UPDATE: Christoffer Tallerås on Twitter let me know that Krita actually has that blending probe radius I wished for in the video! How cool is that! It's called Smudge Radius and it goes from 1-pixel to way bigger than the size of the brush. Awesome. A lot of people asking about Clip Studio Paint. I think I never mentioned it in the video, but t's present in some footage. CSP has both flat and blur blending, and it also has the issue of bleeding when you touch at least 1 pixel of another color with flat blending. Could use a smaller-radius area for picking up blending colors in the brush spot, down to 1-pixel, like Krita. Blur blending works like a simple full-layer blur with bleeding, and the performance is pretty bad. Another update: fixed facts about CSP, it also has blur blending, what an app!
Also, Andy Wright commented that CSP has Color Stretch setting, and it introduces delay for blending with new colors. It improves the issue a bit, but the more you increase it, the harder blending with short strokes becomes. A two-edged sword, so to speak!
This problem bugs the absolute hell out of me. Colors need to be blended in proportion to their position under the stroke, not averaged into the entire stroke. If my computer can run Doom Eternal at 3440x1440 at 100+ frames per second, (it can) then it should be able to blend a 100x100 brush on a per pixel basis, while taking brush alpha into account and also at 100+ frames per second.
Yes. If going completely nuts about it, the blending-in colors should be picked up from a small circle that is positioned in the "back" of the brush spot. Depending on the direction of the stroke. So the super new colors coming from the front of the spot wouldn't immediately start affecting the brush.
Yea, the perfect app would be able to have different settings for high and low performance. I like to use medibang, and in my computer I went over 200 layers wilst my friend using the same app on her phone can barely have more than 50. I imagine how it must be to maintain that range without making the app really heavy for low performance devices (not only smartphones but old computers as well).
When you’re developing software that will be used on multiple platforms and devices, there are specifications that you have to meet in order to ship the product out. My PC can run any game at Ultra settings and run VR games smoothly too. But my laptop is a different story lol. Not everyone can afford a machine that can calculate algorithms quick enough. There’s a lot of computing processing happening and it’s not the same as graphical processing lol. You video game was already predetermined and coded, when you’re painting you’re doing something completely new and unpredictable with every stroke, therefore needs to be computed on the spot, at real-time, no lag or stuttering, at high resolution. So it’s more costly on the machine. Your idea would probably crash and set someone’s CPU on fire 🥴😂
@@dinomightstudios4119 The video game is not predetermined, you have a continuous position, ai state, global state, player input and networking. There's nothing predetermined before hand regarding the input of the software. The algorithms though in doom eternal for this case are fast enough where based on the data supplied can produce an incredible result in a short period of time. Painting is in the same situation but the complexity is significantly less. You'd have some variables like brush setting, current canvas colour under brush, brush stroke direction etc. Based on these inputs you have to come up with a suitable output (doom eternal is having a nice looking image of the game, for Photoshop it would be a nice looking blend). Such an operation performed by Photoshop is orders of magnitude simpler compared to what doom is performing. The complexity of the problem is so much smaller for Photoshop yet embarrassingly half baked in the execution. It's really saddening to see people disregard their laptop and non top of the line computers due to most software in the world being pretty trash and thus giving the perspective that this incredibly fast machine is slow. It's up to consumers to actually be aware and have higher standard for the quality for apps like Photoshop (which in my eyes has significantly degraded over the years).
@@lucasperlind5768 So when I say “predetermined” what I mean is, the textures, the VFX, lighting, animations, etc. all of that has already been predetermined by the game’s company and then shipped to you to play with SOME freedom, but that freedom is still within a controlled predetermined environment. Yes, AI is still predetermined. Painting is NOT significantly less lol. You like REALLY do not understand software and the logistical side of things. Laying down paint, sure that’s relatively simple! But blending, realistically is a different story. If you don’t want to take the blurred layer approach and actually do pixel by pixel, you math and calculations will be what causes the lag to occur. Here’s why... Take OPs example. You have a brush that’s 100px x 100px that you are about to use to blend your colors. The operations required to blend those pixels together with accuracy is pretty much this and then some: Pen / Mouse Input starting position on canvas, what are the colors contained within each pixel of your 100px x 100px brush, user begins moving brush through canvas, the ai calculates the next pixel and the last pixel and blends the two (this happens to every single pixel within that brush). This operation will need to update and colors will have to be constantly calculated and updated over and over as you move your brush. The software cannot guess where you’ll be or control your creativity, so a developer can’t even really add predetermined elements to speed up that process. Our machines are very fast and capable, you are correct. However, they are not fast or capable enough yet to account for the randomness of humans and are fast enough to calculate and update on such a small pixel by pixel level. Just too much real time computing... It’s much faster and reliable to use the blur method and add some extra sauce to it until we have some type of GPU that can handle an infinite amount of operations without lag.
Some interesting things about using the color smudge engine in Krita is that when the overlay mode is on, the brush will blend with anything beneath it like other layers. Even if you take the underlying layer away you'll see the brush strokes changed color based on what was beneath. So it's possible to blend based only on that layer or include any that are visible. Another quick tip is that any color smudge brush can be turned into purely a blender if you uncheck the color rate. This allows it to blend colors without adding to what is already there.
@. lol true. and the overwhelming amount of buttons is giving me anxiety everytime i try to draw. which is why i switched to Medibang which is a much simpler (and FREE) software
I have trouble with the pen pressure in Krita haha. Which is unfortunate cause I can actually create mp4 animation vids with it, without having to use apps that are either too simple or too complicated (looking at you, Opentoonz)
It is a very interesting talk, actually. I had noticed these too, the blending issues in many apps. And Boro is great explaining and commenting about whatever.
