I don’t wanna confuse anybody so let me get to the point :
With the addition of cycles, and more specifically nodes, it feels to me like Blender has just about every functionality needed to compete with The Gimp and Photoshop, and maybe even surpass them, and all I think it’d take is the addition of a couple of tweaks/improvements that would strongly benefit the UV/Image editor anyways (copy paste, selection tools, better layers…) and maybe the addition of a new layout.
Just imagining the possibilities of using nodes for layer effects and compositing is just mindblowing to me, and if I could I’d gladly get my hands dirty and participate in Blender development
I’ll assume newer version than what I tried last week.
When I tried it last week (first time trying it on Windows 7 x64), any brush would only draw as a solid square and would take about 5 to 10 minutes to finish a single stroke (each 1 pixel step took a huge amount of time). Looked at the process details and the memory usage was continuously climbing. Jumped up by about a GB per minute.
The latest version of Krita works wonderfully well on my Widows 7 system - but make certain that you turned on opengl in the prefs. It’s turned off by default. I am painting on A4 canvas @ 600ppi without any issues at all. It’s great, and a much better drawing/painting experience than Photoshop.
The layer paradigm is very close to the one used in Photoline. So now I have a perfect replacement for Photoshop: Photoline for (complex) image editing, web/screen/mobile and texture work, and Krita for 2d painting.
Photoline includes an app link, and I can send layers to Krita for painting for a seamless workflow. With the same app link I now use Gimp as a plugin for Photoline as well for filter and plugin effects that are only available for Gimp.
And the icing on the cake: both Photoline and Krita handle 16/32bpc images without any issues.
No more Adobe for me.
Back on topic: I would love to see true layers in the painting/image areas of Blender. And layered image support where we can turn layers on and off for different uses (like decals, and material channels all saved in one file).
I think the OP is trying to say that with Blender’s node system, its possible to carryout functions that previously would only be possible with the help of Photoshop.
Yes! But it’s even more intuitive and powerful… when I use PS I’m always frustrated at the limitations and heterogeneity of the filters and layer effects.
I’m not saying Blender can compete RIGHT NOW, but the best point of view to take is the following : Imagine somebody branched Blender and reorganized the currently available functionalities in order to make it a painting/raster image editing software… What would be missing? My answer is “not much, and I’d prefer the result over PS” (if done right).
While Blender may see Photoshop-like 2D capability in the future, I doubt that we’ll see photographers move in droves to using Blender to edit the photographs they just uploaded from their camera.
So Blender can edit photos as well as Photoshop, there’s a good chance that 2D artists and photographers will first look for a program that doesn’t have any 3D stuff because that’s not what they do. More likely, Blender becomes a good solution for people to edit the image that just came out of Cycles or BI (and maybe for texture making as well).
are u kidding me? i have i5 procesor and i have to wait like 30-1 minute for Blure + some color correction and color correction after blure i have to wait for every bit of change 30 secounds when. photoshop CS.1 on pentium 4 3.2ghz 1 core. 10 megapixel photo was edited in real time and blender compositor can’t handle fullHD in real time even on i5 computer is joke.
Well, my idea was that since Gimp sucks, and Photoshop is expensive, there’s a spot open for Blender. Afaik there is no free 2D soft as good as blender is on the 3D scene.
Besides, any work done towards improving Blender’s 2D performance and functionalities would strongly benefit the Blender community as it is currently, well especially texture artists.
The fact that Blender has 3D stuff is irrelevant, you’re not forced to use the 3D components and Blender has a very low memory usage anyways… Besides, Photoshop Extended also has 3D stuff.
for textur drawing the or generaly painting. for photoshop the enemy is Krita with is growing very fast!
for color corections etc. stuff (photography) there is light room, there AE there is Nuke. there is even gimp (all in real time)
The only place when blender shine. a bit. is 3D compositing 1#Nuke 2#After… 3#Blender
And 3D texture painting however here same story 1#Mudbox/Mari 2#This new softwhere with particle paiting 3# Blender, because of bad performance.
You’re missing my point. Of course Blender isn’t up to snuff but it has the POTENTIAL if someone fixes the performance issues (not only 2D perfs to be honest) and adds a handful of features to it.
Think about it, think how far Blender’s gone already, and how far it CAN go. If any software has the potential to offer an all-in-one seamless 2D & 3D editing experience in the future, it’s Blender, and it has nodes, which most softs like Black Ink only wish they had!
I’d like to add that I’m not a Blender fanboy, I definitely use Photoshop for my texturing purposes, but PS’ age is apparent and with each version, it feels increasingly unwieldy and pieced together. I had never heard of Krita before, and I’ll definitely give it a shot!
You must be using one of the more expensive blur algorithms set to a lot of samples and a wide radius, because I don’t recall a modest gaussian blur ever being that slow (there’s many different blurring algorithms in Blender).
If all you use Photoshop for is to slap some cheap effects on top of your render then yes, Blender could potentially be a “competitor” for that but if you use Photoshop to paint your textures then there’s no chance for Blender to compete at all. Not even with the 3D painting capabilities.
If any software has the potential to offer an all-in-one seamless 2D & 3D editing experience in the future
Mudbox.
You must be using one of the more expensive blur algorithms set to a lot of samples and a wide radius, because I don’t recall a modest gaussian blur ever being that slow (there’s many different blurring algorithms in Blender).
What type of blur were you trying to use?
what? kidding me? I can work on my computer on 8k texture without a problem in real time with many many layers blures and other stufss in real time. Meanwhile. Blender same computer but just FullHD resolution. 2-3 nodes of blure + 1 glare node. and then i add some color corection. and i have to wait 30-60 secounds.
Acctualy i don’t understand one stuff. Why the hell blender is redoing all the nodes froms start if i just have changed the last one WTF!?
OP, I guess I don’t get what you are using Photoshop for. Blender is not really designed for a general-purpose 2D workflow like PS is. It’s meant to aim towards a general-purpose 3D workflow. A subset of a 3D workflow is often a lot of 2D work, but even a 10-year-old copy of PS is still faster and more useful than blender for 2D. I am not really optimistic about blender catching up to photoshop for any tasks outside of a 3D workflow.
For example Photoshop is pretty useful for mocking up websites. I’d rather stab myself with a fork than try to do that task in Blender.
