@@pranitp.29 Yeah I switched over to an iPad a few months ago, handles those higher resolutions a little bit better if you're willing to sacrifice layers. My 5th gen iPad air gets 145 layers for a 4K canvas, all in all not bad. Plus it's way more portable than my laptop is. Biggest hurdle I've had to face is drawing on a screen, not used to it. Used one of those screenless input tablets for almost two years. Liked that I could utterly annihilate that thing without care or worry, plus I got used to not looking at my hand. Now I'm drawing on the screen of an $800 tablet and I'm terrified. How about you? What do you use?
I would suggest 1080p for hobbist artist because computers can have a hard time doing digital works at 4k. Specially for recording videos. Unless you got a good processor and mostly a lot a ram. Then I do 4k size. Even the best struggles at 4k rebderong a video if its got a lot of effects on it.
Probably true. I forget that some folks are working on lower end machines sometimes. But you make a good point that I wish I would've acknowledged in the video. But if someone wants to make something for print, to get best results they're going to need a more powerful machine. Computers are pretty cheap these days. So It's surprising that someone can't handle a 3k X 2k image in photoshop. If you want to get serious about digital art, you're going to need more than a $200 computer.
@@TrentKaniuga Yes, but scale is important. For example, I very much want to work as a professional. But, I live in a country where $500-700 a month is an average wage. Not $2000-2500. So I had to take up a loan to buy a strong enough computer and a drawing monitor. And I'm one of the lucky ones, who work in an art field with only a few professional level artists working in it, world-wide. So ofc, I gained back the money easily. But in your field, which is a much more saturated field, the sentiment that you must be able to work in at least 2k, excludes 70% of the world from ever becoming professional. Basically you said "you have to live in the first world and make enough money to buy a machine that can handle 2k-4k, if you want to get serious about digital art". Which, yes, I understand that it's true. Being an art professional is very much a privilege of the first world. But saying it out loud, is a bit too much of reality, and from a first world guy, it sounds smug-ish. I think if you have the skills and dedication, you can work yourself up from 1080p as a professional. Working freelance, or making your own brand. What it takes is not the resolution and equipment. But actually having the skill set of an artist. The video is good btw. That's essentially what a professional should aim for. That's why all the money I make goes right back into improving my studio equipment. But I very much started my professional career with a low-end equipment. It's possible. And I wouldn't say that high-end art equipment will make it easier. Cos like I said, if you don't have the skills, it doesn't matter if there are visible pixels or not.
@@sajisama24 🙄 Oh not another "grass hut" argument... Obviously if you live in a first world environment you'll use the best equipment you can afford and recommend stuff based on your own personal experience not the experience of someone living in a third world country. On top of that instead of being a condescending prick you could do a bit of research and look into computers. I own a pc I built in Q4 of 2011 sandybridge i5 default clock speed, 2x4 (8) GB 1333Mhz offbrand ram, and a Hd 7950 gfx card and I HAVE ZERO PROBLEMS with HUGE image sizes... I've been working with negatives scanned in at 2400dpi the ONLY thing that will slow down my pc is shake reduction which takes about 1minute for ruff&fine rendering 2 minutes total. You can buy something similar or BETTER to that for ~200 dollars that the TH-camr suggest isn't enough money. All you need to know is how to buy used and build your own or how to budget and save your money for w/e you perceive is the best.
@@ghostrider2214 I didn't ment to sound condescending. And I think you misunderstood my point. He sets a first world entry level. Which is not true. You don't need to meet the standards he sets. You very much should try to get to that standard, ofc. But you need to somehow make enough money to get there, and it's much harder anywhere else than the first world. And this video being internationally available, that very much allows me to expect a little bit more awareness. But again. I didn't ment it in any hostile way. I'm just not good with my words when it comes to english. I'm not a native english speaker, so excuse my manners.
@@sajisama24 No I understand just fine and you speak English far better than most of America & the UK. He's not setting a "first world example" he's informing views to the current industry standard which doesn't change based on your geographical location. You're just making what I call a "grass hut" argument which means that someone from a dirt poor village who's most advanced piece of tech is a wheelbarrow _somehow_ stumbles onto a computer with an internet connection. They then watch a how to tech video then say "hey this no fair I can't afford this why don't you stop being smug and offer options for people less fortunate than yourself!!!" Obviously that's a huge exaggeration but it's such a wide spread phenomenon it blows my mind because if you can't afford something because you live in a poorer part of the world that's not likely going to change you just buy the best you can and deal with it.
Some computers struggle so I personally go with 1920p x 1920p and obv cut one to 1080p depending if I'm working on a landscape or portrait piece, though just keeping it in equal dimensions for doodles is fine as well you can always adjust later
I'd go with 600 dpi and double the resolution of whatever it is you intend to display it on. that way you are at the max resolution most printers work at and you can downscale the image for your actual usage. If a printer you are using can only do 300, you can always scale it back to 300 later. creating an image at a super high resolution, then scaling them down after, i find looks much cleaner than images that just start at the target resolution. plus you have a super high resolution version somewhere that is pretty well future-proofed in case standards change and you need to use it for something later on. i believe films work this way as well. most theaters now show movies in 4k but they are shot at much higher resolutions. not only is that done for ease of editing, but for future-proofing. many film companies anticipate re-releasing their works years down the line and need for it to look good enough for the standards at that time. this is all unless of course you are trying to do like a timelapse video or recording yourself while working. even working on a single still image, quadrupling your target resolution is very taxing on hardware unless you are capturing to an external device and computer. maybe im just working with a beast pc, but thats usually my method.
@Chiriac Puiu The file sizes get pretty big, but storage is cheap. The issue is the memory usage when you're actually drawing. Right now I have had my memory usage go up to 8-9gb while editing, and that's using Krita, which is pretty light compared to PS. So it can depend on your computer.
@@companyoflosers So lets say I want to make art to post on social media. Instagram for example. I think it's 1080 x 1080 for square images at least. So would I draw art at 2160 x 2160?