Finally, someone that understands me! In SAI try the following settings: Blending: 17 pen pressure on, Dilution 14 pen pressure off, Persistence 0, Keep Opacity Off, Blur Pressure 45. Now when you want to push the edge, you just press harder on the Pen. Speaking of the pen, I'm using the WinTab API (in Options) with Windows Ink off (in Huion Settings). Also, another big plus for SAI is the smooth blending that creates almost none color bending. I am yet to find another painting app that creates such smooth transitions. And if you check the Task Manager, you'll see that SAI is not using the GPU to render the painting process. It only does it using the CPU which I'm guessing is faster because the CPU has faster access to the memory and you will see the memory quickly ramping up with every big stroke.
Paint tool sai is the only good blending. The other apps drive me nuts whit the lack of it like procreate. I have tried most Painting programs. If there was paint tool sai for ipad i would only use that.
Thissss The only app I find got close to paint tool SAI is Boro's Craft Pro, everything else has weird inconsistencies here and there, they're mostly usable, but just won"t give me the absolute flow state of knowing how all works that SAI does
My app actually blends several random pixels within an 80%-size rectangle inside the brush spot. With what I know today, I'd make it 50% or less. And maybe even round.
@@BoroCG What about giving the user the option on the amount they want or even give the choice of more shapes so it could be more precise? For creating precise hard edge I think something that you can give an angle with a smaller radius line or rectangle area like a palette knife would could be a great choice often too. What do you think about it?
@@BoroCG Ooooh is that why it behaves weird and sometimes includes pure white when at ~1px size :o It's fascinating to learn about this !! You still got it reallll close to perfect, at least for my taste, I'd say it's right up there with SAI, you can get a soft+blend or a flat+blend in the slide of a single parameter, that's what matters the most I think (to be able to get cool gradients and hue shifts while maintaining good edge reads like what you were saying about Krita for example) Thanks for sharing this ! :D
I could never put into words why Krita (with Sai as a close second) felt the best to me or why it was so hard to recreate my blends in Procreate. Thank you!
10:17 i thought i was tripping out at first, the subtle movement you've animated onto the camera of your "facecam" is so cool hahaha it adds life and makes it feel like you have a live videographer filming you. your production is ABOVE AND BEYOND for free tutorials. you're awesome!!
so interesting. never saw an in-depth look at blending thats cool. part of peoples issues here may be that edges in painting are supposed to be very carefully thought out and designed to produce the effects you want. what i mean is if an edge is very important that it hits the right hard/softness you should spend some time laying up colors into it and not just blending from a to b. but a to b to c to d to e then done. c being whatever color purposely is chosen to create a soft look or average color between the two. traditional painters really dont blend but build up colors in shapes and only blend very sim colors together. but almost most of the time they shape in colors next to each other then last may blend some together. digital artists can benefit from knowing how traditional painting goes because it has solved these issues in real paint. they exist in real paint too btw. try to do that and make another video to compare. way more variables to deal with btw. great vid...thanks for making
Thanks! afaik, traditional paint is a lot harder to actually blend without a messy brushwork. Since it mostly smears colors in the direction of the stroke, so it's a different thing
Thanks for the great analysis. It is not clear which sampling method is the best. I made many tests when implementing Flat Blending in Artstudio Pro, and picked the best for me, however i'm not artist. One of the tested methods was picking just one pixel in the center of the brush, which was the most simple to implement. But i didn't like, i don't remember why, maybe because i couldn't nice smooth the shape edge. I would name the parameter "Hotspot Radius" or "Wetness Hotspot" or "Flat Hotspot". I will consider adding that in the future.
Yes, do it please :) And learn more from SAI, their blending is one of the best. I would prefer another name for the parameter though, because all of the ones you suggested are confusing and I would have no Idea what that is, something more explanatory like "blur radius" or "smudge radius" or "blur sample size" would be more clear.
I always seem to have this issue With any other app that is not pentool sai. I would love the blending and lineart of pentoolsai with the user interface of procreate.
my first painting software is SAI, so when i switch to other software I felt uncomfortable when using blending, and i don't know why. until boro upload this video
@@GalaxColor true can be argued that way but yet so many find sai to be so much better in terms of 2d character painting and have been used professionally as much as the other 2 you mentioned
@@solitairius. yes I completely agree, it's just that I'm one of the people who prefer to make their style a bit more 3d-ish and paint tool Sai is just not for me :)
@@GalaxColor in fact that SAI doesn't have those convinient tools like in other App. either 3D ish or 2D doesn't really a matter cuz people don't use digital painting app back then. but who doesn't like decent and convinient stuff, that's a kind of technology that we hope for.
@BoroCG, in SAI 1, there was a way to import custom brushes, but it's not anything you can do from within the program. It involved making .PNG files and moving them into a certain folder in SAI, then editing a text file with the brush names all on separate lines or something. So, not user friendly, but possible. I did a webcomic for about 4 years in SAI 1 before moving to Clip Studio Paint, and I loved everything about it except for the lack of certain tools like rulers and stuff like obnoxious brush importing schemes. I wish SAI 2 would get faster development, but I'm pretty attached to CSP now. If only CSP had a liquify tool. :(
@@beni2am That's what I've heard as well. I wish the guy the best, but honestly I kind of wish he would get absorbed into a larger team and his programming chops could be added to a more mature product like CSP or PaintStorm or something.
I tried to custom my brushes on SAI 2. The only thing i could change succesfuly was brush textures and brushform. You can request the new features or report some bugs to the dev email address. I tried to request the "symmetry ruler" and he approve my request in the next update.
For CSP, on the Assets store, there’s actually a Liquify Brush! Not sure if it works with the new version, though, but it’s here: assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1716631 Hope you enjoy! Tell me if it performs!
Really great video! And happy to see SAI 2 featured. I would love to see more videos where you use SAI 2! It's my favorite program and I'd love to see your painting process using it.
