Software Review and Free Download | Desktop Tools | Pixarra Twisted Brush

» Review Pixarra TwistedBrush v13.5
(August 2007)

Pixarra Twisted Brush
Performance: Pixarra's attention to performance is a top priority. As an artist draws and paints the tools should disappear from thought and allow focus on the creative process rather than waiting for the tool to finish its job. In addition the responsiveness of the brush tools should be quick and show marks on the page instantly to allow the artist to enter the "zone".

High Precision 64 Bit Brush Engine: Most graphic programs offer at most 32 bits of color resolution. TwistedBrush represents all image data internally at a full 64 bits of color resolution. This allows for super smooth color mixing and alpha blending.

Brushes: TwistedBrush has over 1500 diffferent brushes included. These range from very simple color dots to realistic representations of natural artist tools to very wild brushes. Here is a very small sampling of some of the brushes that are available.

The workspace in TwistedBrush is designed to reduce the number of floating windows that overlay your painting surface freeing you from the chore of constantly shuffling windows around. Over 50 brushes are right at your fingertips, along with numerous color palette options and tools that get assigned to your right button click to further streamline your artist workflow.

TwistedBrush works much like a real sketchbook. When you start TwistedBrush it is like opening your sketchbook, it is immediately ready to draw or paint on your page. When you're done with a page you turn to the the next page. You never need to manually save your work. But of course you can export your pictures to any number of the standard image formats such as JPEG, PNG, BMP, TGA, TIFF, GIF, etc.

Like a unlimited supply of sketchbooks, TwistedBrush keeps your pages stored in books. Up to 500 pages per book and an unlimited number of books means you'll never run out of paper! The Page Explorer makes it easy to view and reorganize your pages in your sketchbooks. Even assign a name to your sketch book if you like.

In any digital painting program the core of the system is in the brushes. Therefore easy access to the brushes is key. In TwistedBrush there are over 2000 brushes included with more added all the time. With the brush shortcut system your favorite brushes are always ready for you.

ArtSets organize the brushes in TwistedBrush into groups of 60 brushes. There are a variety of types of ArtSets, from standard art tools, specialize collections, patterns brushes, cloners, photo retouching brushes, image brushes, etc.

It is easy to create your own brushes and then store them into your own ArtSets. All the tools used by the creators of TwistedBrush to create brushes and ArtSets are included. You can even create your own collections of brushes easily by entering the ArtSet build mode and selecting brushes from other ArtSets. Then if you like, make these your shortcuts with a press of a button.

Color selections are plentiful with the included color palettes. Additionally you can tweak selected colors, create your own palettes, select colors from your picture, from a reference image, the scratch layer or even the trace source image. Dynamic palettes also aid in color selections, allowing you to pick from the history of colors used or hue ranges from your currently selected color.

All the tools you expect are available from the tool bar. When you have a tool selected it is activated with the right mouse (stylus) click. This means your drawing brush is always available and you never need to reselect your brush to start painting again. The tools you expect are here, eye dropper, cropping, moving, line, box, ellipse, flood fill, gradiant, masking tools, text, drawing guides, brush rotate, brush cleaner etc.

TwistedBrush includes an advanced system called Layers. With layers you can split your work into transparent layers that sit on top on each others and allow for incredible editing and adjustment options even at the end stages of your painting. A wide range of layer blending modes exist including many not available in any other painting program.

Use paper textures while you draw to give the feel and look of textured paper and canvas. Over 70 different surface textures are included.

Masks are the artists masks you may be familiar with if you've done traditional artwork. TwistedBrush has an extensive set of masking capabilities that you'll use to protect and manipulate areas of your work. Included is a magic wand with a number of different modes for creating your masks. Or use a common shape or one of the many masking brushes to create exactly the mask you need.

A filter allows for processing the image all at once. TwistedBrush includes the full range of image processing filters ready to use.

The tracing paper feature gives you the ability to turn your canvas into tracing paper so that you can see a reference image below it for use as a drawing guide. This is invaluable for many types of work.

Cloning, taking image data from somewhere else and placing it into your painting, that is cloning. The source image for the TwistedBrush cloning brushes can be a different image or from another area of your current picture. The cloners can be used to render a photo as a artist drawing, or to touch-up a photo or do many things in-between.

With scripts you can record your painting actions and play them back, recreating your painting from scratch. This has value for trying out different "what-if" scenarios, for teaching pusposes, for animation production when used with the AVI saving option or just for entertainment.

There are a number of ArtSets that contain Pattern brushes. These brushes paint a pattern on your canvas as you paint. Adjust the size the pattern with the density slider. Categories of patterns include, surface, materials, nature and others.

Key features:

- Filters: Over 50 filters can be used to quickly alter and adjust your image. The includes basic photographic filters that adjust brightness and contrast or equalize the colors, artist filters that allow you to mimic a oil painting with a click of the mouse, blurring filters, noise filters, noise generation filters, distorting filters, sharpening filters etc.

- Tracing Paper: A source image is shown below the current paper as if the current paper was as thin as tracing paper. This allows for using a photograph or another drawing as a guide when doing a new picture. With a press of the hot key the tracing paper is turned off and on allowing you to check on your progress.

- Cloners: Related to the Tracing Paper feature Cloners are brushes that have a Trace Blend or Trace Color brush effects applied to them. Used in combination with the tracing paper feature, when on not only does the source image show through but the color that is used for the drawing is based on the color of the source image rather then the color that is currently selected. This use in combination with the other powerful brush effects makes for a very realistic representation of a painted or drawn version of the source image. An entire ArtSet of 60 brushes is included that has a variety of cloning brushes.

Masks: With masks part of an image can be protected from changes. This works just like traditional artist masks or friskets. There are numerous ways to create and edit masks, they can be painted on with masking brushes, added to with special masking tools for rectangles and ellipses, the masking magic wand can be used to mask area of similar color or you can even convert and existing image to a mask.

Layers: Imagine overlaying sheets of clear drawing material on top of each other and being able to freely paint and draw on each layer. This is the idea of layers. A powerful system of image creation that allows for continued editing on a image even after it is nearing completion. For example if painting a landscape. On the background layer place the general tone of the picture blocking in color areas. On the next layer up paint the sky, next the clouds, next distance land or trees, another layer for middle ground areas, and last for the foreground. If you decide to repaint the clouds no problem go back to the cloud layer and touch them up or start the clouds from scratch. The other areas of your work are not affected.

ArtSets: Within TwistedBrush is the brush collection idea called ArtSets. An ArtSet is a collection of up to 60 brush presets. A brush preset can be everything about a brush, including color, size and of course the type of brush and effect. With ArtSets similar brushes can be grouped together for ease of use. A large number of ArtSets are included with TwistedBrush, but anyone can create there own, it's as easy as clicking on an emply brush slot.

Script Brushes: Bringing together the powerful brush engine, ArtSet and the scripting system, results in Script Brushes. A script brush is a script that can be treated like a brush, and therefore can be placed in an ArtSet and drawn with, relative to the position on the canvas that you paint rather then the original recorded location. This is an innovative system that surpases clip art or canned images used for composition. Since the script is played back and therefore is just like it's being drawn for the first time it can properly interact with the colors that are already on the page.
 

Size : 12.8 MB Download Pixarra TwistedBrush

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