Sheesh, first Painter 11, and before that it was Adobe CS4 (which I luuuuuuuv), and now Autodesk has released Sketchbook Pro 2010.
It's a frickin' art revolution for digital artists.
I've tried a lot of different art tools. In the beginning I was mostly a Painter girl, but when that started crashing too much for me, I retrained myself to use Photoshop. Others I've tried are GIMP (freeeee!), Open Canvas, and Alias (now Autodesk) Sketchbook Pro. Everything had something that recommended it, but nothing could be a Photoshop-killer. It just has too many useful things.
Alias SKetchbook Pro (SBP) did beat it, and all the others, in one crucial area though. It had a brilliant interface and was the sketching tool to end all sketching tools. Particularly if you use a tablet, that is. Not useable for mouse-artists .
I've been using SBP as my concept/doodle/sketch tool for over a year now. Start in SBP, then migrate to Photoshop (or maybe GIMP), to finish it.
They then released SBP 2009, with increased support for photoshop-format files, but I didn't think it was worth the 200 bucks at the time.
I was about to reconsider that lately, when I discovered that
2010 was out. And it was
packed full of awesome feature enhancements. Canvas rotation. More customizable interface. Better zoom algorithm. A ruler (*drool*) for making straight lines. And other fun stuff.
Took me only twenty minutes to decide to buy it (and fortunately it's only 100 now). And I've been in love ever since.
So yes, for those of you who like to digitally sketch on a tablet, and who are not horrified at the thought of a $100 purchase, you owe it to yourself to download the
15-day trial of Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
It can do more than sketch, of course. It simulates a number of different media (markers, airbrush, paint), but I personally don't use it often for coloring, so I can't speak to how good it is at that. But it *can* do it, so if you aren't already set in your ways, it wouldn't be that hard to make it your one art program.
Oh, and the other goody...
...Axiotron is coming out with what is basically a
small cintiq/computer combo that I can't stop drooling over. It's not quite as good as a Cintiq (1024 levels of pressure sensitivity), but it's much higher pressure sensitivity than most tablet PC's (512 levels as opposed to 256 levels). And it's bigger than most tablets, but not so big that it can't be portable.
And it's powerful enough you could attach a keyboard and mouse to it and game on it.
I swears, I just about had a mini-orgasm when Irianta finally got me to look at the specs/pictures. It looks fantastic.
Too bad I can't come up with an excuse for why I neeeed something that costs as much as a used car. *wistful sigh*
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Topic: Sketchbook Pro 2010 and other goodies (Read 8236 times)