Mouse suggestions?

[caligula]

Hi Nemesis, I am asking you this because everything you have told me has worked and been very helpful. Photoshop is running great with no further problems with the shift key.

I am a very realistic figurative oil painter, trying to duplicate the same effect in photoshop. (I kind of paint in a style like Caravaggio.) I use a wacom intuitos 2 tablet, but am not always happy with the result which can sometimes be a little choppy. I have pressure sensitivity enabled and the brush spacing set to 0.) I am trying to get a very smooth result without the individual brush strokes showing. I am using very soft brushes with opacity settings of about 05 for a slow build up of paint.

Sometimes I get smoother results supplementing the tablet with a mouse, but my hand gets very tired using the apple mouse although I have the tracking settings cranked up. I would like to purchase a really good fast tracking mouse that I doesn't need to be pressed so hard. I have been told i should get one of gaming quality and think I would like one that has two buttons and maybe a scrolling wheel. It needs to work on a mac G5 power pc. Do you have any suggestions or recommendations? Be specific if you can and tell me manufactors and model names. Thanks alot for all your help. Caligula

[NEMESIS]

Hello Caligula,

I am glad that we have artist here as our member.
And now concerning to mouse i can suggest you two models from two different manufacturers. Both of them are gaming high end mouses.

1. Logitech G7 cordless mouse

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/productlist/US/EN,crid=2463

2 Razer Copperhead

http://www.razerzone.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=11

All specs about those products you can find on links i posted.

And by the way i use wacom tablet and i know what your problem could be. When you paint brush stroke with for example 5% opacity and paint another one next to first one and they are overlapping each other so that overlapped area is 10% opacity because of two brush strokes with 5% opacity. So you would like to have that smooth and constant color.
But you could try this: When you enter in your Brushes engine for Shape Dynamics you have Size Jitter and it's Control set to OFF. Than go to Other Dynamics and you'll see Opacity Jitter and it's value set to 0% and for it's control set it on Brush Pressure.
Try this and let me know what you have done and was this helpful :D . I hope this was it while reading your post.

See ya soon
Regards

[caligula]

Hi Nemesis, I went to the links you posted and thought the Logitech G7 cordless mouse looked really good, but noticed that the system requirements are for IBM or compatible PC running on windows 98, 2000, Me or XP. The same was true of the Razor Copperhead. Are you sure these mice will work with a powermac G5?

Thanks for your suggestions about the brush settings. I am still experimenting with them. If I understood you correctly, I should turn the size jitter off and have the other dynamics setting at O% opacity with the controll set to pressure sensitivy?

I also turned the angle jitter off and made roundness jitter pressure sensitive. Under other dynamics, I turned the flow jitter to 0%. Smoothing is turned on. Are these good settings for getting very smooth results from the wacom pen? Every other brush setting is turned off.

I noticed in the brush presets box that I only had the option of checking or unchecking noise, wet edges, airbrush, smoothing and protect texture. Nothing opened when I clicked on these options so you could not tweak the individual settings. For instance you cannot adjust the amount of noise or smoothing your brushes will have if you check these options. Is this normal or is something wrong with my version of photoshop cs2?

Thank you very much for all the time you have spent helping me! Caligula

[NEMESIS]

Hello Caligula,

Concerning the mice situation is like this. I have both MAC and PC. One time i wanted to connect PC mouse to MAC keyboard (is USB connection mouse) and worked great. But that mouse was without need to install any drivers for it so i think it worked because of that. OS recognized it. And concerning to Logitech G7 mouse i saw it have drivers to install. But on forums people said that they use Logitech mice on MAC. It have some LLC 2.1.1 driver for MAC. But i think is best to consult some reseller about experiences they have about using it with MAC and does drivers for MAC exists. Anyways those mice are best on the market.

And now Wacom tablet and Brushes engine. Caligula don't worry your Photoshop CS2 is ok. Options from Noise to Protect Texture have no additional settings as other above Noise option. You can just turn them ON or OFF.
And settings for Wacom tablet is: (for example you have some soft brush)

SHAPE DYNAMICS: Size Jitter is set 0% and Control to OFF, other is set to default.
OTHER DYNAMICS: Opacity Jitter is set 0% and Control to Pen Pressure, Flow Jitter is set to 0% and Control to Pen Pressure.
SMOOTHING is set to ON.

