Essentials Cafe

i would greatly appreciate someone with patience ( alan etc ) take this photograph and teach me how to get an classic oil, impressionistic

oil painting that gives PAINTER a run for its money. IS CPEssentials capable of giving as good results as the PRO product?

When i go fully auto it really looks lousy takes forever and im really disappointed.  What is it that you do to get this photograph crying out to be a painting

to look really great as a painting?  Do you alter the brush ( what kind of brush, size, ? ) do you use random strokes?  do you use different papers

etc etc etc.  Im really intrigued with photo> painting possibilities but i suck thus far getting there with this product. 

Will  appreciate help from a pro using this.  I do not want to paint!  I want the auto settings that will do it for me. AM i being to naive here?

Please someone enlighten me.  Is CPEss really just for kids an amateurish program and should i give up painting ideas.

thanks ever so much. im sorry to be a cry baby but i am totally dissatisfied with the results from this product. I think some of this is my fault!!!

glenn losack

http://www.glennlosackmd.com

 http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1mQnkTDl9rhWUC1YLPycVOi2fz7qb0

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1mQnkTDl9rhWUC1YLPycVOi2fz7qb0 

here is the link

 sorry

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1mQnkTDl9rhWUC1YLPycVOi2fz7qb0

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1mQnkTDl9rhWUC1YLPycVOi2fz7qb0

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1mQnkTDl9rhWUC1YLPycVOi2fz7qb0
 

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1mQnkTDl9rhWUC1YLPycVOi2fz7qb0

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1mQnkTDl9rhWUC1YLPycVOi2fz7qb0 

Well Glenn, it is difficult to imagine the problems you are having with this programme without seeing any examples. However I don't see any reason why you cannot come up with something that you are happy with. I don't see painter x as a pro version, or painter essentials as an amateur version. They are merely different, insofar as essentials is a much cheaper version without all the bells and whistles of big brother, with a bias toward auto painting, but not exclusively. As an introduction to digital painting it is fabulous, and capable of excellent results. There are three rules to getting a good photograph, they are composition, composition, and composition yet again. The camera or lens used is almost irrelevant from an artistic point of view. I have seen some of your work, and as there is nothing wrong with your composition skills, nor the equipment used from a technical angle, there is no reason why you cannot turn an already excellent photograph into an acceptable piece of artwork. However the image you have put in your other posting is so compressed it almost looks like a gif file, yet it seems to be a jpeg. Even at full size it is already pixellated. If this is the image you would like to try a painting of, could you please e-mail me with a full size original photograph, and I will have a go myself, and give you exact notes on how I do it, and if you like the result you should be able to duplicate it exactly. You mention that some of your renderings have been slow, I must assume that you have plenty of ram, and a good graphics card, but have you set up another hard drive as a scratch disk? This can make a real difference to speed.

From my involvement with this forum I see people with less photography experience than you, take their photos and turn them into good works of art that they are happy with.  Others are willing to make the effort, to take the time to learn about this programme and how to use it in a creative way. 

When I considered moving from the Essentials 3 programme to Ess 4  or even PainterX, I contacted John Derry one of the creators of the programme along with a couple of other authors of the Painter programmes, and the advice that was given to me was that this programme was designed with the photographer in mind, and also as an introduction to digital art, and you surely fit the bill here.

Ok Glen, There is one sentence in your plea that really jumps out at me.

"I do not want to paint!

If that is true then what on earth do you want a digital art programme for?  

I have Painter IX and X.1 as well as several paint shop pro programmes and Essentials 4

In all the write ups for Painter and Essentials the auto paint is not intended to be the completed picture. Just as with real painting there are some bits that need to be cleaned up and sharpened, some need to be blurred and shoved to the background.

As Alan is my partner I know that even he has to hand touch many of his images and he works a long time on some of them.

So if you don't mind me saying, I think you are being very naive to think auto paint will do it all for you.

