..this is great, I realy like that. Painter Classic, hmm. I've had Painter Classic for some time but never did anything with it 'xcept accents on Bryce renders with the image hose. Maybe I should dust it off and try using it to its full capacity. BTW, photo-realism vs. painterlyness (is that a real word?) I don't think are an issue since both approaches are a legitimate means of expression and most folks here recognize that. Walter

Excellent!

Thanks. I've upgraded to Painter 5 for the masks and layering but as far as brushes etc. Painter Classic has more Painter 6 to it than Painter 5. I think the strong suite of Painter is its watercolor brushes rather than the oil brushes or so-called artist's brushes. I get the best dimensional painting from Painter by useing chalk and oil stick brushes and texturing after the fact with "apply surface" which is really under-explained in the manual. Usualy I use "Image Luminesence" from the Apply Surface pulldown but if you take a picture, clone it, blur the original (now the clone source) and apply surface "3D Brush Stroke" on the clone you get good effects. Also, cloning with the watercolor brush set small is really cool to, take a bit to learn but is a great effect! I don't think "painterlyness" is a real word, but we used it alot in art school. It refered specifically to bravura brush work and "juicy" paint aplication as opposed to the "architechtonic" neo-classical style often dispareged by artsy as "drawing with paint". As you might discern, there is still great party politics in painting: the Classists, the Neo-Realists, the Non-Objective Abstract painters, the Painterly Painters, and the Exprsionist and and Conceptual Painters. Thanks again.

...don't get me wrong. I'm all for 'invented' words. If it weren't for them we'd all still be grunting and pointing. All words were at one time 'invented'. That's how language grows and becomes rich. Walter