I have Painter 8 but I don't know too much, besides some basics, about customizing the brushes in it. I know how to open the brush editer and make changes like bristle type, etc., but there's a lot of options I just don't know how to use.


what I want to do is get a brush set up to work -exactly- like the brush in lascaux when you have both the antialias and blend options checked. Specifically what I can't seem to get is the transparency to work right. In lascaux when you lower the opacity of the brush it'll give you exactly that degree of transparency no matter how long you hold down the mouse button/tablet pen, until you let go to start a new stroke. In painter no matter what I do to the opacity level it'll keep getting more opaque the longer I hold down my pen. The only way I've found to get a consistantly transparent stroke is to do every stroke on a new layer and adjust the opacity of the entire layer, and that's just not practical.


-also, one of the brushes in painter I use the most is the wet gouache round, with a few adjustments to things like bristle type, and I hate the watercolor tools in painter along with most other brushes/pens/whatever else. Out of all the brushes I only actually use 1 gouache, 1 oil, 1 oil pastel, 1 conte, 1 pencil, 1 or 2 pens, and 1 acrylic. I just don't like the way the rest of them handle.

I have Painter 8, but i don't use it much. I like Photoshop better.
I mostly use corel for text art and clipart.

I never really had an issue like that with Painter...I tried out the tools that you use and the opacity was consistent with every stroke, no matter how long I held my pen.
I'm not sure if this will help at all but maybe you could try adjusting your pressure setting.

for me lowering the opacity in painter only makes it take a little longer for the color to be fully opaque, no matter what brush I'm using or how much I press down the pen, and lowering the pressure settings just makes me have to press harder but doesn't stop it from reaching 100% opacity on the stroke if I hold it long enough.

Painter is made simulate real brush strokes, so holding the brush in one spot will result in a more opaque colour. I'm not aware of any brushes in painter will allow you to achieve the Lascaux effect, you'll probably have to go with Photoshop or Open Canvas.

the problem I get in photoshop is that it'll give exactly the transparency results I'm looking for but doesn't have any blending built into the brush. So I'd have to blend separately with another tool. Painter gives me the blending built into the brush so I can get soft transitions as I work without having to switch tools after every stroke. There are a few tools in painter that give transparency like the glazing acrylics, but the way they handle is odd because no matter how many strokes you make with them anything below it that's darker than the color you're glazing with will still show through slightly. That's how it'd work in real life, but not how I want it to work. In some ways I do like lascaux's brush better than anything in either photoshop or painter.

Well, then you should give Open Canvas a go. Google it and download for free if you don't already have it.

too bad there's no mac version of open canvas, so I can't use that. Really I can use painter to make a lot of good drawings that people like, it's just annoying to have to change techniques between here and there and for certain things to be harder to make in one place or another.