@@ReblazeGaming if you want to future proof the original art, sure. Granted social media doesn't typically limit your resolution size, just your file size or how much storage space it takes up. If you want a lower resolution version for social media, you'll need to export it at that resolution. Also of you work in a program like photoshop, instead of worrying about resolution, I would change your unit size to inches, then designate your dpi. So imagine how big you want the image if it was physically in front of you, set that as your size, then set it to 600 dpi. 300dpi is the standard for most good printers so I go double that to futureproof. Or use a vector based program like illustrator so no matter what size you work at, you can always scale larger or smaller without losing any clarity.
was wondering for like years why my drawing programs were so laggy when my computer is really good and turns out i've been drawing at 1000 dpi this whole god damn time and just never thought to look into it until right now im gonna scream
Ah, yes. At last, a video that goes directly to the point. Compact and direct. I ain't new to digital arts but new to digital painting and thought settings would work the same. This clears things up for me so thanks :D
Bro, I'm a traditional artist and I've been trying to start with digital art this year but it has been a f****ing hard struggle. Hahaha I hope your advice works. Thanks a lot.
Thank you werrry much. Now I drawing too much better. I use biger brushes, and can paint more details! This video help me and I hope everyone! Great, thank!
@@yuseong1662 my reply sounded really bad and you are exactly correct, I find it hard to explain emotions through text and I should’ve used a different emoji
Overall informative video, but... I do not 100% agree with statement "don't start with lower resolution". Sometimes it is ok to start with smaller resolution and resize it in process, for example for sketch phase it can be really low res no problem :)
True but don't star lower if you expectation is to make it look pretty by blowing it up and applying filters to it to look better. Even then it's easy enough to just start at a higher resolution and scale that down if needed. Though like all things, once you understand why things are done the way they are then you can mess with the status quo.
Ideally one hasn't to do anything like that, but if one's hardware can't handle, one can do almost the "bulk" of the work in a considerably small resolution, at an initial stage (but more advanced than sketching), and then paint-over a blown-up version, after flatting the image. New layers can be used then, but it will possibly be a smaller, lighter file than doing in any other way. Ideally one has an obscenely powerful hardware that can handle everything, though.
You're talking about an advanced technique to get blurry underlying sketches to build from for your underpainting and control contrast and edge sharpness to create focal points? That's advanced stuff that only confuses beginners. I wanted to help those people who only get frustrated getting started with it.
Just start in bigger, and readjust with a Select>Copy/Move/Paste. Messing with the canvas size during a drawing can get messy specially if you are low on ram, not to mention it could crash the program for some weird reason and lose everything.
Always informative, thanks Trent! I'll say this though: if you for sure know your work is never going to be for print and strictly for web, you can get away with using 72DPI. The only thing about this though is ideally you want to paint at 2x's the final product dimensions. So if your final product is going to be a 1000w by 500h image you'd paint at 2000x1000. This is mostly for those that a) strictly doing web graphics/illustrations and/or b) your computer just chugs hardcore when upping your DPI. Just note.... no matter what DPI if you're painting at 10,000+ pixels... you're probably over doing it. *starts reducing PSD...*
This is true. Thanks for pointing that out Jon. I didn't address web resolutions very much. I wanted to just give beginners a baseline place to start so that their artwork doesn't look blurry or pixelated. Maybe ill dig into more advanced stuff later.
Yeahh, I don't know if we're there yet, but you want your digital art to still look good in 5-10 years time you're going to have to account for what will be the standard in the future.
4k is standard for every digital creator not just artist. The standard for viewing content made by these creators may be 1080p or 1440p but for creating the content 4k is standard in 2020, and it was standard in 2019 as well.
Is not about what you think standard is, is about professionalism! If you know the market is expanding in 4K, its minimal commune sense you might wanna start thinking about painting your things to fit any screen that might come to fit your employers future prof needs. Its now 2020, still isn't standard, but many ppl expect to be able to see thigns in 4k even if only upscaled, but we alredy are getting bombarded with 8k possibilities so the "expected/acceptable minimal"is going to go up again from 4K. If I purchase image from you and you gave me and Image in .JPGE, 2k or lower resolution and less then 300dpi's I would consider you to be very unprofessional and probably argue with you to redo it or even ditch you and ask someone else to do the job. As an Artist myself, I always do my stuff at 7000x5000, .PNG/TIF, 600dpi's. That's how much seriously I take my work/hobby. If I wanted, I could even print my stuff in a building and you would still not see a single grain/pixel/dot in it(even if they aren't the best ones out there). PS: Friend advice, your image should only be scaled down for adjustments, it needs to be scaled up to fit somewhere... then you(the artist) did very bad job.
Um, when I create a piece or game assets we work at double the resolution you will be outputting. So if 4K is going to be the output create at like 7680 x 4320. If you have to scale it down this is also a good method.
for people who their computer struggle with high resolution I do the sketch and all rough stages at 1920 x 1080 then when I reach the refined and finish stage I do it at 3840 x 2160 hope that helped :)
I'm a little different if I'm quickly sketching a landscape I start at a low resolution while I block in some colour, light and ideas and then increase the resolution once I start adding anything concrete.
Craig Mullins eventually ups his resolution to 10k pixels somewhat in the midpoint of his paintings. Alot of other concept artists do the same. Even for Character Design, Wes Burt will work around 7k pixel dimensions or more.
That may be necessary if you're working on concept art for film. I've never heard of any client needing anything that high rez. If a client asks you to work at a higher resolution, then that's what you do. But as a standard, for non professionals, it's not as complex of an answer as people seem to think. If it's for print, just set the canvas to the size of the final print, and set the dpi to 300.
Dylan matkasdjo There is no “best” in here o.o Its depending on the platform. Like default Instagram feed is 1080x1080. Your image will be resized automatically. Then, depends on the viewers too. Most common viewer use phone/monitor with 1080p. My recommendation is make it bigger than 1080, because sometimes you need to crop image to make better compositions. Something like 3000 For printing, its a whole different thing
Well if you're doing it just to post online like Instagram I would say go for 1500×1500. This is what I use. But for commissions and other professional work I use bigger canvas. Then again I use Phone for digital art. In computer you can go for bigger.
