Was just wondering what everyone`s personal preference is as far as painting textures for Poser. I recently came in to some money and wanted to purchase either Photoshop or Deep Paint 3D. If anyone has Deep Paint 3D...Is it worth the extremely high price? Or should I just go with Photoshop? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Go check out ZBrush before you buy DeepPaint. www.pixologic.com Not only can you paint in it, you can do Poser morphs also. Really great app

I would say photoshop because it is much more versitile

Well, I have 'em all. Go with PSP...easy to use...quick and dirty to get the job done. Very easy to learn. Only about $100 bucks, often less, with a rebate. Then, if you have money left over...go for zbrush. It seems awesome. Sadly, I have not yet had time to learn its interface...Photoshop is like 800 dollars. I don't have Deep Paint...but, I think from what I have seen it is pricey.

I have Photoshop and I got it way back when I was a student. If I had to do it over having to pay full retail, I'd say that Poppi is right. Unless you have a compelling reason (paying customers who demand it) I'd recommend PSP. Next, read hold off just a bit on the Zbrush. UVMapper Pro is just over the hill (at least for PC users). If you read the list of functionality improvements you'll see it allows you to use photoshop (so presumably PSP). You can even see the updates in real time. UVMapper Pro may have nearly all the functionality at a much lower cost.

Well personally I'd advise you if you had a fast internet connection or whatnot to actually download demos of both and try them out for yourself...see which one you are more comfortable with etc.. Personally I like photoshop, like what Ghostofmacbeth said it is also my opinion that it is very versitile. I use it to retouch rendered poser images and add FXs to them ^^...among other stuff. That and I actually know how to use it LOL. Thank goodness for art class ^^. As for deep paint, I've tried the demo, and it is easier to paint directly on a 3d model, and do bumps and shiney stuff....but I wasn't to comfortable with it. I'm not saying it's a bad program, it's all a matter of preference nods. Each program has it's own advantages and such, such as photoshop layer modes and channels and stuff like that, and deep paint's ability to work in 2d, 2d 1/2, and 3d modes...blah blah blah ^^ well that's my opinion ^^

Go for the demos. I just bought Zbrush and really like it since it does more than just textures. Both deep paint and Zbrush have demo's. Don't know about Deep paint but Zbrush you can get your demo extended by getting a new number from the company. So gives you a lot of time to play with it. PSP is great. Photoshop is a super program I guess, just think their price is insane.

For years I fought getting Photoshop - using alternatives and so on. Then I finally needed it for a client's job and sprung for it. I have never regretted it. PSP may be able to do what you need, but for my work I always find that I am much more productive in PS. As for DeepPaint or Zbrush - hard to say. I haven't worked enough with them.

First, if you're a student or teacher, remember you might qualify for great discounted prices. You might want to own a copy of a high-end program (make sure it's got a future) so you can get upgrades. Your choice depends if you're buying software just for getting stuff done, or if you also want to build career skills. Good Photoshop skills are basic to lots of jobs, and just all around useful. I worked as a multimedia programmer and was miles ahead of folks who had to wait around for a graphic artist to fix every little thing, when I could just fire up Photoshop and do it myself in a few minutes. I got my full version cheap bundled with a scanner and Photoshop Lite came with various things. I've a friend who figured out a way behind the consumer interface of PhotoDeluxe to use the scaled-down version of Photoshop it's based on. That might be enough for what you need. You might find old copies of either. My local library has a shelf of Photoshop books. For PaintShopPro check the forum here.

Photoshop and Deep Paint are not the same type of software. Photoshop is an overall image manipulation program for photos, web graphics, and what have you. Deep Paint is a painting program that uses real-media feel. I tried the demo, but Deep Paint seemed just like Painter, which I already had. Deep Paint 3D on the other hand allows you to paint directly ON a 3D model, which is quite a different thing altogether. I would say that a good option would be to get Photoshop and then get Deep Paint as a plugin later. Then you get real media painting inside of Photoshop using a non-confusing interface (Painter is definitely a learning hurdle).

Thanks everybody for the advice. I have Paint Shop Pro 6 and I like it but wanted to try something new. I think I will download the demos of DP3D, PS, and Zbrush to see what I like better.

As a general rule, you should choose the application that will better fit your needs -and your "price range" :-) If you are only interested in creating/modifying a texture to be used on a 3D object, you can use ZBrush or any of the other excellent 3D-Painting applications; each of the available programs has its own strengths and weaknesses in features, price and features/price ratio. If, on the other hand, you are also interested in creating new 3D models or creating morph-targets for Poser, then ZBrush is your ticket:). Besides the fact that 3D Texturing and 3D Modeling is only a portion of what you can do in ZBrush, you may want to consider the following... 1. Poser figures/props which are exported from Poser in OBJ format will already contain proper UV coordinates assigned which ZBrush will recognize and use for 'undistorted what you see is what you get' texture mapping. 2. ZBrush will retain the proper vertices count and order of imported object, which allows for fast (and fun) Morph-target creation process. 3. All Objects created within ZBrush will have automatic UV coordinates assigned to them and can be exported and used in Poser. 4. If needed, standard UV mapping can be re-applied to imported objects (Cylindrical, Planar, Spherical) 5. If you decide to give the demo of ZBrush a try, download TextureMaster -a 5 chapter tutorial script that plays right onto the zbrush interface and shows how to texture your 3d models. It's free and rewarding. You can find some more info here: http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=002034 Hope that helps :-)

You might want to consider Photoshop Elements. It's around $150 (I think) and does most of what Photoshop 6 does. The only thing that seems to be missing is cmyk seperations and alpha channels. If you're not fooling with that anyway, it's liveable. Elements is somewhat similar to PSP (in that it's less technical). I've played with zbrush too. It's neat and strange at the same time. There's a bit of a learning curve to fool with it, but it's worth checking out.