When I first got Essentials 4 I was happy with a lot of what I did as were many of us who joined this forum at the beginning. However we soon found that many of the paintings began to look the same even though the scene was different and we shared and cared enough to put our work up for comment and to share every tip we discovered.

We swiftly found out that Essentials may well be child friendly but it is far from childish or amateurish and some astounding artwork can and has been created. You only have to look at what's been posted here to see that.

I guess the bottom line glen, is that you will only get out of it what you are prepared to put in, and I don't just mean the input of a good photograph.

There is as much help here as you would ever want, but please please please, join in the spirit of the forum.

ie:- make posts and ask for constructive criticism, .... give your constructive comments on the posts of others, ...... be prepared to experiment and make a mess as that was how we all learned.

I can assure you that you would soon be surprising yourself with your results, also that there is no-one on or off this forum that can give you a precise setting that will suit every photograph you have, and even if that was possible you would soon get bored with them all looking the same.

I hate having to be so hardline with any member and I do wish you would join in the spirit on the forum. I know you gave us the link to your web site some time ago but I have not seen you make any effort to become a part of this community, all you wanted was to show us your "fantastic" photographs and now you want someone to give you a formulae to turn them into artwork without you having to make any effort yourself. This attitude is extremely childish and selfish.

I am as offended by it as Dianne and personally I think you know you are being offensive, but you are hoping to appeal to someone's ego by pre-empting any anger by asking for someone who is patient (Alan etc) which effectively puts the rest of us down.

If you would just climb down off your high horse for a few minutes and become a contributing  forum member you will find some of the most generous and patient people you could hope to meet who would be willing to offer you any help you needed, but would not be prepared to do the work for you.

Here endeth the first lesson ....

OK OK OK OK already

i hear you all!  please forgive me!

 look i aplologize!im sorry im sorry im sorry

i want the most i can get from essentials.   I just dont know how to use it.

I went thru the  video tutorials and did not  get  what i think i should have gotten

please help/guide me  

must i cut my wrists??????? 

i will climb off my high horse and become a contributing member.

I
 

 Glenn (and everyone else who wants to provide feedback on the learning materials that came with PE4)

What kind of help were you looking for in the video tutorials that you feel you didn't get? Are there tutorials that you feel are missing? What areas are you looking for more information on? Is a video the best vehicle for conveying this type of information?

As for specific help or guidance, all I can do is echo the voice of those who have already replied, if you could post your original image and the painting you have created from it with a description the technique you used to create your painting and what you like and don't like about it, then people in this forum could give you suggestions on how to change your technique to achieve a result that is hopefully closer to what you are wanting to achieve.

Sincerely
Jennifer
 

thank you for not yelling at me! If everyone is dismissive how can any one get help?????

 i run the usual impressionistic or classical oil  and it goes on and on and on and on and on and on  as if its never going to stop. The file is 58 MB.  I do not change any of the four parameters
it goes nowhere.  It looks terrible.

i left the file at pixentral  

thanks

gl
 

In that case then Glen, come on in, pull up a chair, grab yourself a coffee and join the club, I'm sure we will all be happy to help once we have licked our wounds.

Just let us know what it is you are struggling with and show us an example as suggested. Perhaps some ideas as to what your expectations are would be a help too.

Anyway, it's very late here in the UK .... (or should that be early) and I am off to bed

Look forwards to seeing the sort of result you are so unhappy with as it will at least be a starting point.

I downloaded your picture glen and it looked terrible at full size with blotches all over it and a peculiar pixalation effect. However I ran it through classic oil and it took forever as you say.

I then compared the properties of your image to one of my own

My own imagees are 3504 x 2336 pixels at 72 pixels per inch giving me an image of approx 48.5 inches by 32.5 inches in size. (23.4 megabytes)

Your image was 3984 x 2913 pixels at 300 pixels per inch which only gives you a picture of 13.28 x 9.71 inches .... (33.2 megabytes)

I changed the pixels per inch in your picture to 72, as this is the same as my screen and there was an imediate improvement in the image smoothness.