Thanks for the great video! My art program tends to crash when I get too many layers going, I'll have to check the settings again to make sure the resolution and the dpi are balanced. I kinda knew about this stuff but hadn't thought to check those settings in a long time.
I draw at 8k rezz mostly because I use sketchbook and don't have extra monitors for reference, so I can pretty much fit, refit and cut with selection tool a dozen or more ref imagens wherever I want and however I want within the canvas itself.
1080p Is still the broadcast standard. 4k 8k and 16k are usually internal editing standards because you want high fidelity for editing, and while displays are getting cheaper and more common. that's not what makes a standard. editing at UHD should only be done when needed. due to memory needed and space needed as well as the computing power needed. Print can get up to ridiculous sizes for high quality so that's an aspect that i'm not touching.
I also enjoy to see pixels when zooming in. It feels more "perfect" and in order. At high res, when zooming, I see lots of imperfections which are not visible when zoomed out. Seeing pixels makes much more sense in my brain because I consider it a texture or pixel art.
HI Trent! New to your channel and the content that you have here is exactly what I've been looking for. We both have the same art style but i'm having a lot of trouble adjusting to Photoshop painting/ drawing. It would be super helpful if you made a video about your brushes that you use or how to make our own. Thanks in advance if you decide to do this. Thanks for the helpful and great content too!
Hey kinda late to the party but wanted to say thanks; very informative content; would like to see an updated version that takes into account tablet/monitor size ratio and how it relates to the canvas size and affects the drawing experience in general.
Although it's true that prinitng is mostly done at 600 dpi, it is always nice to have the abbility to scale the image up later and still be over 600 dpi. Especially if you are going to draw a bunch of characters into one document as you did in the one you had opened. What if you later want to enlarge one of those characters to make a fullscreen wallpaper, use it in a big advertising poster or what not. That's why i would recomment to draw at 1200 dpi or even higher if your computer can handle it and you have the disk space (generally the memory needed for a imega double the size quadruples to that explodes pretty quickly). Of course this might seem overkill but you never know what you might use it for in the future.
Never knew, been doing digital art for 13 years ('ish). I've always just been using 300dpi by default to be on the safe side. I knew it was for prints, but I didn't really care how it worked until now since my computers have always been able to handle the demand. I'm a no-compromises kind of guy, so my rigs are usually build to handle both gaming and digital art (16-32gb RAM, best reasonable processors, gold standard PSU, a 144hz monitor for gaming and a decent dell ultra sharp for art and a graphics card that can handle ultra settings in most games). People could also just use the energy they spent writing out a question to your youtube channel, to simply google the answer instead.
@@the_cyber_artist pretty sure most store bought PC is capable of handling drawing. Just have at least 16gb of ram if possible and get a drawing tablet
@@Banana-cc5rx i already have drawing tablet i tested it on my brother laptop which has 4Gb ram and its a i7 4th gen . I used medibang A4 sized paper and 300dpi it worked fine . Haven't tried Photoshop though . I was planning to get a PC with Xeon E3 1245 V2 @3.80GhZ it's same as a i7 3770 . But xeon is better in rendering and workstations tasks . And then ill add 8GB ram in it with a normal 1Gb gpu . Will it be fine for making digital art on Photoshop?
Then I have a follow up "question" aka problem for you: changing image resolution also changes the behavior of the pencil. At least that's what I feel like when I'm drawing on higher resolutions. I need to increase my brush size and it feels weird to draw on this much pixels. Also, the processor starts to lack and the line falls behind my pen. I guess the simple answer would be "just use a lower resolution" But I'm wondering if there is a more complex answer to it. I'm still far from professional, but I'd hoped to get some advise on this situations in this video, instead of an explanation of how resolutions work - which is a good explanation.
Nicely explained Trent. Fortunately, I came from a print background before I started drawing seriously so I already had a grounding in this before I took on my own commissions etc.
Very nice explanation, thank you Trent. My pc dies a little when i change one of my concepts documents from 72 to 300 but it really works... i wanna do this with a few concepts more, they deserve it but i'm worried for my computer.
....I see, I never... ho god.... I got more than a year triying to know why I got to much pixelated things... FOR GODS SAKE THANKS, I finally feel I can work right
I know this is sort of off topic but one major issue I was and am still facing that is related... I zoomed in way too much while drawing/painting. This leads to awkward lines, getting into details in one area over another.. the list goes on.. I feel like this doesn't get stressed enough and it's a purely digital issue. It is a little related to resolution.. because the more resolution you have the more tempted you are to just zoom in. If you draw/paint traditionally there is no zoom. If you try and start out digital I feel like you just learn a whole range of bad habits.
Dude real talk, you're Chell concept looks way better than the one they had in the games. I never liked her jump suit. Your design is gangster AF! The robots look cool too.
Ironicly some if the basic info like setting ur canvas to 300 dpi and setting it to rgb color is somthing I am aware of, but the actual canvas size was somthing I needed a refresher on.
What if you need to have a certain size to upload for a book. On procreate, you choose between inches or pixels. So, If choose the right pixels, how do I get my illustration to the right size in inches for my book? YES! I am a beginner with digital art! Thank You!
Hahahahha I remember being at school library. I draw something then I printed my drawing. It’s was tiny very tiny and pixelated . It’s was funny though 😄
Also, Medibang Paint! It's amazing and you can do actual professional looking work! Check out jyundee's work here on TH-cam, she uses a lot of Medibang AND Krita
There are some niche reasons to use higher bit rates but generally it's just wasted space. Photography uses higher bit rates because camera sensors capture more information than your screen can display. In this case it makes sense to preserve this information for color grading but when you're painting, you don't really paint details you can't see. In fact, it might be worse than 8bit, because you could accidentally create artifacts (e.g. by using blend modes) which you can't see but become visible after color grading.
