PD ArtistComments on:

By: Philip Staiger

Philip Staiger — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:58:50 +0000

Update coming – PD Particles 1.1 is underway.

check http://www.thebest3d.com/pdp in a week or two. Prolly around Halloween. Scary huh :-)

If you have PD Artist, you might want to add the spooky clock – see the Halloween giveaways at http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/freebies – should work with PD Artist too if I recall. The activeX is the same name in Dogwaffle 2, PD Artist and PD Pro. Unless a filter/plugin uses something specific to PD Pro, a filter for PD Pro will also work on PD Artist.

By: Philip Staiger

Philip Staiger — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:50:18 +0000

Almost free… with other people’s money

If you missed the download from GAOTD, you can still get PD Artist for free by trying something else too. That other product developers may be interested in paying for your PD ARtist copy.

Don’t believe it fairy tales? Check out TrialPay. It’s a new approach to marketing…. instead of Pay per click, it’s pay per prospect. If you find interest in one of their other products, try it, and they’ll cover the cost of PD Artist for you.

http://www.thebest3d.com/pda/sales.html has a link to TrialPay

By: mrwheels

mrwheels — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:39:24 +0000

i like this application …
not to complicated to get started – u dont have to start with wading thru the manual … just start doodling …
if u got creative mind … am sure it will grow on you
Now i starting to read the manual .. and create some beautiful images as on website :-)

there maybe better application out there … but u cant complain if this is going free!

have fun
mrwheels

By: Steph

Steph — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:27:03 +0000

Hi there GOTD, I downloaded and installed PD Artist yesterday and I’m extremely glad that I did. So it’s one toe in the water and nine to go. :-) Thanks a million for offering us something unusual and creative rather than the usual converter-of-the-day.

By: yavo

yavo — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:15:41 +0000

:(((

Damn, I was very happy when Dan announced that PD Artist will be on GOTD as far as I am student now and buying such a software is a bit complicated task but yesterday I had problems with my Internet connection. Bad luck for me I guess… Please, please rerun it in the near future! :)

Yavo

By: Matt B

Matt B — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:51:30 +0000

To be quite honest, Photoshop and anything from Adobe is overpriced. Why the heck would anyone pay to create a PDF? That’s why people find alternate methods. I personally use GIMP and PDFCreator and they work great for me.

By: watcher13

watcher13 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:50:57 +0000

Also, the PD artist help, explaining the Nuts and Bolts is fine. You need tutorials and examples so you can visuals what all the explanation of the tools can really do for you.

By: watcher13

watcher13 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:47:56 +0000

Well, for those few, like me, waiting to the last minute: Had downloaded PD Particles when it was offered, liked it, but realized it was limited and specialized on purpose. It mainly gave presets of grasses and the like for landscape art. So I downloaded the grandaddy of the series, the free version (1.2) of Project Dogwaffle, with the idea that I could import/export stuff back and forth and increase what I could get done. Tried it out and could see it had potential for someone who wanted to learn digital painting, especially landscapes. That fits right in with my ambitions.

The issues:
1. As to the changing of Visual Basic libraries, I agree with the suggestion of someone who has posted before, Mike. Download ERUNT at this address: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
You can use it to take a snapshot of your register, install the software, then reinstall the register to restore the original settings. You can do the same with restore points, but this is more straightforward. I appreciate Fubar reviews on this issue.

2. Most, if not all, painting programs allow you to alter images, but that’s an extra. Comparing this with Photoshop or Gimp is really apples and oranges. If you want to alter images, get them. If you want to paint, get something like this.

3. Other software. Haven’t used them, but checked out the suggestions. As mentioned above, Artweaver can exchange images with this. Pixia’s website doesn’t have much detail, some example links are long dead, and the tutorial link is also dead. Seems to be a paint program, but hard to say exactly what the features are. Seems like it would be a little lighter on resources. ArtRage has a free version which looks very promising. It has a simpler layout and it’s biggest advantage is a tracing mode, allowing you to practice strokes from harder photos.

4. Layers. This compensates for lacking multi-layers somewhat by having a buffer system: swappable canvases which allow you to try out ideas and then incorporate them into the masterpiece if you like them. More than one buffer it seems so you can even keep earlier copies in case you feel you started to get far away from your original creation. Though, if you use a lossless format, you could just keep older copies with out the problem of image degradation. You could also use the buffers to take the images in multiple radical directions to see which way you want to go.

5. The website needs cleaned up. There’s good info. here and multiple tutorials, but stuff isn’t all organized in one place and you have to dig around and sometimes end up back where you started before you find what you need. There’s more than one place you can find the different tutorials. Worse, a fair amount of dead links, which leads me into…

6. The Vista question. From these comments and my experience it will work for most people on Vista. You don’t need to turn your UAC off, just install with Run as Administator from the right click menu. The confusing language on Vista is just the same kind of sloppiness they use on the website.

Bottom line: if you have any interest in digital painting, get ArtRage or this or both (maybe even Artweaver). 7/10 – 8/10 if they’d clean up the website. The prices are inline with ArtRage. Their latest version is $25. Be aware ArtRage uses a fader system on their website to change pages, some of which take just short of forever (unless that was server congestion when I was on it).

Thanks, GOTD. Stuff like this and InPaint makes the Screensavers easy to tolerate.

By: Robin Jones

Robin Jones — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:47:07 +0000

I installed this on Vista and on XP and did not see there were any problems at all so far on Vista. It is a fun software I love it. I also love photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver etc. So this is a fine software and similar to some of the ones I mentioned above. I will surely be using this software often. It took a little longer to install on my laptop than my desktop but that is probably because the desktop (Vista) is much faster of a machine. Thank you very much for this nice software.

By: April

April — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:29:11 +0000

Tried several times to download and keep getting message box “checking availability” which doesn’t do anything and won’t close without going to “end task”, also will not delete Setup file, says access denied. Just wondering if this program has put something on my computer which could be potentially harmful. I really wanted to try the program, “thumbs down”.