![]() Lack of pen mode continues to be the Achilles’ Heel of this otherwise very capable software. Special Effect tools (sticker spray, gloop pen, cloner, glitter tube). ![]() Natural painting tools (oil brush, paint roller, paint tube, watercolor, airbrush).* I realize it’s still taking up space at the top of the screen, but it feels different. I could go on and on about how great ArtRage is, but you should check it out for yourself. Useful if it’s going to bleed out, you can stop the process so that there’s less to undo. Squee! There’s also a slow motion option for paint fills, so you can watch as it fills. Brilliant! That alone was worth the cost of the upgrade to me. I can turn that up a bit and fill away without it escaping the intended area. But now, 5 has a gap tolerance setting on the fill tool. It was very time consuming, and I’d frequently wind up getting a bit of paint mix along the edges, throwing off the color. I’d have to undo and paint with the paintbrush tool. But if there were gaps in the line work, and there frequently are with my illustrations, the paint would bleed out. I use the fill tool whenever I can to speed through it. 5’s killer feature is even better, which brings me to a confession: coloring is probably my least favorite part of an illustration. Paint symmetry means I don’t have to redraw the one side multiple times to get it to match up with the other. Derrick has that classic soda bottle shape, the 2-liter variety. For me, the killer feature with 4 was paint symmetry. There are a bunch of new features that come along with 5, just as was the case with 4. Not much you can do about the canvas, but at least the rest isn’t so white. I love a good, dark theme, and this is especially appreciated for those early morning drawing sessions when the last thing you want to look at is a bunch of white light. The new version comes with a Lights Out mode, which cuts down a bit on the amount of white. Still, I sort of wish you could customize what’s on that toolbar and its placement like you can with Scrivener.Īs you can see from the second picture, things are a little darker. At least there’s a redo button, so it’s easily fixed. The only downside I’ve found is due to muscle memory: I’m used to the zoom controls being on the left, and I’ve several times clicked Undo when I meant to click zoom out. I think this also opens up the top toolbar for future expansion, which is already what I’m seeing (a new tool was added to the lower left panel, and the tool it replaced was moved to the top). The new feels like a proper toolbar that’s out of the way*. The old always felt like it was floating over the top of whatever I was working on. For me, the toolbar is a big improvement. It’s also a little narrower as far as height goes. Notice how the top toolbar stretches across the entire top of the screen. Here’s a screenshot of my latest WIP in 4.5, which is the look I’ve always known. The next thing I noticed was the toolbar at the top. 4.5 was no slouch, but it would usually take 10-15 seconds to open on my desktop computer. The first thing I noticed was how incredibly quickly version 5 opened. Yes, score! I’ve been putting it through its paces for the past few weeks, looking for new features, bugs, whatever little tidbits I could find that struck a chord with me. So, I threw my hat in the ring, and a few days later, the lovely Hannah from Ambient Design got back to me with a code for a free review copy. I could get something I was prepared to pay for – not that they needed to know that – for the cost of a review? Something I would have chatted about anyway? Yes, please. I was all ready to plop down my money for an upgrade (once you’re a user, you get new versions for 50% off, or so it has been since I’ve been using it) when I noticed that they were offering review copies. So, I went over to the ArtRage site and found my suspicions confirmed. I noticed a few weeks ago that it had been awhile since I’d gotten an update to my 4.5 install, and I thought that perhaps the next version was out or would be soon. It’s not the only tool in my tool belt (I also have Manga Studio, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Paint.NET), but it’s the one that I use almost exclusively for illustration work. I started off with 3.x and moved onto 4.x when it came out. As any reader of the blog knows, I’ve been an ArtRage user for years.
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