@@TrentKaniuga Just in case you want all the nerdy details: The main benefit of 16/32bit is that they're linear color spaces. The human eye is able to distinguish finer gradients in dark situations (which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint: the one who saw the bear in the dark survived) and if you spread out all 256 different values per color channel evenly from pure black to pure white, 8bit is just not enough information. So programmers cheated a little. The actual brightness of a color is its binary value squared, which means that a value of 200 is not twice as bright as 100, it's four times as much (100*100 = 10000 vs 200*200 = 40000). But it also means that there's a lot less information available in bright areas. Did anyone ever notice? Probably not. But 16bit fixes this, since you have 65536 different shades per color channel and now there's no need to cheat.
my issue is... on phones I see the mess and sloppiness on my artwork @ 100%. I feel like I always have to draw @ 10k pixel for full body and then minimize to 3k. Honestly I havent seen anyone talking about this issue...
My DUMBASS just did an illustration at 900x1280 and I was thinking to myself this whole time "yo, why does it look so low quality?" I dunno how my ass forgot this. That shit took me a while- man, I'ma have to redraw that shit.
@@romt5649 thats up to the customer to decide, not us artist. As an artist we should always provide the most current highest quality available on the market to our customers. How they decide to distribute that file/image(be it full 8k, 4k, 2k, 1k or less), after we get payed and done with it, is up to them to decide what's overkill or not for the consumer. Your costumer should only ever need to re-size down an image to fit something/somewhere, and never ever should there be a need or reason for it to re-size upwards(since this would deteriorate ur image, thus meaning you failed to meet ur customers needs) Your drawing,/Art/Image is a payed product after all, wouldn't make sense for you to go buy a car without the interiors and seats just because a car is made to hit the road, right? But well, every artist is an artist, and have different standards from one another, some even refuse to draw certain things, which makes no sense an artist refusing to do what he is supposed to do in the first place, but I guess this will fall on the subjective topic that ppl may or not agree with.
"3840 x 2160 for 4k monitors."
Me with a 1080p monitor:
"Fuck it, let's go 6,000 by 6,000 and see if that works."
Just work at 1080p its the actual standard (1920 x 1080)
I always use an 8k canvas and wonder why my pc is blowing steam💀
@@pranitp.29 Yeah I switched over to an iPad a few months ago, handles those higher resolutions a little bit better if you're willing to sacrifice layers. My 5th gen iPad air gets 145 layers for a 4K canvas, all in all not bad. Plus it's way more portable than my laptop is.
Biggest hurdle I've had to face is drawing on a screen, not used to it. Used one of those screenless input tablets for almost two years. Liked that I could utterly annihilate that thing without care or worry, plus I got used to not looking at my hand. Now I'm drawing on the screen of an $800 tablet and I'm terrified.
How about you? What do you use?
Phone at 1080. We at 4000x7000 lesgoo
not me laughing my ass off in the middle of the office at work while reading this.
THANK YOU, I have struggled with this forever! Changing the resolution saved my drawing life! THANK YOU
Oh my lord, I've been struggling with pixelation for ages, and my res has been so high. I never noticed it was set at 72p/i. Mind freakin blown.
My heart goes out to you. 🤧
I would suggest 1080p for hobbist artist because computers can have a hard time doing digital works at 4k. Specially for recording videos. Unless you got a good processor and mostly a lot a ram. Then I do 4k size. Even the best struggles at 4k rebderong a video if its got a lot of effects on it.
Probably true. I forget that some folks are working on lower end machines sometimes. But you make a good point that I wish I would've acknowledged in the video. But if someone wants to make something for print, to get best results they're going to need a more powerful machine. Computers are pretty cheap these days. So It's surprising that someone can't handle a 3k X 2k image in photoshop. If you want to get serious about digital art, you're going to need more than a $200 computer.
@@TrentKaniuga Yes, but scale is important. For example, I very much want to work as a professional. But, I live in a country where $500-700 a month is an average wage. Not $2000-2500. So I had to take up a loan to buy a strong enough computer and a drawing monitor. And I'm one of the lucky ones, who work in an art field with only a few professional level artists working in it, world-wide. So ofc, I gained back the money easily. But in your field, which is a much more saturated field, the sentiment that you must be able to work in at least 2k, excludes 70% of the world from ever becoming professional.
Basically you said "you have to live in the first world and make enough money to buy a machine that can handle 2k-4k, if you want to get serious about digital art". Which, yes, I understand that it's true. Being an art professional is very much a privilege of the first world. But saying it out loud, is a bit too much of reality, and from a first world guy, it sounds smug-ish.
I think if you have the skills and dedication, you can work yourself up from 1080p as a professional. Working freelance, or making your own brand. What it takes is not the resolution and equipment. But actually having the skill set of an artist.
The video is good btw. That's essentially what a professional should aim for. That's why all the money I make goes right back into improving my studio equipment. But I very much started my professional career with a low-end equipment. It's possible. And I wouldn't say that high-end art equipment will make it easier. Cos like I said, if you don't have the skills, it doesn't matter if there are visible pixels or not.
@@sajisama24 🙄 Oh not another "grass hut" argument... Obviously if you live in a first world environment you'll use the best equipment you can afford and recommend stuff based on your own personal experience not the experience of someone living in a third world country.
On top of that instead of being a condescending prick you could do a bit of research and look into computers. I own a pc I built in Q4 of 2011 sandybridge i5 default clock speed, 2x4 (8) GB 1333Mhz offbrand ram, and a Hd 7950 gfx card and I HAVE ZERO PROBLEMS with HUGE image sizes... I've been working with negatives scanned in at 2400dpi the ONLY thing that will slow down my pc is shake reduction which takes about 1minute for ruff&fine rendering 2 minutes total. You can buy something similar or BETTER to that for ~200 dollars that the TH-camr suggest isn't enough money. All you need to know is how to buy used and build your own or how to budget and save your money for w/e you perceive is the best.