This is why I never use blending-mode brush in photoshop. A better way to blend color is just relying on the color picker and use pressure opacity brush with 80% flow. Using the blending brush makes the colors looking muddy.
I'm glad you pointed this out. I've been complaining about this issue for years. A lot of people really don't know how good blending saves time and effort and you need the right tool for that
The setting could be called "Blur Sample Size" or something like that, maybe just call it "Sample ratio" and have it under the blur category, so it could be like 85% or just 1%
! I thought I was the only one who had this issue because I've never seen someone addressing this "problem"! Been painting digitally for around 10 years and using Photoshop and CSP for industry standards, but I always find myself returning to SAI for more painterly and personal projects! I could never point why it blends so different and why I can't replicate the SAI blend at other softwares but you finally pointed it out! Thank you for this video, very informative! ^_^
Omi gosh this is exactly what I’ve been struggling with for sooooo long, like I stopped working digitally because something was off with the blending and I couldn’t make it work! I thought it was just me
You just there at the top of my recommendation list, I clicked it and I'm not disappointed at all. I'm a subscriber now, thanks for the video it really helps me a lot in some ways.
Oh my, I never would have been able to articulate this problem! Now that I hear it explained, that stuff caused so much frustration when I started digital art this year! Going straight from watercolours to digital is a pain in regards to blending.
This is why I love you Boro, you pay attention to the real nit-gritty of art apps and I respect your opinion highly. This kind of thing has always interested me in painting apps. You break it down so well. Thank you. I guess I should try Krita....
I paint every category in seperate layers to advoid this for the overall sillohutte as landscape painting and bob ross are taught to paint from the back to front. Pick your brush, then to erase the edge, click transparent color on the bottom of the two swatches.
Am I the only one who wanted to just watch the end of all the paint smearing for a longer time? There was something very satisfying about that together with the music... :)
I use Krita and I LOVE blending in it. It's a big part of my art process and a lot of fun. I love the program as a whole, I enjoy it way more than any other program that I've ever tried and always thought that's just because it was the first one I ever used and it's what I'm used to. Now I know better. :D
I found that Paint storm studio has the radius ange setting for the blur blending too, just click the box icon on the blur slider and you will see a range slider. After I changed it to 60%, I can't see the blur\color bleeding anymore even If touched the color.
I always wondered why I liked SAI so much, I tried many different apps but its still my favorite :) I also love the interface and how you can make your own pallette of different brush settings very intuitivly
The only ipad app I've been able to get GOOD blending (like, the closest to SAI's) is Infinite Painter. It's weirdly a super under rated app and yet by far my favourite on the ipad.
I believe Clip Studio Paint can do this, I think the option is called "Colour Stretch" (or something like that). So you can switch the option to 0% and it doesn't blend at all or higher and it blends more.
Thanks for the info! CSP is present in some parts of the video. It has only flat blending, and it bleeds when you touch another color even by 1 pixel. I tried Color Stretch just now, and it introduces delay for blending with new colors. It kinda solves the issue, but it makes blending with short strokes less effective in the first place, making its precision not higher, but lower. Still, a useful thing to keep in mind, Painter also has something like this iirc
Have you tried affinity photo? It is limited in terms of brush stuff but it has a Color Mixer Brush tool. I have no idea if that tool is any good for art though. It may be similar to the directional thingy in Photoshop that you showed.
Seriously this is the definite example of why Paint tool Sai reigns king in digital painting for digital artists. I think the main reason why I have opted to use procreate or photoshop nowadays though is the lack of similation of paint or materials fhat procreate has managed to replicate. I don't think I will ever make an artwork start to finish purely through photoshop though, the process of work big to small and how laggy it gets is what makes me favor procreste and sai whom have managed to bypass the lag all around.
The original art studio pro actually had this feature. It was the “wet brush” setting. You could push and pull shapes and even add a liiiitle bit of color if you wanted.
When different artists trying to choose correct word for what they'd like to say, but they can't because art software don't have consistent terminology always make me laugh
Thank you for the video. I am a 3d artist and Mudbox Wax brush has a similar nature in 3d to what you showed here with Paint Tool Sai. You can be precise but if pressed lightly it blends forms together, thus having multiple tools in one. Saying out loud you prefer Mudbox Wax brush over Zbrush’s clay brushes is considered to be a sacrilege. It might be less refined, with less features, but it does something at it’s core that I miss when I am not using it.
I see no isue there, to my small brain it should work exactly like that! But every video like that is actually really interesting and fun to dig in. Great job Boro!
by the way, you can totally get both a smooth blend or a pushing of the color with photoshop if you select the right brushes. Sometimes it takes a little manipulation of the brush properties to get exactly the effect you want but it's definitely possible, I do both all the time
Actually in paint tool sai, the brush setting persistence, dilution and blending really affect the brush. Persistence affects how long it keeps the color you begin to blend in(easy to have clean edges), dilution how quickly the brush loses color (brush turns kind of transparent) and blending which just affects how mixed the colors get and how quickly, really give different outlooks. When I used to use SAI I used to change these three options all the time while coloring. So I actually used pen for sketching and brush for everything else, of course you could save different versions if you didn't want to change them all the time. So i would recommend playing around with these options on top of opacity.
I use Ibis Paint X. If I use the blur tool it blends it just before the edge of color (like you demonstrated earlier in the video). However, if you use the smudge tool it seems to blend from the center. I never noticed the difference between these two tools until your video. Thanks for putting this out there.
Very interesting subject. From my experience on PS, the hadness of a tip of a brush matters a lot when it comes to that kind of effect. It never seems to consistent though, so I don't rely much on it, I just look for a kind of brush that will do the trick and roll with it.