I then ran it through underpaint followed by the impressionist setting, changing only to colour/ none and saves as it came out with no retouching.

I repeated the whole proces re-opening and re-sizing doing everything from the beginning 3 times more. Once more in the impressionist but this time soft cloning back some of the details with a low opacity (4%) then twice in the classic oil, again only removing the colour change. First time leaving the finished image untouched the second time making a few changes to the tonal values and a little soft cloning.

I started this process at 10.07 am I have re-sized all 4 pictures and saved them for web, placed them on a large canvas and re-sized for web (for this site) again and written this posting and it is now only 10.22 am. a total of 8 minutes.

hope this helps.

thanks so much squirrel.  I think i got similar image results and i really am not pleased with them.  BUt it might just be that the photograph does not cry out for a painting.  Thanks anyway.

let me clarify this so i am atleast clear on what Essentials 4 can/cant  do.

1.  am i allowed to  work on 30 >58 MB TIFF  files usually 300 dpi with dimensions atleast 12 x 18 ' in CPE?

2.   what should i be doing to the photograph ( if anything )  before i press that start button in auto painting

3.   lets say i choose impressionistic  do i leave the 4 parameters at their defaults? or do i change around the canvas brush etc?

4.   what other things should i be doing if i dont like the result?  can i press the start button again  after the painting is still on the canvas

      and run it again  and again  and will this make a difference?

5.  Should one get equal and just as good results from a program like this one CPEssentials as they would from Painter X?

     when i said that CPE was amateurish  i got stomped on. ( thanks ! )  what are the limitations with CPE? for automatic painting is CPE

the only program around?

thanks for ongoing help

Let me put in my simple advice.  Reduce your photos to a much lower size (maybe 10 MB) and learn to use ES4 with that.  The paintings will go much faster and you can learn faster.  Second, after you have done an auto painting, try a little touch up with other painting brushes in the Drawing mode.  Learn to use some of the brushes so you can see what they do.

I use ES4 on 28MB files and I sometimes go fix dinner, watch the news or read one of squirrel's posts :-) while it is autopainting, but you need to get the feel of the program first with smaller files.

Finally, you need to post some results after some practice.  The feedback will help you make it better.  You are learning if what use to be your best is now your worst.

Painter X also has an automatic painting programme, as to does some plug in software. I'm not sure why you think the Painter X untouched, automatic painting is so, good because it too leaves work to be done when it's finished, even when the smart stroke setting is utilised. So where do you get the idea it doese all the work for you at the touch of a button? I certainly haven't found that to be the case, and it also says this is not true in the Painte information stuff.

One thing I know is that the native file format for Painter and Essentials is a RIFF. and when working in these programmes in dynamic layers you will need a RIFF file, You can save in another format when you have finished and dropped the layers if you want to open in another programme later.

As for TIFF, I am sure jennifer will correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it, this is just about the most popular file format especially when people are working with masks as you can save a mask with your image. However, both Painter and Essentials will drop all you TIFF layers into the background and only the first of your user masks will be visible. Also there is no option to compress a TIFF file when you save in these programmes. I would suggest starting with a jpg as the programme seems to handle this much better that the TIFF.

(Please Jennifer let me know if I have understood this correctly as I am on a steep learning curve here)

Anyway, before we get sidetracked let's stick with E4 and the problems you are having.

Ok Glenn perhaps the most useful thing you can do is post the image of your attempt here in the forum. This would be far more helpful in understanding what it is you are unhappy with. If you can also say what you are unhappy with as well it would give us, and Corel, a better idea about the problem. Who knows! You may have stumbled on a glitch that they will need to sort out for the next issue.

Mind you be careful to make your post a lengthy one so that Artisan can have something to do whilst he watches the paint dry ..... LOL

I look forward to seeing your post so we can perhaps help you to get more satisfaction from your Essentials programme.