Painting? Does Photoshop, whatever the latest version is, have painting tools which would compare to or exceed those of Painter 6? I do far more painting than I do image editing, but lately I've been getting more into both, and I have to say, I find Painter's iamge editing capacities, though good, a little limited and difficult at times. Plus, the manual kind of falls short on alot of points. I really wouldn't want to go with Photoshop though, unless I knew it had painting tools at least as good as Painter's. Thank you for any/all opinions. :) -Mike

PhotoShops core purpose is image editing/ with some painting added, hence the name PhotoShop. Painters core purpose is painting/ with some image editing added. Unless you are into some serious retouching/image editing I would go with Painter.

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Painted in Photoshop....

Like I said...The above image could have easily been done in Painter. If you purchase Photoshop to do something like that, you would end up wasting money on tools you would never use. Nice image BTW.

Yes, very nice picture. And thanks for the answers. I always was under the impression that PS was more for image editing, but figured I'd ask since I have had people tell me to get rid of Painter and get PS. Well, I guess I'll hope that the soon-to-be Painter 7 will have some better editing tools as well. I appreciate the help, DD#3. -Mike

I use Photoshop for painting. But if you already have Painter, why get Photoshop if you don't need it.

I've had Painter since version 2, and have used Photoshop since version 2 as well, I'd say for painting, assuming the use of a tablet (Painter is sadly lacking without a tablet), Photoshop is about 1/10 as good. After saying that, I'd say Photoshop works in a much more logical way, has a much better interface (at least until 5.5, where it may have peaked) (Paintee peaked at 2X!) and has a lot more tools. But some Photoshop tools hardly work at all (like smudge), where the Painter equilvent (just add water) work excedingly well. This is about the best I ever did in a computer painting, I don't have enough time for this any more, but it was all done in Painter.

actually, I quite like the smudge tool in photoshop. But painter has that sort of wet tool that blends the paint slighly better. The program I really want to try is Canvas 9 by Deneba, but I don't know if it's strictly a Mac product or not.

Wow, Jim that's a great picture there. I really love Painter's brushes, and it's funny you should bring up the Just Add Water brush, because I probably use that one more than any other. I've been using Painter 6 for over a year and a half, and am planning on upgrading to Painter 7 whenever it comes out. Thing is, I've never tried Photoshop before, so I really didn't know it's cpabilities. Thanks again.

I think it also depends on what you are used to. I have painter classic (came with my wacom) and though I have toyed with it, the feel of it is funny after years of photoshop. When in painter, I am constantly asking myself.. "Now how do I do this like I can in Photoshop?" Because of this, I have hesitated in actually buying the beefed up full version. I am so addicted to the smudge tool in Photoshop! In my opinion, PS tends to be much more responsive to the pressure of my pen, but that could be because I am a lamer when it comes to Painter. Blow by blow, you can probably list pros and cons of both and come up with some interesting information, but if you can't use the program comfortably, neither one is going to work. My true opinion is that the person who can pull the best out of both programs is probably the real winner in the debate.

"My true opinion is that the person who can pull the best out of both programs is probably the real winner in the debate." You got that right! I'm coming from the opposite direction: I've learned painter well enough to use it for what it's advertised for, which is digital painting. But then I've seen some amazing pics from people crediting Photoshop, and even on those occasions when they've explained their technique, I've not been able to do the same with Painter. BUT, then again, though Painter has some really cool (although probably little more than "standard") image editing tools, it's strong point is in image creation. I was just wondering if I could have the best of both worlds in one app. But I'm not good enough yet to use PS to it's utmost potential; I understand that a whole lot of PS is fairly subtle, such as it's printing-setup tools, something which I have only the vaguest knowledge in. One day. :)

Most of the crew are right about photoshop and painter being designed differen tly for different purposes. Personally however, I've been using photoshop to paint images -- the problem is that, unlike painter whose brush tools are already made and designed to look like natural media, you'll have to predesign everything with photoshop. That means scanning in "brush looks", resizing, testing opacity, etc. As an alternative, how about using coreldraw's Photopaint? I use both Painter 6 and Photopaint and I find Photopaint a tad bit easier to use as well as easier on my system's resources.

Don't look at me. I'm happy painting and image editing in Corel PhotoPaint.

Nothing wrong with PhotoPaint what so ever. It's a very powerful app. I used from PP5 up to PP8. Started using PS with version 3 now using 5.5. I switched to Photoshop full time a couple of years ago and it wasn't because I thought PS was better but because of what Corel was doing to an outfit that I happen to like a lot (Xara LTD) at the time. Corel tried every trick in the book to bury Xara LTD and I'll never forgive them for it. Looks like I'll be dealing with Corel again though, because I'm a Brycer and I got to get Bryce5 even if it does leave a bad taste. Dave