You now I think I actually ran into this but didn’t realize it was a problem, assumed it was just how things were, and actually developed a style that didn’t need that type of blending to avoid that problem in the future and lowkey lost my blending style
I wonder if there is a way to fix this in Affinity Photo. It's pretty "new" and still has it's bugs but I tell want to stick with it because I really like using that program
This is why I never use a blending brush. It just literally messes up the colors that I built underneath. I blend things manually (I use Medibang on Windows 10)
yeah i think without lasso tool in photoshop, or doing huge big strokes, and then soft brush to adjust edges or colour, itd bascially be impossible; might give Sai a try.
This is why despite more powerful software being developed after nearly 20 years i cannot find a replacement for paint tool sai, nothing has what it blending has, theres simply no 'similar' app in that regard, I even find Krita despite all the effort and the settings to just not be able to have that effect. And this is the only source i found of someone explaining this effect and pointing it out. So im not crazy, i give up on most apps and go back to sai, I wish SAI got ported to tablets.
im trying it in firealpaca and it doesnt seem to be happening but then again i know nothing about painting nor half of what he's talking about so idek xD
I know you're being paid to promote it, but I can't imagine paying $40 for someone to teach me how to paint the anatomy nightmare they're using as a main example image.
I guess the edge issue in procreate doesn't bother me as I tend to use the lock layer tool thingy. So the brush can't interact with the white canvas at all. I also tend to use the oriental brush
Thanks for clarifying why I never enjoyed the way the paints mix in procreate. I see you have tried csp. Have you tried medians? The way the paints mix always felt close to csp to me.
I wonder if using edge-aware bluring might help, I think some methods should be possible in real time, at least on small regions and with graphics card acceleration
This really bugs me, cause i shade by using the blur and smudge tool combine, i would be shading a red colour, but the grey colour right next to it just comes in and destroy my rich dark red
I found out what I needed in a app and I onoy used SAI and CSP because of nice blending, I usually do sketches in Procreate, not full blended pieces, because I don't like the blending aspects in that app, and I knew something was different, but didn't realise ehat
I have a really big problem right now with this in Photoshop... I didn't paint in Photoshop for like 3 years and I just can't get a smooth or wet painting like blending done anymore. It always looks like stages and not smooth at all. (red ~ darker red ~ dark red ~ nearly black ~ black) Also it's like painting with a text marker... Any help/tipps?
I only use ibis paint. The brushes are weird. most blenders create the gradient, when touching edges, (it even does this dispite using the selection tool to block in the area I'm painting). But I've also customized a few brushes that behave like chalk, where you can still see pixels of other colors underneath, without it pushing them to blend into my selected color. Blending is also very slow TwT
Yeah, this bugs the hell out of me, it's part of the reason I don't use blending brushes and go for the manual approach. Loving the new camera work too, looks like it's on some sort of gimbal?
UPDATE: Christoffer Tallerås on Twitter let me know that Krita actually has that blending probe radius I wished for in the video! How cool is that! It's called Smudge Radius and it goes from 1-pixel to way bigger than the size of the brush. Awesome.
A lot of people asking about Clip Studio Paint. I think I never mentioned it in the video, but t's present in some footage. CSP has both flat and blur blending, and it also has the issue of bleeding when you touch at least 1 pixel of another color with flat blending. Could use a smaller-radius area for picking up blending colors in the brush spot, down to 1-pixel, like Krita. Blur blending works like a simple full-layer blur with bleeding, and the performance is pretty bad.
Another update: fixed facts about CSP, it also has blur blending, what an app!
Also, Andy Wright commented that CSP has Color Stretch setting, and it introduces delay for blending with new colors. It improves the issue a bit, but the more you increase it, the harder blending with short strokes becomes. A two-edged sword, so to speak!
Pretty interesting stuff, hopefully people took advantage of the Humble Bundle sale with Corel painter.
One could also use the blend and blur for blending.l Those felt nice too. (Maybe not optimal too either.)
@@RichardKurbis Oh there was a Sale for Corel painter... I certainly missed that. O.O
@@kanrei keep an eye on Humble Bundle, this was the second time I've bought Corel Painter from them, I'm sure there will be another chance.
As a software developer currently working on art related software:
noted.
C:
ah.. yess when you need to make your own softwate related to this
I wanna use thta
*that
Yes please
me who only uses a flat brush on photoshop and color picks to blend: fascinating
saaame
Same, but with Medibang
Honestly
Same xD
me who uses the Microsoft paint pencil tool:
This problem bugs the absolute hell out of me. Colors need to be blended in proportion to their position under the stroke, not averaged into the entire stroke. If my computer can run Doom Eternal at 3440x1440 at 100+ frames per second, (it can) then it should be able to blend a 100x100 brush on a per pixel basis, while taking brush alpha into account and also at 100+ frames per second.
Yes. If going completely nuts about it, the blending-in colors should be picked up from a small circle that is positioned in the "back" of the brush spot. Depending on the direction of the stroke. So the super new colors coming from the front of the spot wouldn't immediately start affecting the brush.
Yea, the perfect app would be able to have different settings for high and low performance. I like to use medibang, and in my computer I went over 200 layers wilst my friend using the same app on her phone can barely have more than 50. I imagine how it must be to maintain that range without making the app really heavy for low performance devices (not only smartphones but old computers as well).
When you’re developing software that will be used on multiple platforms and devices, there are specifications that you have to meet in order to ship the product out. My PC can run any game at Ultra settings and run VR games smoothly too. But my laptop is a different story lol. Not everyone can afford a machine that can calculate algorithms quick enough. There’s a lot of computing processing happening and it’s not the same as graphical processing lol. You video game was already predetermined and coded, when you’re painting you’re doing something completely new and unpredictable with every stroke, therefore needs to be computed on the spot, at real-time, no lag or stuttering, at high resolution. So it’s more costly on the machine. Your idea would probably crash and set someone’s CPU on fire 🥴😂
@@dinomightstudios4119 The video game is not predetermined, you have a continuous position, ai state, global state, player input and networking. There's nothing predetermined before hand regarding the input of the software.
