The Blur Tool!!!! HELP!!!

[gripsocks]

hey guys I love sai it's my favorite program to use and 1 of the main reasons it is, is because of its AWESOME BLUR TOOL!
but now that I'm using my mac for art instead of PC I CANT USE SAI! so I was wondering if anyone knew a program with a blur tool like what SAI has.


PLEASE HELP! anything is appreciated!

[Robellyn]

Ah, NO program has a blur quite like SAI's.

When doing the Mac thing, I've used Painter 11, Photoshop CS5, and Artrage Studio 3.

 For Painter 11, I customize an Acrylics brush (use a grainy soft cover on a single stroke brush with 0% resaturation), although some prefer the built-in tool of BLENDER-JUST ADD WATER.

For Photoshop CS5, the 'smudge' brush can serve (but turn on 'scatter' with a low % for it). If you're feeling confident, you can also use the new blender brushes, which are excellent.

For ArtRage, you are pretty much limited to using a palette knife;  great for some effects but hardly patch on SAI's.

You can also check out the 'smudge' brush on pixelmator, but I've never used it so I cannot tell you how it goes with that. Same with GIMP ...

[Mikan]

I've done a lot of comparison to the way Sai handles transparency and bluring and pushing of colors.  It's completely unique.  All other paint programs use a buildup method mainly.  So if you do like a 20% stroke over another 20% stroke you wind up with a 40% stroke where they overlap.  In sai this isn't absolute and the cross section will be calculated so that it's based absolutely on the pressure of the stroke.  It's like having absolute control over opacity/translucency versus relative control on a tablet, but for transparency.  

This also effects how it can blur colors.

It also doesn't treat clear on layers as white, or as a color in itself, as most other painting applications like painter 11, Photoshop, and many even bigger better known painting programs.  It treats it as null as it should be.  That's the biggest difference in how blurring and pushing color is better in Sai.

It's pretty amazing, other programs should learn from Sai and give this option.  I've been suggesting it to the writer of 4th paint to add this option for a while but no go there.  It's something that the writer of Sai must have really thought about and worked on.

[Robellyn]

I know! Not to mention it's probably the fastest blender I've ever met too!

Another feature of SAI that is wonderous to me (since I do Comics) is the fill tool based on transparency rather than colour difference (user selectable). I don't know if any other graphics application does that either (It makes flatting really easy!).

In fact, when my Mac died last year, I replaced it with a PC just because I became so addicted to using SAI for my work (although I also use Painter ... SAI isn't the best at EVERYTHING!).

For the original poster, if you can afford it I might suggest finding a copy of windows somewhere and setting up a Windows install in Boot Camp on your Mac. Then SAI will only be a reboot away.

[asmIllustrations]

hmm This might be the wrong place to say it but you can try looking up "sai for mac" on youtube or something. Most programs that are just for windows... you usually get lucky and one person has already converted it for another OS. I won't leave a link here since I think that video is a cracked say for the mac but I can say try looking it up. Its bound to be on the net.

hopefully my comment helps.. if not try gimp painter. Its amazing and a huge step towards a free painting software.

software-http://code.google.com/p/gps-gimp-paint-studio/


Some of the things it can do- http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=167429

[Xor]

I think the setting that i present in sai and not in others is called blur pressure / smoothing pressure.....its unique to sai n by default on water brushes its set to 50%...when u turn it to 0 % it acts like the blending brush in csp ...but i think mikan has said it much better

[Xor]

I just realized its been 8 years loool