Photoshop vs. Painter for Foliage

[Ken Walton]

I've seen some pretty impressive work here lately with foliage "painted" with painter. I've downloaded the painter trial but haven't ran it yet. But I was wondering if there was anyway in Photoshop to use a pattern brush (or something else maybe) to kind of duplicate the process used in Painter? Or is painter really the best way to go in this matter?

[Dennis B]

It's pretty hard to beat Painter (or PSP and PhotoPaint) in this regard because they have a brush technology Photoshop doesn't. That said, Nisus has done some great trees using Photoshop. (I searched around a bit but couldn't find where he posted examples.)

There's a discussion in the tutorials section, "Painting Trees & Shadows," that includes a brief conversation on the Photoshop plug-in (which substitutes for the Painter brush technology) as well.

I try to encourage people to ask Adobe to adopt the feature. That may come back to haunt me, but... Until then, you can check out Corel's store on Ebay. They're selling the Painter 7 upgrade, a better choice when it comes to using nozzles, etc, for $30.

Good luck,
Dennis