The algorithms though in doom eternal for this case are fast enough where based on the data supplied can produce an incredible result in a short period of time.
Painting is in the same situation but the complexity is significantly less. You'd have some variables like brush setting, current canvas colour under brush, brush stroke direction etc. Based on these inputs you have to come up with a suitable output (doom eternal is having a nice looking image of the game, for Photoshop it would be a nice looking blend). Such an operation performed by Photoshop is orders of magnitude simpler compared to what doom is performing. The complexity of the problem is so much smaller for Photoshop yet embarrassingly half baked in the execution.
It's really saddening to see people disregard their laptop and non top of the line computers due to most software in the world being pretty trash and thus giving the perspective that this incredibly fast machine is slow. It's up to consumers to actually be aware and have higher standard for the quality for apps like Photoshop (which in my eyes has significantly degraded over the years).
@@lucasperlind5768 So when I say “predetermined” what I mean is, the textures, the VFX, lighting, animations, etc. all of that has already been predetermined by the game’s company and then shipped to you to play with SOME freedom, but that freedom is still within a controlled predetermined environment. Yes, AI is still predetermined.
Painting is NOT significantly less lol. You like REALLY do not understand software and the logistical side of things. Laying down paint, sure that’s relatively simple! But blending, realistically is a different story. If you don’t want to take the blurred layer approach and actually do pixel by pixel, you math and calculations will be what causes the lag to occur. Here’s why...
Take OPs example. You have a brush that’s 100px x 100px that you are about to use to blend your colors. The operations required to blend those pixels together with accuracy is pretty much this and then some: Pen / Mouse Input starting position on canvas, what are the colors contained within each pixel of your 100px x 100px brush, user begins moving brush through canvas, the ai calculates the next pixel and the last pixel and blends the two (this happens to every single pixel within that brush). This operation will need to update and colors will have to be constantly calculated and updated over and over as you move your brush. The software cannot guess where you’ll be or control your creativity, so a developer can’t even really add predetermined elements to speed up that process.
Our machines are very fast and capable, you are correct. However, they are not fast or capable enough yet to account for the randomness of humans and are fast enough to calculate and update on such a small pixel by pixel level. Just too much real time computing... It’s much faster and reliable to use the blur method and add some extra sauce to it until we have some type of GPU that can handle an infinite amount of operations without lag.
Omg someone actually talked about this issue!!!
Sycra had a VERY interesting video praising blending in SAI. How it actually blends in an useful way, opposed to Photoshop and other tools.
Some interesting things about using the color smudge engine in Krita is that when the overlay mode is on, the brush will blend with anything beneath it like other layers. Even if you take the underlying layer away you'll see the brush strokes changed color based on what was beneath. So it's possible to blend based only on that layer or include any that are visible. Another quick tip is that any color smudge brush can be turned into purely a blender if you uncheck the color rate. This allows it to blend colors without adding to what is already there.
Just tried it whoaa it's so cool thank you 👌👌
saving this
i had no idea why i liked krita, now i understand better
@. lol true. and the overwhelming amount of buttons is giving me anxiety everytime i try to draw. which is why i switched to Medibang which is a much simpler (and FREE) software
Idk, I hate the blending tools in krita, I don't know how u guys like them
@. I always wondered. Do they require you, as an employee, to buy the Adobe creative cloud? I'm studying rn so I have it pirated
I have trouble with the pen pressure in Krita haha. Which is unfortunate cause I can actually create mp4 animation vids with it, without having to use apps that are either too simple or too complicated (looking at you, Opentoonz)
@@klltsun_2576 you can customise the pressure curves of the brush.
Boro: talks about very technical stuff for 20mins
Me who doesn't understand anything and doesn't even use any of these programmes: *interesting*
BAHAHA
It is a very interesting talk, actually. I had noticed these too, the blending issues in many apps. And Boro is great explaining and commenting about whatever.
SAME. I´m just like: uh huh. uh huh. relatable. I agree.
Thats youtube
I do use a painting app, but it's not any of the ones mentioned here.
-Not that I use it often nor do I know what I'm doing with it-
Finally, someone that understands me! In SAI try the following settings: Blending: 17 pen pressure on, Dilution 14 pen pressure off, Persistence 0, Keep Opacity Off, Blur Pressure 45. Now when you want to push the edge, you just press harder on the Pen. Speaking of the pen, I'm using the WinTab API (in Options) with Windows Ink off (in Huion Settings).
Also, another big plus for SAI is the smooth blending that creates almost none color bending. I am yet to find another painting app that creates such smooth transitions.
And if you check the Task Manager, you'll see that SAI is not using the GPU to render the painting process. It only does it using the CPU which I'm guessing is faster because the CPU has faster access to the memory and you will see the memory quickly ramping up with every big stroke.
this is very interesting, i didn’t encounter this problem because i can’t paint (kinda learning now)
Paint tool sai is the only good blending. The other apps drive me nuts whit the lack of it like procreate. I have tried most Painting programs. If there was paint tool sai for ipad i would only use that.
Thissss
The only app I find got close to paint tool SAI is Boro's Craft Pro, everything else has weird inconsistencies here and there, they're mostly usable, but just won"t give me the absolute flow state of knowing how all works that SAI does
My app actually blends several random pixels within an 80%-size rectangle inside the brush spot. With what I know today, I'd make it 50% or less. And maybe even round.