TIP: try in one brush stroke to paint more as you can.

Just play a little bit and i hope you'll get desired results. And by the way did you tried Wacom Airbrush pen?

Regards
Nemesis

[caligula]

Hi Nemesis, No I haven't tried the wacom airbrush. What are the main differences between it and the pen? Does it produce smoother results?

Regarding Wacom tablets, are there any differences in results between the Intuitos 2 and Intuitos 3? Is it worth replacing my Intuitos 2 for the newer model?

Now back to my shift key issue. I am noticing that the shift key behaves differently in brushes depending on whether airbrush is enabled. When airbrush is turned off, pressing shift changes the flow. When airbrush is turned on, shift controlls the opacity. Is this normal behavior? If so, it is very annoying.

A final question. When I have the brush tool selected and alt click on the image to try to match a color, photoshop chooses the right color for me, but I have to guess at the opacity when I paint with it if I want to make it blend in seamlessly with the image. Is there some third party software that will measure the opacity of the sampled color. I am working in RGB mode and currently have the other cursors set to standard. I have tried other cursors in both standard and precise without noticing much difference.

Thanks again, Nemesis. Sorry to take up so much of your time. Caligula

[NEMESIS]

Hello Caligula,

Wacom Airbrush simulates the traditional airbrush. So if you know about traditional airbrushing that would be it. And airbrush have on it self something like scroll wheel and with it you control the flow of the paint.

And concerning the wacom tablets sure there is difference. Is higher resolution, is more accurate. Newer version so it have improvements. And you could always compare specs from your Intous 2 and Intous 3. Take the manual of your tablet, find Intous 3 on wacom site and compare.

Shift key, ok. When you have selected Brush tool shift key is used for constrain angle of your brush strokes. You don't have to use it to change Opacity or Flow. If your airbursh capabilities are not enabled in Option bar for your Brush tool, when you press number 5 on your numeric keyboard it will change the OPACITY of brush tool to 50% (zero is for 100%, zero-one is for 1%, five-five for 55% opacity). And if your airbrush capabilities are enabled when you press for example again number 5 it will set the FLOW to 50%. So you've got basic idea how this works. Shift key as i said it will constrain angle of brush stroke vertically, horizontally and 45 degree angle.

And now concerning the ALT (PC) or OPTION (MAC) key, when you have selected Brush tool and you paint something with it and you want quickly to lift color from some part of an image you already know it you would use ALT or OPTION key. What that will do is temporarily call Eyedropper tool and eyedropper tool will lift that color in it's 100% opacity if color it self is 100% or opaque.
REAL WORLD SITUATION: You have document and set color you like and you painted for example one brush stroke with 50% opacity of brush tool. So you'll have that color in it's 50% opacity. And in some time you want to lift again that color with ALT or OPTION so it will lift it like it is 100% opacity (visually you'll see that your color is half lighter for foreground color, but if your setting of brush is set to 50% you will paint half light color from new original you picked, so you have to set the opacity of the brush to 100% to paint that 50% of first original color). I don't know was i explained that good but you could try and see what is going on. Just wanted to point you to that thing. And concerning the third party plug-ins i don't know about it.

And by the way you are not bothering me :D , don't hesitate to ask what you don't know. At the end forums like this exists to share knowledge between each other.

Regards
NEMESIS

[Little-erik]

if you want to simulate the look of an oil painting, then I suggest you use the smudgetool and turn on fingerpainting. that will allow you to paint with a color at the same time you "smudge".

Hope this was helpfull :D

[Little-erik]

And, oh yea: Wacom rules. Do not hesitate when it comes to buying a wacom-tablet! Theese tablets saves me so much time. I use my tablet 99% of my time at the computer. And I've only got a graphire. I've used Intuos to, and that tablet is even more incredible. Buy it and you wont regret it :D:D:D

Wacom is the... banana-pie...

www.wacom.com