usagi.
Those are all good suggestions. I'm not sure what you mean by a 'graph' option - can you clarify that one?
Oh, wait, do you mean like a graph-paper overlay for helping getting measurements and proportions?

As you say, the biggest challenge with adding new features to ArtRage is fitting them into the UI in a way that doesn't make it crowded and daunting. That's Matt's job!

Thanks very much for the suggestions.

AndyRage.

[Tiznaught]

another thing that would be smashing is a quill pen. I also use Artrage to make comics, and the felt tip pen isn't quite bold enough, having something with a nice crisp line would make it so much better.

[ninja-usagi]

yes, a graph overlay for proportions.

another thing about artrage is that its laid out more like a artist desk than other digital art soft such as Painter or Photoshop. i like the fact everything is around the screen rather than those boring/common windows that you have to keep moving around the screen, so as you can see what your doing.

the 'pin photo' option is a really nice feature.

i still think you could get away with adding more pop up windows with out mucking the screen up. could you make use of the numeric keypad? eg. press'1' and the art tools windows slides/pops on/off screen.i'd love to able to work quickly with shortcut keys.

oh, if you made a glitter pen which does look nice (and like glitter) could you also make, say a fur effect tool?

8)

[Hellmark]

I'm with Tiznaught, I'd love a pen tool. In all my attempts to make the pencil tool more like a pen, I end up with a mini airbrush or something.

I'd like to be able to import images, each as its own layer, into a pre-existing ArtRage painting. Right now, in order to do that, I have to fireup Photoshop or GIMP, copy and paste each image into their own layer, save as a psd, then import that into ArtRage. What I've been doing lately, is drawing a sketch, exporting that into the Vector drawing program I use (Inkscape), tracing it out, and having a good line drawing for my inking, export that as png and bring it into ArtRage, and having a layer for painting, under the "ink". However, if I need my original sketch, or a photo, as a reference for shading, I'm kinda screwed.

Another thing that would be neat is to be able to have vector drawings imported to be used as paths, and once in, use the paths to automate brush strokes and such.

A linux version would be nice, since right now, there is not a single program that mimics natural media on Linux.

Other than that, I'm really happy with ArtRage. I've been using it since it was first released and bought 2 as soon as I found out about it. AR1 was really nice, but not all the features I wanted, so I flipped back and forth between Painter and ArtRage, but now, it is ArtRage all the way. Plus its nice that ArtRage is affordable. Not everyone can afford to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars on software, especially if they're just a hobbiest.

[AndyRage]

I'd like to be able to import images, each as its own layer, into a pre-existing ArtRage painting. Right now, in order to do that, I have to fireup Photoshop or GIMP, copy and paste each image into their own layer, save as a psd, then import that into ArtRage.

Hi Hellmark.

For a workaround, you could create a layer, load the picture as a tracing paper, then from the tracing-paper menu, convert the tracing paper to ink.

It's a few more steps than a simple 'import a layer' option, but it does allow you to scale and position the imported image if it doesn't match your layer size.

AndyRage.