@@BoroCG What about giving the user the option on the amount they want or even give the choice of more shapes so it could be more precise? For creating precise hard edge I think something that you can give an angle with a smaller radius line or rectangle area like a palette knife would could be a great choice often too. What do you think about it?
@@BoroCG Ooooh is that why it behaves weird and sometimes includes pure white when at ~1px size :o It's fascinating to learn about this !!
You still got it reallll close to perfect, at least for my taste, I'd say it's right up there with SAI, you can get a soft+blend or a flat+blend in the slide of a single parameter, that's what matters the most I think (to be able to get cool gradients and hue shifts while maintaining good edge reads like what you were saying about Krita for example)
Thanks for sharing this ! :D
tru and i only know how to use procreate id ive to do a lot or do it over and over again to get the blending effect i want xD
I could never put into words why Krita (with Sai as a close second) felt the best to me or why it was so hard to recreate my blends in Procreate. Thank you!
10:17 i thought i was tripping out at first, the subtle movement you've animated onto the camera of your "facecam" is so cool hahaha it adds life and makes it feel like you have a live videographer filming you. your production is ABOVE AND BEYOND for free tutorials. you're awesome!!
OMG dude, I was wondering why the new blur brush acts weird on Procreate when I'm painting near edges, THIS IS WHY! Damn, great video!
so interesting. never saw an in-depth look at blending thats cool. part of peoples issues here may be that edges in painting are supposed to be very carefully thought out and designed to produce the effects you want. what i mean is if an edge is very important that it hits the right hard/softness you should spend some time laying up colors into it and not just blending from a to b. but a to b to c to d to e then done. c being whatever color purposely is chosen to create a soft look or average color between the two. traditional painters really dont blend but build up colors in shapes and only blend very sim colors together. but almost most of the time they shape in colors next to each other then last may blend some together. digital artists can benefit from knowing how traditional painting goes because it has solved these issues in real paint. they exist in real paint too btw. try to do that and make another video to compare. way more variables to deal with btw. great vid...thanks for making
Thanks! afaik, traditional paint is a lot harder to actually blend without a messy brushwork. Since it mostly smears colors in the direction of the stroke, so it's a different thing
Thanks for the great analysis. It is not clear which sampling method is the best. I made many tests when implementing Flat Blending in Artstudio Pro, and picked the best for me, however i'm not artist. One of the tested methods was picking just one pixel in the center of the brush, which was the most simple to implement. But i didn't like, i don't remember why, maybe because i couldn't nice smooth the shape edge. I would name the parameter "Hotspot Radius" or "Wetness Hotspot" or "Flat Hotspot". I will consider adding that in the future.
I also vote for a feature like this. Blending is the best trick in Artstudio Pro and I didn't think it could get better until Boro pointed this out
Artstudio Pro has my favorite blending...hotspot radius sounds cool as hell.
Yes, do it please :) And learn more from SAI, their blending is one of the best. I would prefer another name for the parameter though, because all of the ones you suggested are confusing and I would have no Idea what that is, something more explanatory like "blur radius" or "smudge radius" or "blur sample size" would be more clear.
I always seem to have this issue With any other app that is not pentool sai. I would love the blending and lineart of pentoolsai with the user interface of procreate.
this this this!!!!!
my first painting software is SAI, so when i switch to other software I felt uncomfortable when using blending, and i don't know why. until boro upload this video
@@ajinasawor same!
I've always be impressed with SAI performance! It's from another world.
im kinda shocked thereres people who dont know sai exists
It's not as diverse as other softwares, like clipstudio or photoshop; It's very basic for many people
@@GalaxColor true can be argued that way but yet so many find sai to be so much better in terms of 2d character painting and have been used professionally as much as the other 2 you mentioned
@@solitairius. yes I completely agree, it's just that I'm one of the people who prefer to make their style a bit more 3d-ish and paint tool Sai is just not for me :)
@@GalaxColor in fact that SAI doesn't have those convinient tools like in other App.
either 3D ish or 2D doesn't really a matter
cuz people don't use digital painting app back then.
but who doesn't like decent and convinient stuff, that's a kind of technology that we hope for.
@@worinof true, currently I cannot find any "perfect" digital art program, but we can hope for one in the future:)
@BoroCG, in SAI 1, there was a way to import custom brushes, but it's not anything you can do from within the program. It involved making .PNG files and moving them into a certain folder in SAI, then editing a text file with the brush names all on separate lines or something. So, not user friendly, but possible. I did a webcomic for about 4 years in SAI 1 before moving to Clip Studio Paint, and I loved everything about it except for the lack of certain tools like rulers and stuff like obnoxious brush importing schemes. I wish SAI 2 would get faster development, but I'm pretty attached to CSP now. If only CSP had a liquify tool. :(
If I'm correct, SAI is developed by one person, that's why sai2 has slow development.
@@beni2am That's what I've heard as well. I wish the guy the best, but honestly I kind of wish he would get absorbed into a larger team and his programming chops could be added to a more mature product like CSP or PaintStorm or something.
@@beni2am that person probably sold his soul to devil and he works alone to keep his secret from getting busted
I tried to custom my brushes on SAI 2.
The only thing i could change succesfuly was brush textures and brushform.
You can request the new features or report some bugs to the dev email address.
I tried to request the "symmetry ruler" and he approve my request in the next update.
For CSP, on the Assets store, there’s actually a Liquify Brush! Not sure if it works with the new version, though, but it’s here:
assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1716631
Hope you enjoy! Tell me if it performs!
Really great video! And happy to see SAI 2 featured. I would love to see more videos where you use SAI 2! It's my favorite program and I'd love to see your painting process using it.
This is why I never use blending-mode brush in photoshop. A better way to blend color is just relying on the color picker and use pressure opacity brush with 80% flow. Using the blending brush makes the colors looking muddy.
I always love how in-depth your videos are.
