Christmas wishlist: what should I put on it?

[JediSonic]

I don't have a scanner. I don't have PSP (or any decent drawing program). I don't have a tablet. Actually, all I do own for making anime is a number 2 pencil and some paper!

Since I'm not currently obsessed with any video game or "pokemon" spinoff, I think I'm going to ask for some digital art supplies for Christmas. The question is, what stuff SHOULD I ask my parents for?

Really, what I'm asking you guys is this: If your house burned down with all of your art supplies, which of them would you try to repurchase first?

I'm thinking "jedisonic's online manga - complete with color". Should I just try and get a scanner and PSP or what?

Thanks!

PS: grr, why must psp8 be over $100? Is there a freeware download of an earlier version somewhere?

[Mr. Rogers]

the download version of PSP8 is only $80 last I saw, but I think that might have only been for a limited time, you gotta have broadband too if you don't want it to take forever. I'm pretty sure they don't have any versions that you can download for free, except the demo, but that only works for 60 days.

[shooraijin]

Scanners are cheap. You can get a cheap, albeit slow (not a big deal if you're not scanning huge numbers of pages at a time) USB scanner for around $70-$80 -- my UMAX 2100U USB scanner cost me about $80. I'm outgrowing it with my scanning needs, though, so I'll probably invest in a faster FireWire one soon.

[inkhana]

IMHO, get a Wacom tablet (mine is a Graphire and works VERY well for me); a version that comes with Photoshop, so you kill two birds with one stone. You can oekaki til you get a scanner... (Yeah, I don't figure oekaki is a verb, but it fits...LOL)

OR - if you are in more need, you can go with the scanner first, and use a mouse to color. I never had good luck with that, though.

[JediSonic]

Hmm, thanks for the tip, ink! Which is better for, like, coloring drawings and stuff - PhotoShop or PSP?

[Bobtheduck]

It's legal if it's a trial version... If it's full, it's illegal... The real Photoshop costs like 500 dollars, so there ain't no way you're getting it for free legally...

What's PSP? Sorry, I thought you said Photoshop was there for download...

[JediSonic]

Whoops, sorry I edited that post after I found out that was the trial version. Umm, I meant PSP meaning Paint Shop Pro.

Really, the more i think about it, I don't need all the features these programs have. I mean, really all I want to do is soup up my scanned in drawings with good color effects and have the ablity to use "layers"... am I going to be wasting huge money if I get PSP with no intention of doing ANYTHING to photos? lol

[inkhana]

My recommendation is still to try to find a tablet with Photoshop. Why? Because the version that usually comes with it is the light/limited edition and you don't have to pay an arm and a leg to get access to it. Fewer features, less confusion, still quite a bit of power. 90% of my work you'll see on this site was done in 5.0 LE, so I can verify it works well!

I've never used PSP, though, so I can't really help you there.

[JediSonic]

So far, the only thing I KNOW I want to get is: a cheap scanner.'

I have a question: what kind of options is a cheap scanner likely to have? I've noticed that scanned images I copy from the "art corner" into MS paint tend to have very inconsistent white space. I mean, there will be a place on the paper where I doubt the artist's hand even TOUCHED the thing more than once, but if I use the "fill" option, it stops at some random spot because it was a "different shade of white". Can you tell your scanner to ignore extremely subtle changes of shading if you want to, or will only really expensive ones do that?

[inkhana]

Mine doesn't, but the best thing to do is just adjust the contrast after you've scanned the image. That will make the whitespace more uniform.

[JediSonic]

converting it to .gif might be helpful too, if you don't use much shading in the scanned image

[inkhana]

Even if you do use shading, you can always convert it to gif, and then convert it back. Although converting tends to lend a speckled appearance to grayscaled areas if it doesn't remove the white...

[shooraijin]

I wouldn't risk dithering down to 256 colours either (remember that GIF is 8-bit colour) and then coming back up. Even greyscale GIF is still very limited in its contrast range. I think your original suggestion about contrast adjustment would be somewhat more safer, even though both techniques are technically "destructive."

[JediSonic]

Yeah, you're right. I did a little test and the gif idea converted all the "eraser marks" into a grayish blue!