@@ghostrider2214 I didn't ment to sound condescending. And I think you misunderstood my point. He sets a first world entry level. Which is not true. You don't need to meet the standards he sets. You very much should try to get to that standard, ofc. But you need to somehow make enough money to get there, and it's much harder anywhere else than the first world. And this video being internationally available, that very much allows me to expect a little bit more awareness. But again. I didn't ment it in any hostile way. I'm just not good with my words when it comes to english. I'm not a native english speaker, so excuse my manners.
@@sajisama24 No I understand just fine and you speak English far better than most of America & the UK. He's not setting a "first world example" he's informing views to the current industry standard which doesn't change based on your geographical location.
You're just making what I call a "grass hut" argument which means that someone from a dirt poor village who's most advanced piece of tech is a wheelbarrow _somehow_ stumbles onto a computer with an internet connection. They then watch a how to tech video then say "hey this no fair I can't afford this why don't you stop being smug and offer options for people less fortunate than yourself!!!" Obviously that's a huge exaggeration but it's such a wide spread phenomenon it blows my mind because if you can't afford something because you live in a poorer part of the world that's not likely going to change you just buy the best you can and deal with it.
portal 3 concept arts leaked right there
Hah! Valve would never make something with such stylization.
A man can dream
@@TrentKaniuga their loss.
*That character looks suspiciously like Aloy (Horizon: Zero Dawn). [sweatdroppingly narrows eyes]*
valve is a joke now dont play portal 3 if it comes out just look at his concept art and remind urself of the better days
Some computers struggle so I personally go with 1920p x 1920p and obv cut one to 1080p depending if I'm working on a landscape or portrait piece, though just keeping it in equal dimensions for doodles is fine as well you can always adjust later
i never realized this was a thing. I always wondered why when I zoomed in to work on something like eyes it came out so pixelated. thank you so much!
I'd go with 600 dpi and double the resolution of whatever it is you intend to display it on. that way you are at the max resolution most printers work at and you can downscale the image for your actual usage. If a printer you are using can only do 300, you can always scale it back to 300 later. creating an image at a super high resolution, then scaling them down after, i find looks much cleaner than images that just start at the target resolution. plus you have a super high resolution version somewhere that is pretty well future-proofed in case standards change and you need to use it for something later on. i believe films work this way as well. most theaters now show movies in 4k but they are shot at much higher resolutions. not only is that done for ease of editing, but for future-proofing. many film companies anticipate re-releasing their works years down the line and need for it to look good enough for the standards at that time. this is all unless of course you are trying to do like a timelapse video or recording yourself while working. even working on a single still image, quadrupling your target resolution is very taxing on hardware unless you are capturing to an external device and computer. maybe im just working with a beast pc, but thats usually my method.
@Chiriac Puiu The file sizes get pretty big, but storage is cheap. The issue is the memory usage when you're actually drawing. Right now I have had my memory usage go up to 8-9gb while editing, and that's using Krita, which is pretty light compared to PS. So it can depend on your computer.
Lord of The Rings just got announced for 4k release. Did they film it in 4k back in the early 2000s?
@@Thesamurai1999 the actual filming was done in 4k, but the sfx were done in 2k, so that will have to be redone or somehow up-scaled.
@@companyoflosers So lets say I want to make art to post on social media. Instagram for example. I think it's 1080 x 1080 for square images at least. So would I draw art at 2160 x 2160?
@@ReblazeGaming if you want to future proof the original art, sure. Granted social media doesn't typically limit your resolution size, just your file size or how much storage space it takes up. If you want a lower resolution version for social media, you'll need to export it at that resolution. Also of you work in a program like photoshop, instead of worrying about resolution, I would change your unit size to inches, then designate your dpi. So imagine how big you want the image if it was physically in front of you, set that as your size, then set it to 600 dpi. 300dpi is the standard for most good printers so I go double that to futureproof. Or use a vector based program like illustrator so no matter what size you work at, you can always scale larger or smaller without losing any clarity.
There's no way that 4k is the standard monitor resolution. Perhaps for professional artists.
I just came to comment exactly this! We are not there yet!
4k Monitors cost less than a regular monitor did ten years ago
They ARE the standard now
Its not really as much about that as it is about zooming in
4K is like $2,000 for me. My 1080 monitor only costs %10 of that amount
@@Vivi_Strike They cost less than 10% of that
I would know, I paid for one
was wondering for like years why my drawing programs were so laggy when my computer is really good and turns out i've been drawing at 1000 dpi this whole god damn time and just never thought to look into it until right now im gonna scream
Kiichii For digital purpose, just play around with the resolutions.
DPI is related with print size only
Ah, yes. At last, a video that goes directly to the point. Compact and direct.
I ain't new to digital arts but new to digital painting and thought settings would work the same. This clears things up for me so thanks :D
OMFG THANK YOU! Been using Sketchbook and always wondered why my art was blurry.
I never thought this topic would be covered! Thanks for covering this Trent!
That helped alot, I'm doing a realistic drawing on Sai and was getting a lot a pixelated areas on small details.
I've been wondering why my art is so damn blurred so this is why, thanksss!!!!
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!! I appreciate this and all you videos soo much. I have learned more from you than any art school could ever teach me
I have been scratching my hairless head about this. Thank you so much.
Bro, I'm a traditional artist and I've been trying to start with digital art this year but it has been a f****ing hard struggle. Hahaha I hope your advice works. Thanks a lot.
Thank you werrry much. Now I drawing too much better. I use biger brushes, and can paint more details! This video help me and I hope everyone! Great, thank!
cavader kau is your English bad or are you young, I’m not trying to make you mad at me, sorry😐
@@quickerblazelol4367 maybe they don't really talk English? It's fine tho
Quicker Blaze LOL
Seems like they used google translate lol
@@quickerblazelol4367 you're a furry + ratio + americano child
@@yuseong1662 my reply sounded really bad and you are exactly correct, I find it hard to explain emotions through text and I should’ve used a different emoji
Overall informative video, but... I do not 100% agree with statement "don't start with lower resolution". Sometimes it is ok to start with smaller resolution and resize it in process, for example for sketch phase it can be really low res no problem :)
True but don't star lower if you expectation is to make it look pretty by blowing it up and applying filters to it to look better. Even then it's easy enough to just start at a higher resolution and scale that down if needed. Though like all things, once you understand why things are done the way they are then you can mess with the status quo.