You make such fantastic videos covering topics that no other TH-cam channel covers!!!
I'm glad you pointed this out. I've been complaining about this issue for years.
A lot of people really don't know how good blending saves time and effort and you need the right tool for that
I enjoy your nerdy deep dives into the kinds of things you often discuss. You have a knack for nuance and speaking about your thoughts.
The setting could be called "Blur Sample Size" or something like that, maybe just call it "Sample ratio" and have it under the blur category, so it could be like 85% or just 1%
! I thought I was the only one who had this issue because I've never seen someone addressing this "problem"! Been painting digitally for around 10 years and using Photoshop and CSP for industry standards, but I always find myself returning to SAI for more painterly and personal projects! I could never point why it blends so different and why I can't replicate the SAI blend at other softwares but you finally pointed it out! Thank you for this video, very informative! ^_^
Omi gosh this is exactly what I’ve been struggling with for sooooo long, like I stopped working digitally because something was off with the blending and I couldn’t make it work! I thought it was just me
You just there at the top of my recommendation list, I clicked it and I'm not disappointed at all. I'm a subscriber now, thanks for the video it really helps me a lot in some ways.
Krita is such a powerful program despite being free. It's still the illustration program I use even now.
all programs are free....
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) if you know where to look~
@@reshzy3807 so where to look?
Oh my, I never would have been able to articulate this problem! Now that I hear it explained, that stuff caused so much frustration when I started digital art this year!
Going straight from watercolours to digital is a pain in regards to blending.
This is why I love you Boro, you pay attention to the real nit-gritty of art apps and I respect your opinion highly.
This kind of thing has always interested me in painting apps. You break it down so well. Thank you. I guess I should try Krita....
I always felt like something was difficult/part of why I would always use layers and be afraid to merge. All makes sense now.
I love how you can send this to a client and it explains why some artists prefer certain software.
I paint every category in seperate layers to advoid this for the overall sillohutte as landscape painting and bob ross are taught to paint from the back to front.
Pick your brush, then to erase the edge, click transparent color on the bottom of the two swatches.
Am I the only one who wanted to just watch the end of all the paint smearing for a longer time? There was something very satisfying about that together with the music... :)
I use Krita and I LOVE blending in it. It's a big part of my art process and a lot of fun. I love the program as a whole, I enjoy it way more than any other program that I've ever tried and always thought that's just because it was the first one I ever used and it's what I'm used to. Now I know better. :D
I found that Paint storm studio has the radius
ange setting for the blur blending too, just click the box icon on the blur slider and you will see a range slider. After I changed it to 60%, I can't see the blur\color bleeding anymore even If touched the color.
You just made me realize what I hate the most when painting digitally!!
I always wondered why I liked SAI so much, I tried many different apps but its still my favorite :) I also love the interface and how you can make your own pallette of different brush settings very intuitivly
thank you for this video!! it explains exactly why procreate blending hasn’t been working for me!
The only ipad app I've been able to get GOOD blending (like, the closest to SAI's) is Infinite Painter. It's weirdly a super under rated app and yet by far my favourite on the ipad.
Up for this, I dont understand how its so underrated. It acts just like your average photoshop but cleaner.
Wow I have to check that app out!
I believe Clip Studio Paint can do this, I think the option is called "Colour Stretch" (or something like that). So you can switch the option to 0% and it doesn't blend at all or higher and it blends more.
Thanks for the info! CSP is present in some parts of the video. It has only flat blending, and it bleeds when you touch another color even by 1 pixel. I tried Color Stretch just now, and it introduces delay for blending with new colors. It kinda solves the issue, but it makes blending with short strokes less effective in the first place, making its precision not higher, but lower. Still, a useful thing to keep in mind, Painter also has something like this iirc
@@BoroCG I didn't notice CSP in there lol. Oh well, that's a shame -- thanks for the video :)
Have you tried affinity photo? It is limited in terms of brush stuff but it has a Color Mixer Brush tool. I have no idea if that tool is any good for art though. It may be similar to the directional thingy in Photoshop that you showed.
Seriously this is the definite example of why Paint tool Sai reigns king in digital painting for digital artists. I think the main reason why I have opted to use procreate or photoshop nowadays though is the lack of similation of paint or materials fhat procreate has managed to replicate. I don't think I will ever make an artwork start to finish purely through photoshop though, the process of work big to small and how laggy it gets is what makes me favor procreste and sai whom have managed to bypass the lag all around.
The original art studio pro actually had this feature. It was the “wet brush” setting. You could push and pull shapes and even add a liiiitle bit of color if you wanted.
Omg, thank you, finally someone talked about this,,, it's always been bugging me
you can change the brush texture in sai, it's just kinda hard to find in the settings.
When different artists trying to choose correct word for what they'd like to say, but they can't because art software don't have consistent terminology always make me laugh
Thank you for the video. I am a 3d artist and Mudbox Wax brush has a similar nature in 3d to what you showed here with Paint Tool Sai. You can be precise but if pressed lightly it blends forms together, thus having multiple tools in one. Saying out loud you prefer Mudbox Wax brush over Zbrush’s clay brushes is considered to be a sacrilege. It might be less refined, with less features, but it does something at it’s core that I miss when I am not using it.
I liked the video, it is interesting to see the comparison of these types of operating details of the apps.
With krita if I need blending to look smooth I take down the opacity of the brush, sometimes by half, and I get sof blends
Medibang blending is pretty good from my experience. The wet watercolor brush and going back and forth between colors creates a nice blend imo
I see no isue there, to my small brain it should work exactly like that! But every video like that is actually really interesting and fun to dig in. Great job Boro!
is first software 1:15 is photoshop? why it's doesnt looks like regular photoshop?
