So we released Artist 8.2b in a slight hurry 3
weeks ago, only to find out shortly thereafter
an embarrassing glitch that made it difficult
(read: impossible) to use under Windows XP.
How this one slipped by my scrutiny and
testing I still don't know, shame on me. But
Dan was quick to find a fix and a week later
we officially buried 8.2b and replaced it with
8.2c. So if you're one of the few who had
ordered PD Artist 8 while it was shipping as
8.2b, consider yourself the lucky rare owner
of a release that lived for just a week. Who
knows, your installer might have collector's
value some day, or you could send it to the
Smithsonian.
Anyway, by now, if you have PD Artist 8.0, you
should be using 8.2c.
We have sent upgrade instructions through the
BMTmicro server to the email on record that
you used when ordering PD Artist 8. If your
email has changed, be sure to inform the
Support department at bmtmicro, they can
update your record with the new address, and
then inform
us (Philip) and we'll arrange for
resending the re-enabled download links.
Reminder: GPU support is implemented
through the MS concurrency runtime (VC++ AMP)
and as such requires Windows 7 or 8 with
DirectX 11 and a graphics card or chip that
supports it. On other platforms or systems
such as with Windows Vista and XP, CPU code is
used instead instead of GPU. It still works
great, just a little slower.
New Tutorials
We have a bunch of recently posted tutorials,
focusing on things to explore and discover
with v8.2, especially using the 3D Designer,
Bokeh blur and more.
The folks at
YURdigital.com recently held a contest (the
YUR "Twisted Digital Art Contest"). Sponsors
included Filter Forge, 3d.sk, SmithMicro and
us, TheBest3D.com, withg PD Pro 8.2 -
See details here:
http://www.yurdigital.com/page/yur-twisted-digital-art-contest
Congratulations to the 3rd
place winner (booksbydavid) who won a copy of
PD Pro Howler 8, and to meerkat for the
honorable mention in 5th place, which was
awarded with PD Pro Artist 8.
We invite you to visit and discover
YURdigital: www.yurdigital.com
If you join as a member, be sure to contribute
to the dogwaffle forum there too.
sneak preview:
a color gradient sucker
er... gradient grabber tool
Have you ever looked at a
picture and looked at some details in that
picture, and said to yourself, "my, those are
fancy colors, I wish I could just pick those
up to make a new gradient with these exact
same colors!".
Well, now (or soon anyway), you will be able
to just lift those colors from the image
buffer. A new tool is being developed that
lets you 'place' an imaginary line, which will
then guide the tool to look for the colors
under that 'line', These colors are then used
to build a new gradient - automagically!
For example, if you have photo with a special
sunset loaded with awesome colors, blue and
reds, purples and orange mixed together, just
drag the tool across the sky, and all these
colors will be used in the making of the new
gradient. Then you can simply draw a filled
rectangle in gradient mode to re-create a
similar sunset, but without possible undesired
artefacts in the photograph such as an
airplane, a cloud, or the mere grain of
high-sensitive film. Or you can use that same
gradient in many other ways, including the
particle brushes, perhaps for fancy firework
colors.
Here's a first video that shows how it would
work. This was done during very early
development, and we called the tool the
"gradient sucker" since we had this vision of
a vaccuum cleaner sucking up the colors from
the pixels straight into the bag, er,... into
the gradient. But we have since renamed the
tool: it will be known as the gradient
grabber, or nicknamed the GG (best pronounced
'Gigi', with italian accent).
Now, keep in mind, as of this writing (March
23, 2013), this tool is not yet available,
i.e. we're showing you a sneak peek, a
preview. The tool looks even better with the
finalized interface and feedback, stay tuned
for more
videos in our YouTube channel, examples
and great tutorials
on that.
We haven't decided yet when this will be
released, if it will be another free
update/bug fix release or a paid major update,
such as part of 8.5 or 9.0.... for now, let's
just enjoy and salivate :-)
If you don't have v8.2 yet, however,.... what
are you waiting for?
Thanks for waffling and howling!
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