Ideally one hasn't to do anything like that, but if one's hardware can't handle, one can do almost the "bulk" of the work in a considerably small resolution, at an initial stage (but more advanced than sketching), and then paint-over a blown-up version, after flatting the image. New layers can be used then, but it will possibly be a smaller, lighter file than doing in any other way. Ideally one has an obscenely powerful hardware that can handle everything, though.
You're talking about an advanced technique to get blurry underlying sketches to build from for your underpainting and control contrast and edge sharpness to create focal points? That's advanced stuff that only confuses beginners. I wanted to help those people who only get frustrated getting started with it.
Just start in bigger, and readjust with a Select>Copy/Move/Paste.
Messing with the canvas size during a drawing can get messy specially if you are low on ram, not to mention it could crash the program for some weird reason and lose everything.
Thanks , pixel quality has always been a brick wall inhibiting my creativity . Most Appreciated 😎🤙🏽
Always informative, thanks Trent!
I'll say this though: if you for sure know your work is never going to be for print and strictly for web, you can get away with using 72DPI. The only thing about this though is ideally you want to paint at 2x's the final product dimensions. So if your final product is going to be a 1000w by 500h image you'd paint at 2000x1000. This is mostly for those that a) strictly doing web graphics/illustrations and/or b) your computer just chugs hardcore when upping your DPI. Just note.... no matter what DPI if you're painting at 10,000+ pixels... you're probably over doing it. *starts reducing PSD...*
This is true. Thanks for pointing that out Jon. I didn't address web resolutions very much. I wanted to just give beginners a baseline place to start so that their artwork doesn't look blurry or pixelated. Maybe ill dig into more advanced stuff later.
thanks for the tip,
If you're brushes are too pixely, either your working too zoomed or your resolution is bad, very helpful thank you
YOU DONT KNOW HOW HAPPY I AM, I ACTUALLY FORGOT ABOUT CANVAS SIZES WITH GOOD QUALITIES AND BAD AND ALWAYS GET THE BAD ONES. OMGMGMGMGMMG TYSM
Thanks Trent! Looking forward to more concept art videos!
i learned to never go beyond 8K but 4k Is pretty good to downscale to 1080p
Its true, I should have mentioned not to go too big with the file size.
so now i just need to set it at 1080x4 and 3xxx pixels???
1:16 since when 4k resolution became a '''standard''? Not there yet.
Yeahh, I don't know if we're there yet, but you want your digital art to still look good in 5-10 years time you're going to have to account for what will be the standard in the future.
Welp it is now pretty much
4k is standard for every digital creator not just artist. The standard for viewing content made by these creators may be 1080p or 1440p but for creating the content 4k is standard in 2020, and it was standard in 2019 as well.
Is not about what you think standard is, is about professionalism! If you know the market is expanding in 4K, its minimal commune sense you might wanna start thinking about painting your things to fit any screen that might come to fit your employers future prof needs. Its now 2020, still isn't standard, but many ppl expect to be able to see thigns in 4k even if only upscaled, but we alredy are getting bombarded with 8k possibilities so the "expected/acceptable minimal"is going to go up again from 4K.
If I purchase image from you and you gave me and Image in .JPGE, 2k or lower resolution and less then 300dpi's I would consider you to be very unprofessional and probably argue with you to redo it or even ditch you and ask someone else to do the job.
As an Artist myself, I always do my stuff at 7000x5000, .PNG/TIF, 600dpi's. That's how much seriously I take my work/hobby. If I wanted, I could even print my stuff in a building and you would still not see a single grain/pixel/dot in it(even if they aren't the best ones out there).
PS: Friend advice, your image should only be scaled down for adjustments, it needs to be scaled up to fit somewhere... then you(the artist) did very bad job.
Say hello to 2020
Um, when I create a piece or game assets we work at double the resolution you will be outputting. So if 4K is going to be the output create at like 7680 x 4320. If you have to scale it down this is also a good method.
for people who their computer struggle with high resolution I do the sketch and all rough stages at 1920 x 1080 then when I reach the refined and finish stage I do it at 3840 x 2160 hope that helped :)
what should be my resolution pixel if i have a 1920x1080 display
I'm a little different if I'm quickly sketching a landscape I start at a low resolution while I block in some colour, light and ideas and then increase the resolution once I start adding anything concrete.
Craig Mullins eventually ups his resolution to 10k pixels somewhat in the midpoint of his paintings. Alot of other concept artists do the same. Even for Character Design, Wes Burt will work around 7k pixel dimensions or more.
That may be necessary if you're working on concept art for film. I've never heard of any client needing anything that high rez. If a client asks you to work at a higher resolution, then that's what you do. But as a standard, for non professionals, it's not as complex of an answer as people seem to think. If it's for print, just set the canvas to the size of the final print, and set the dpi to 300.
Holy crap I’ve been doing mine way too big, my starting size is always 6000 by 6000, no wonder I’m running out of memory so quick
whats the best weight and height for a square image
Dylan matkasdjo There is no “best” in here o.o
Its depending on the platform. Like default Instagram feed is 1080x1080. Your image will be resized automatically.
Then, depends on the viewers too. Most common viewer use phone/monitor with 1080p.
My recommendation is make it bigger than 1080, because sometimes you need to crop image to make better compositions. Something like 3000
For printing, its a whole different thing
Tell me about it. I drew in 10k by 10k for ages. What a waste of time.
@@Idaero_Art And how is it with printing? 🤔
Well if you're doing it just to post online like Instagram I would say go for 1500×1500. This is what I use. But for commissions and other professional work I use bigger canvas. Then again I use Phone for digital art. In computer you can go for bigger.
Oh my gosh THANKS ive been finding answers for this.