I feel a weird sort of pride when people say good things about Paint Tool SAI because it's my main app for drawing.
by the way, you can totally get both a smooth blend or a pushing of the color with photoshop if you select the right brushes. Sometimes it takes a little manipulation of the brush properties to get exactly the effect you want but it's definitely possible, I do both all the time
Actually in paint tool sai, the brush setting persistence, dilution and blending really affect the brush. Persistence affects how long it keeps the color you begin to blend in(easy to have clean edges), dilution how quickly the brush loses color (brush turns kind of transparent) and blending which just affects how mixed the colors get and how quickly, really give different outlooks. When I used to use SAI I used to change these three options all the time while coloring. So I actually used pen for sketching and brush for everything else, of course you could save different versions if you didn't want to change them all the time.
So i would recommend playing around with these options on top of opacity.
Finally, I've had this problem for so long
I use Ibis Paint X. If I use the blur tool it blends it just before the edge of color (like you demonstrated earlier in the video). However, if you use the smudge tool it seems to blend from the center. I never noticed the difference between these two tools until your video. Thanks for putting this out there.
Lol that moment when a complete n00b feels validated because I thought I just sucked at blending
I just completely avoid blending brushes in most cases.
_Have you all noticed ?_
_That every sentence ends with an upward inflection?_
Great vid bud!
Very interesting subject. From my experience on PS, the hadness of a tip of a brush matters a lot when it comes to that kind of effect. It never seems to consistent though, so I don't rely much on it, I just look for a kind of brush that will do the trick and roll with it.
You now I think I actually ran into this but didn’t realize it was a problem, assumed it was just how things were, and actually developed a style that didn’t need that type of blending to avoid that problem in the future and lowkey lost my blending style
Holy moly this video like like a legit film!
When you have almost every painting software so you just switch from one to another: *stonks*
I wonder if there is a way to fix this in Affinity Photo. It's pretty "new" and still has it's bugs but I tell want to stick with it because I really like using that program
I love the smooth watercolor in clip studio. Try it! It’s sooo goood!
Now I sleep better after giving up wet brushes for dry glazing brushes.
OMG FINALLY someone addressed that. Was driving me mental.
Aight subscribed, this dood did something unique and I like it cuz it helped me a lot
before i watched this i thouhgt when i blend i just don't know how to blend or my brush have a proplem with the program engine
i like that effekt you put into your video.... likre a staggering-effekt.... really cool!
Damn, I really loved that awesome painting/blending montage! Is that your new outro? ;)
This is why I never use a blending brush. It just literally messes up the colors that I built underneath. I blend things manually (I use Medibang on Windows 10)
this is why I love sketching on the iPad but feel uncomfortable with painting on it
When I first started on digital art, I had just this problem. And I still hate it. I finally found out that it’s a big problem that many people have
yeah i think without lasso tool in photoshop, or doing huge big strokes, and then soft brush to adjust edges or colour, itd bascially be impossible; might give Sai a try.
This is why despite more powerful software being developed after nearly 20 years i cannot find a replacement for paint tool sai, nothing has what it blending has, theres simply no 'similar' app in that regard, I even find Krita despite all the effort and the settings to just not be able to have that effect.
And this is the only source i found of someone explaining this effect and pointing it out.
So im not crazy, i give up on most apps and go back to sai, I wish SAI got ported to tablets.
can always use a screen mirroring app to use your PC on a tablet
@@legocreator768 the lag kills my drawing ability
I dont use apps like this but cant you just use different layers to stop this? or am I confused
I normally use the selection tool to create edges so for me bleeding colors is like a thing that I don't do.
im trying it in firealpaca and it doesnt seem to be happening but then again i know nothing about painting nor half of what he's talking about so idek xD
I know you're being paid to promote it, but I can't imagine paying $40 for someone to teach me how to paint the anatomy nightmare they're using as a main example image.
What about heavy paint?
I suggest checking out PD Howler and comparing it, too! It is amazing in a lot of different areas, like natural painting styles.
I really like these kinds of videos
this issue only bothers me in photoshop mixer brush
14:32 what program is that
Wouldn’t it be much easier to put foreground objects on a different layer?
I guess the edge issue in procreate doesn't bother me as I tend to use the lock layer tool thingy. So the brush can't interact with the white canvas at all. I also tend to use the oriental brush
Thanks for clarifying why I never enjoyed the way the paints mix in procreate. I see you have tried csp. Have you tried medians? The way the paints mix always felt close to csp to me.
How about Medibang?
What is the software you start using from 0:13??? Hmmm I think you answered it in 4:36, hahah thnx.
I wonder if using edge-aware bluring might help, I think some methods should be possible in real time, at least on small regions and with graphics card acceleration
This really bugs me, cause i shade by using the blur and smudge tool combine, i would be shading a red colour, but the grey colour right next to it just comes in and destroy my rich dark red
I found out what I needed in a app and I onoy used SAI and CSP because of nice blending, I usually do sketches in Procreate, not full blended pieces, because I don't like the blending aspects in that app, and I knew something was different, but didn't realise ehat
I have a really big problem right now with this in Photoshop...
I didn't paint in Photoshop for like 3 years and I just can't get a smooth or wet painting like blending done anymore.
It always looks like stages and not smooth at all. (red ~ darker red ~ dark red ~ nearly black ~ black)
Also it's like painting with a text marker...
Any help/tipps?
I only use ibis paint. The brushes are weird. most blenders create the gradient, when touching edges, (it even does this dispite using the selection tool to block in the area I'm painting).
But I've also customized a few brushes that behave like chalk, where you can still see pixels of other colors underneath, without it pushing them to blend into my selected color. Blending is also very slow TwT
Yeah, this bugs the hell out of me, it's part of the reason I don't use blending brushes and go for the manual approach. Loving the new camera work too, looks like it's on some sort of gimbal?