Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Essential Sketch Program for a Tablet User, March 16, 2009
I'm constantly amazed that more people haven't heard of this product. If you sketch seriously with a tablet of any kind you owe it to yourself to download the trial of this program. It is the perfect blend of media emulation and work flow. Sketchbook Pro's entire user interface is very pen friendly. You can operate 95% of the program's interface without having to deal with dialogs and cumbersome text entry. This is a huge plus for artists. It means you spend your time creating and not fidgeting with settings. When you do need to switch a pen for a pencil, change colors, move the image, save a file - do almost anything - Sketchbook Pro's fast pen flick menu system is ideal. Operations like panning and zooming and scaling and rotating all can be done with the pen tip with a very innovative and simple interface. It needs to be experienced to be appreciated. By comparison, Photoshop or PaintshopPro is a very ugly user experience for fast sketching. Those programs are quite frankly not optimized for sustained fast pen use - unlike Sketchbook Pro. I use a tabletpc extensively for penciling comic book layouts and for final inking. Any break in the work flow to fiddle with dialogs or to zoom or pan is annoying to me. I've spent hundreds of hours on this software and I never feel I'm fighting the program to get what I need done. It's fast and responsive for me working with full color 300 DPI images under 2K x 2K sizes on my Lenovo X200T. This is not to say it can't handle larger files - I just don't edit images larger than this in my work flow.
This is not a Photoshop replacement. It's about having pens, pencils, brushes, markers, and an eraser and a virtual piece of paper. You can customize the tools for pressure sensitivity, line width, opacity, line angles, etc. The paper simulation is a smooth white bond. No fancy paper types (which is fine for me). There's no vector editing or ways to make perfectly straight lines or boxes (although that's coming in v2010) or image processing options. You do get layers and ways to save to a variety of formats including PSD as of v2009. The tools are simple and the markings it makes are dead on equivalents to their real world counterparts. The pencils make pencil-like markings, the pens pen-like markings, etc. This is THE point of this program. YOU supply all the creativity and work. There's no gaussian filters, perspective tools, or drop shadow layer effects. If your creative process doesn't involve this kind of look and feel or you rely on something more exotic then there's no reason to get this software.
The other reason not to get this program is if you don't have a tabletpc or some other graphic tablet. It really only shines with a pen interface. If you only use a mouse you'll find this software overpriced for what it can do - save your money and download The Gimp or Artrage for free. I've used Sketchbook Pro since the software was developed by Alias. It came with my 1st TabletPC in 2003 and it is the only piece of productivity software I've ever used which was virtually perfect at version 1.0. From v1.0, to v2.0, to v2009 there have only been small incremental changes (I wouldn't even call them improvements since it was so good from the start). Autodesk seems to be bent on improving on perfection and I really hope they don't go overboard and try and make it into Photoshop in v2010 and onwards. If ever there was a product that could just stay "as is" and be forever perfect Sketchbook Pro is it.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Keeps on Giving, February 13, 2009
I've been using Sketchbook since it first came out and it just keeps getting better! It's not a replacement for Photoshop, but a whole new way of thinking about digital sketching. They really have tried to keep it simple; with a streamlined set of tools that focus on getting an idea down and making it look great and fun to use.
Thanks so much for making this program available on Amazon!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sketchbook Pro is of the best graphic apps out there!, February 12, 2009
I've been using Sketchbook Pro since version 1 and it's grown into an amazing application. It is without a doubt my go-to app for all digital drawing. it's made it so easy for me that I hardly use a real pencil anymore.
Digital drawing is really a huge advancement over the traditional mediums for the simple reason that you can erase and use layers. Those two small additions make it so much easier for an artist to experiment and noodle to find the right technique without ruining all the work you've already done. There are quite a few digital graphic programs on the market but Sketchbook Pro is the best in my opinion for two reasons. It's simple, easy-to-use interface makes it a breeze to use with little or no learning curve and it's digital tools feel like the real world ones.
For me the best part of SBP is that it has a pencil that feels and looks like a real pencil, something that no other graphics program is capable of doing out of the box and even after fiddling with the other apps to get it to mimic one, Sketchbook Pro STILL does it better.
I have fiddled with Sketchbook Pro's competitor Photoshop many times to try and get it to even DO a realistic pencil and it fails every time. I've even downloaded other 3rd party Photoshop 'pencil' brushes and they still don't work as well as Sketchbook Pro. It beats Painter's pencil as well as every other digital application out there and as a professional artist, trust me I've used them all.
I've even seen grouchy old-school traditional artists smile when they begin to draw with it, it's that good. I've also seen 8-year-olds use it and be able to interface with it instantly. Quite simply, it's a breeze to use for all ages. Finally, the price beats all other graphic applications out there which is a great thing for your wallet.
All in all, you'd be crazy not to use SBP for the simple reason that it makes your job as an artist/designer/draftsman easier and will allow to focus on what you want to do; DRAW!
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