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Brushes and Paint.Net

You’ve already heard me say how much I love Paint.Net, so there’s nothing new about that.  Paint.Net just IS the greatest thing to come along in the last few years, through the hard work of developers Rick Brewster and Tom Jackson.

Just one thing though — while you can do anything you could ever want to with Paint.Net, there is ONE single feature yet missing — Brushes.  Go to the Paint.Net Users Forum and you’ll see post after post, asking: “when will there be brushes?” etc.

Well just relax, everyone.  Here’s the solution: ArtRage 2.5.

I needed a really good airbrush for a recent client’s job and tried out ArtRage.  AWESOME!  Not ONLY does ArtRage have ANY type of brush or paint effect you could ever hope for, it costs only $25, and (here’s the great part) you can use it in tandem with Paint.Net.  Piece of cake.

ArtRage allows you to create multi-layered files just like Paint.Net and save them as individual files.  So you do whatever you like in Paint.Net and any time you desire a brush effect, save the layer as a .PNG image

and open that image in ArtRage.

When you have the effect you like, Save the ArtRage Layer as a .PNG image.

Pick the saved layer(s) back up with Paint.Net and finish the job.

Bottom line ?  Photoshop costs about $400.00.  Paint.Net is free.  Add ArtRage 2.5 for another $25.00 and you just saved yourself $375.00.

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Google Wave – Better get ready now to catch this one

As a working artist I make it a point every day to study and learn something new. Now, I’m certainly not a “Geek” by any means, but I’ve been working at expanding my understanding of all of the ways I can use the internet in my work.

A few days ago I ran across several postings on Twitter announcing “Google Wave will be a tsunami” and “Google Wave will transform the way you do business” etc, so I checked it out.

After watching this presentation in bits and pieces over the last few days I have to say I believe this is going to be true. So you should make time to see this presentation yourself.

Now a lot of you at first are just going to think: “Oh, crap, that’s all we need, another Social Application to use up more of my time!” Okay, Me too, at first. But give it a couple of days to kind of sink in and then start to consider what you’ve seen here as you’re using your email, Facebook, Twitter and other tools you use in your work and communications.

With a little bit of imagination it will begin to shift your viewpoint about HOW (and why) you use different applications. You’ll start noticing a glimmer of the relationships between them and get the flavor of things to come. This one is going to be exciting. It is going to be big.

How big ? Not much, at first.

At first it’s just going to go around the arcane, inner circles of the Uber-Geek, where it already happens to be. (So if you know how to code and have an idea for a way to use it you can already sign up for an account and begin to create applications for it.)

When it finally comes into open release you will begin to see it mentioned in widening media circles – on Google accounts and Technology News feeds and blogs.

Then, after some time, Twitter will likely be the first to get a Wave application. Then Facebook. And Blogger, WordPress, Typepad.

As each of the various types of users begin to discover the growing ways to apply a “wave” and begin to think with an email that chats and collaborative albums that are social and documents that evolve, we’ll begin to see a radical shift.

Not overnight. But start to think with it. They have done something here that Microsoft will not – They’ve released it as “open-source” – Anyone with an idea may contribute a new application using Wave as its interface. You can use it on your desktop – not just online. Takes a while to grab you, but grab you it will.

Google was quite apt to choose “Wave” as the name for this application. Shakespeare gave us the phrase: “sea-change” — “Full fathom five…Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

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