[inkhana]

Yeah, if you have a decent photo editing program, adjusting the contrast on the image shouldn't be any big deal. In PS, I just raise the brightness and contrast values both, and the result is usually crisp and somewhat cleaner (the "dinge" is seldom perceptible to the human eye, esp on a cruddy monitor, LOL)

[Retten]

if you just want to color your art work I really recommended you get opencavas its $62 at http://www.portalgraphics.net/ its a great cg program they have demo you can download and a really awesome gallery I am thinking of buying it once I grab a scanner

[Mithrandir]

If you are using photoshop, another option to try (for the fill inconsistancies) is to change the 'Tolerance' level for the paint option. If you leave it at 0, you'll get those odd 'dots,' but if you set it to, say 5, it can change the settings dramatically.

[JediSonic]

I thought there might be something like that... wonder if opencanvas has it?

LOL, it's nice to see someone else here in the same boat as me, blaze!

[Retten]

lol yeah all I need is a scanner then I was thinking of getting opencavas for its coloring abilities since that’s all it is really used for (hopefully i can get as good as the people in the gallery they are just amazing ) and using PSP and PS for my other digital art to many programs

[inkhana]

Out of curiosity, does OpenCanvas support Photoshop filters of any kind? I know nothing about the program.

[Retten]

As far as i can tell no but i am not 100% sure of that.
These are the filters is has

Level
Gamma
Brightness Contrast
Color Balance
Monochrome
Bluring
Blur
Blur More
Motion Blur
Zoom Radial Blur
Gauss Blur
Sharping
Sharpen
Sharpen More
Sharpen (numerical specification)
Others
Twirl
Wave
Lighting
Emboss
Floor
Tiles
Clouds
Rock
Noise
Mosaic
Posterize
Flip
Flip Horizontal
Flip Vertical
Rotate 180
Invert
Rotate
Rotate 90-(Clockwise)
Rotate 90-(Counterclockwize)
Othrer Changes
Rotate
Zoom

its doesn’t really focus on filters much but the drawing tools are really great and very adjustable you can dowload the demo at http://www.portalgraphics.net/en/oC/oC3/download.html
and try it out for your self

[JediSonic]

Well, I downloaded the oC3 trial, and I must say I've had a lot of fun messing around with the effects. However, I don't think the fill option is working the way it should -- or do I just have to adjust some kind of "tolerance" factor? Well anyhow, I'm not sure how much use I'll be able to get out of this sort of program without a scanner

[Retten]

Yeah its pretty much worthless without a scanner or a tablet since you can only CG color pictures with it

[shooraijin]

Tolerance might be a 'Photoshop-ism'. I don't know if oC has a corresponding option -- basically what it does is make Photoshop more lax about what it considers to be a continuous tone, so that a fill will extend into a greater contiguous area. It might be called 'colour range' or something like that.

[JediSonic]

Well, after some google searching, I finally found oC v.1 as freeware, so I think I'll just use it for now ;-)

*a few hours later*

Wow. I doesn't even have a "fill" option! Oh well, it's free

[madphilb]

Those who don't know about it, The GIMP is a free program that was written for Linux and has been ported over to the PC.

It's not quite as powerful as the current PhotoShop, but it's a very powerful program.

The down side is that it doesn't have a CYMK mode for editing, but you can dump a image into CYMK files.

The last version or two of Photoshop added some features which The GIMP doesn't have yet.

As for filters, it won't use any of the Plug-in filters for Photoshop (they are actually executables), but there is supposed to be some filters/plug-ins that it can use, they are simply just Matrixies or something... I'd have to look it up to be sure of the name/type.

You can find it at http://www.gimp.org three you can find out about The GIMP and if you scroll down it has a link for the Windows port.

One think that GIMP has that I don't think Photoshop does, is a scripting language that can be programmed (and many filters, etc. are already programmed that way). I used to subscribe to a Yahoo Group that convered development for the scripting language (I haven't programmed it myself, but it was a good way to get newly developing scripts).

It does have tablet support (kinda wish I had one, bet I could do more with it), but supports a mouse well enough (tablet support is for the preasure-sensitive stuff).

As a bonus, I think it will automatically gzip files for you as well (common thing in Linux I guess).

PHIL

[JediSonic]

DUDE! Sweet! Gimp is awesome! Finally I get a customizable "fill" option

The only thing is it takes a second to load up, and you have to manually specify the file name... surely there must be a way around that...

[inkhana]

LOL, yeah, I had totally forgotten about the GIMP!

[Retten]

Oh yeah thats right why dint i think about posting that i used to use the gimp

[JediSonic]

How much does a scanner's resolution matter?

Is 600 x 1200 dpi waayyyyy too small?

Is it worth it to get something as high as 4800 dpi?

What does dpi mean? lol