Thanks for the great video! My art program tends to crash when I get too many layers going, I'll have to check the settings again to make sure the resolution and the dpi are balanced. I kinda knew about this stuff but hadn't thought to check those settings in a long time.
Omg thank you for this! I was trying do detail and I was getting so frustrated!
I draw at 8k rezz mostly because I use sketchbook and don't have extra monitors for reference, so I can pretty much fit, refit and cut with selection tool a dozen or more ref imagens wherever I want and however I want within the canvas itself.
Omg thank you so much , you literally made my art better.
Thanks! This works for Krita, too!
1080p Is still the broadcast standard.
4k 8k and 16k
are usually internal editing standards because you want high fidelity for editing, and while displays are getting cheaper and more common. that's not what makes a standard.
editing at UHD should only be done when needed. due to memory needed and space needed as well as the computing power needed.
Print can get up to ridiculous sizes for high quality so that's an aspect that i'm not touching.
This helps a lot I am a beginner but I’m dyslexic so I get a little heads start in my drawing skills 😅
THANK YOU OMG I WAS SO CONFUSED WHY MY LINEART IS SO BLURRY LIKE PIXELS LOW QUALITY
Dude. You are a god.
Thank you
Am I the only one who likes the drawing at 50% size with all those pixels ? It gave it a lot of charm, although high resolution is clearly better!
I also enjoy to see pixels when zooming in. It feels more "perfect" and in order. At high res, when zooming, I see lots of imperfections which are not visible when zoomed out. Seeing pixels makes much more sense in my brain because I consider it a texture or pixel art.
This was really helpful! Thank you!
That just make's to much sense now thank you!
5:44 *looks like a rad game I totally would have wanted to play in the 90's*
HI Trent! New to your channel and the content that you have here is exactly what I've been looking for. We both have the same art style but i'm having a lot of trouble adjusting to Photoshop painting/ drawing. It would be super helpful if you made a video about your brushes that you use or how to make our own. Thanks in advance if you decide to do this. Thanks for the helpful and great content too!
Hey kinda late to the party but wanted to say thanks; very informative content; would like to see an updated version that takes into account tablet/monitor size ratio and how it relates to the canvas size and affects the drawing experience in general.
YES!!! I NEEDED THIS VIDEO SO MUCH!!! THANK YOU!!!
This was super helpful!
You can change canvas then resize everything to fit the new canvas size
Except it can change the resolution and overall quality of the image. Even the aspect ratio, if it isn't locked.
ooo yeeaahhh!!
I've been waiting for this catch-phrases :D
Does this mean that if you wanted to do pixel art on photoshop, you would just use a super low resolution?
yep!
Good explanation, Thanks!
me who draw in a 3 year old phone:
hmmm... don't have that kind of resolution chief, but I'mma try that.
Although it's true that prinitng is mostly done at 600 dpi, it is always nice to have the abbility to scale the image up later and still be over 600 dpi. Especially if you are going to draw a bunch of characters into one document as you did in the one you had opened. What if you later want to enlarge one of those characters to make a fullscreen wallpaper, use it in a big advertising poster or what not. That's why i would recomment to draw at 1200 dpi or even higher if your computer can handle it and you have the disk space (generally the memory needed for a imega double the size quadruples to that explodes pretty quickly). Of course this might seem overkill but you never know what you might use it for in the future.
This is a perfect guide. Thank you
I always started with 1080p
I felt like it's not enough then this video came in and helped
Pause video at 6:10 for the exact size
Thank you so much very helpful
Never knew, been doing digital art for 13 years ('ish). I've always just been using 300dpi by default to be on the safe side. I knew it was for prints, but I didn't really care how it worked until now since my computers have always been able to handle the demand. I'm a no-compromises kind of guy, so my rigs are usually build to handle both gaming and digital art (16-32gb RAM, best reasonable processors, gold standard PSU, a 144hz monitor for gaming and a decent dell ultra sharp for art and a graphics card that can handle ultra settings in most games).
People could also just use the energy they spent writing out a question to your youtube channel, to simply google the answer instead.
Any idea when do people actually use 600 dpi?
Any idea what type PC should i get for digital art ? I don't what to build a gaming PC
@@the_cyber_artist pretty sure most store bought PC is capable of handling drawing. Just have at least 16gb of ram if possible and get a drawing tablet
@@Banana-cc5rx i already have drawing tablet i tested it on my brother laptop which has 4Gb ram and its a i7 4th gen . I used medibang A4 sized paper and 300dpi it worked fine . Haven't tried Photoshop though . I was planning to get a PC with Xeon E3 1245 V2 @3.80GhZ it's same as a i7 3770 . But xeon is better in rendering and workstations tasks . And then ill add 8GB ram in it with a normal 1Gb gpu . Will it be fine for making digital art on Photoshop?
@@the_cyber_artist sounds totally fine
Then I have a follow up "question" aka problem for you: changing image resolution also changes the behavior of the pencil. At least that's what I feel like when I'm drawing on higher resolutions. I need to increase my brush size and it feels weird to draw on this much pixels. Also, the processor starts to lack and the line falls behind my pen. I guess the simple answer would be "just use a lower resolution" But I'm wondering if there is a more complex answer to it.
I'm still far from professional, but I'd hoped to get some advise on this situations in this video, instead of an explanation of how resolutions work - which is a good explanation.
You probably just have a very low powered machine. Are you drawing on a netbook or chromebook or old computer?
I wished my computer could handle a canvas that size lol, above 2k it just crashes...
You might need a more powerful computer if you're going to do digital art! :)
Nicely explained Trent. Fortunately, I came from a print background before I started drawing seriously so I already had a grounding in this before I took on my own commissions etc.
Thanks
Thank you! Helped me a lot as honestly, I had an awful pixelated art syndrome 😅😅😅😅
Very nice explanation, thank you Trent.
My pc dies a little when i change one of my concepts documents from 72 to 300 but it really works... i wanna do this with a few concepts more, they deserve it but i'm worried for my computer.
....I see, I never... ho god.... I got more than a year triying to know why I got to much pixelated things... FOR GODS SAKE THANKS, I finally feel I can work right
So what is the average canvas size for a finished character design, ready to be submitted to a client/art director?
finally the real advice
Thank You for the Video
savior. this is so relevant
I know this is sort of off topic but one major issue I was and am still facing that is related... I zoomed in way too much while drawing/painting.
This leads to awkward lines, getting into details in one area over another.. the list goes on.. I feel like this doesn't get stressed enough and it's a purely digital issue. It is a little related to resolution.. because the more resolution you have the more tempted you are to just zoom in. If you draw/paint traditionally there is no zoom.
If you try and start out digital I feel like you just learn a whole range of bad habits.
Try to practice not zooming in AT ALL, and finishing a piece that way. You've just developed a bad habit of zooming in too soon.
Unless if it's working for you! If what you're doing is working... keep doing it.
Thanks for the response, man. Yeah I think I need to force myself not to do it. It's a really bad habit and I'm not seeing the results I want.
Dude real talk, you're Chell concept looks way better than the one they had in the games. I never liked her jump suit. Your design is gangster AF! The robots look cool too.
Since my screen is 4K I do everything in 4k 300dpi
Great advice
so you're telling me that after all these years I WAS MEANT TO BE AT 4K??? AHHHHHHHH
Well its probably 8k now.
@@TrentKaniuga Imma need a minute. 🥴
I can't I'm lagging but next time when I have better CPU probably use this res
Ironicly some if the basic info like setting ur canvas to 300 dpi and setting it to rgb color is somthing I am aware of, but the actual canvas size was somthing I needed a refresher on.
i searched and searched but only you answered
Ok lets try this 😜
portal!!! those are so beautiful!
THANK YOU!!!!!!
Thank youssss🥰🥰🥰
What if you need to have a certain size to upload for a book. On procreate, you choose between inches or pixels. So, If choose the right pixels, how do I get my illustration to the right size in inches for my book? YES! I am a beginner with digital art! Thank You!
Set your canvas size to the final dimensions, then make sure that it's at at least 300 dpi.
Trent Kaniuga this is what I originally did and it was still blurry....do I need a high dpi? Or should I add another art app besides procreate?
thank you so much sir...now I know how to set my canvas size...ill just gonna leave a subscribe
Hahahahha I remember being at school library. I draw something then I printed my drawing. It’s was tiny very tiny and pixelated . It’s was funny though 😄
if ur looking for a really good free program download krita (or just try it out)
krita is a great program for beginners! I used to use it myself it compares to paint tool sai.
Also, Medibang Paint! It's amazing and you can do actual professional looking work! Check out jyundee's work here on TH-cam, she uses a lot of Medibang AND Krita
u are so good
OMG! Just what I needed :')
Love the Videos man! Preference Question: Photoshop - 8bit, 16 or 32? any reason or requirements in gaming/print/editing to use one over the other?
There are some niche reasons to use higher bit rates but generally it's just wasted space. Photography uses higher bit rates because camera sensors capture more information than your screen can display. In this case it makes sense to preserve this information for color grading but when you're painting, you don't really paint details you can't see. In fact, it might be worse than 8bit, because you could accidentally create artifacts (e.g. by using blend modes) which you can't see but become visible after color grading.
Great answer! I didn't know that. I only ever use the 32.
@@TrentKaniuga Just in case you want all the nerdy details:
The main benefit of 16/32bit is that they're linear color spaces. The human eye is able to distinguish finer gradients in dark situations (which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint: the one who saw the bear in the dark survived) and if you spread out all 256 different values per color channel evenly from pure black to pure white, 8bit is just not enough information. So programmers cheated a little. The actual brightness of a color is its binary value squared, which means that a value of 200 is not twice as bright as 100, it's four times as much (100*100 = 10000 vs 200*200 = 40000). But it also means that there's a lot less information available in bright areas. Did anyone ever notice? Probably not. But 16bit fixes this, since you have 65536 different shades per color channel and now there's no need to cheat.
DLC Spider oh! Thank you so much, I never knew
my issue is... on phones I see the mess and sloppiness on my artwork @ 100%.
I feel like I always have to draw @ 10k pixel for full body and then minimize to 3k.
Honestly I havent seen anyone talking about this issue...
That ending though...
lmao ive been drawing at 1000x1000 for the past 3 months. why did i not question myself sooner
What resolution and sized canvas do you use for causal doodles and sketches?
The same.
Disagree on drawing 4k at 4k. Draw at double that resolution and export at 4k.
My DUMBASS just did an illustration at 900x1280 and I was thinking to myself this whole time "yo, why does it look so low quality?" I dunno how my ass forgot this. That shit took me a while- man, I'ma have to redraw that shit.
Considering how old this video is, you artists(in 2020) might want to start considering drawing in 8K at the very least.
8k is not a overkill ?
like 4k is decent for every screen
@@romt5649 thats up to the customer to decide, not us artist.
As an artist we should always provide the most current highest quality available on the market to our customers.
How they decide to distribute that file/image(be it full 8k, 4k, 2k, 1k or less), after we get payed and done with it, is up to them to decide what's overkill or not for the consumer.
Your costumer should only ever need to re-size down an image to fit something/somewhere, and never ever should there be a need or reason for it to re-size upwards(since this would deteriorate ur image, thus meaning you failed to meet ur customers needs) Your drawing,/Art/Image is a payed product after all, wouldn't make sense for you to go buy a car without the interiors and seats just because a car is made to hit the road, right?
But well, every artist is an artist, and have different standards from one another, some even refuse to draw certain things, which makes no sense an artist refusing to do what he is supposed to do in the first place, but I guess this will fall on the subjective topic that ppl may or not agree with.
@@lrdalucardart okay thanks !
@@lrdalucardart i was aiffraid that my pc could not handle 8k but it seems that the efficiency is still a 100%
Man I really want a new portal game
if u want it to look blurry go wayyy higher than 4k.