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ArtRage 2.5 Update Details.
New Features.
For information on updating to ArtRage 2.5 Full Edition, click here. To purchase ArtRage 2.5 Full Edition, click here.
New Features.
- Stencils & Rulers: The Stencil Picker allows you to add Stencils and Rulers to your painting,
for creating precise shapes, straight lines, and curves freehand with any tool.
- Layer Content Transformation: You can now Move, Scale, and Rotate the contents of
Layers using the Transform Layer Contents option in the Edit Menu.
- Copy & Paste: You can now copy the contents of a Layer using the Copy Layer to Clipboard option
in the Edit Menu. You can Paste the contents of your clipboard to a new Layer using the Paste Clipboard to New Layer
option in the Edit Menu.
- Layer Groups & Layer Names: You can now add Layer Groups, and name your Layers and Groups. For more
information, see the Layers section of the manual.
- Resolution Support: In the New File or Resize panels you can now set the size of your image using
pixels, inches, centimeters, or millimeters. You can also set the DPI resolution of your image.
- Smooth Blender: The Palette Knife now has a Smooth blending option which can be found in the Type
picker of the Tool Controls Panel when the Palette Knife is selected.
- Precise Pencil: The Pencil now has a Precise option. Turning this option on makes your pencil
sharper and more like a mechanical pencil. This option can be found in the Tool Controls Panel when the Pencil is
selected.
- Mousewheel Zoom: The Mouse wheel on a mouse, or the Zoom Strip on Wacom Intuos 3 tablets can now
be used to zoom the canvas.
- Recent Files List: You can access a list of recently used ArtRage files in the File Menu.
- More Image Formats: ArtRage 2.5 supports more image formats for Import and Export.
- Internal Updater: The ArtRage Updater has been built in to the application to make it easier to
download and install updates.
- Toolbox Panel: The bottom of the ArtRage window now has a Toolbox Panel, from which you can access
your Stencils, Tracing Images, and Reference Images.
- Layers Panel: The Layers Panel has been moved to the right of the window for easier access.
- Color Samples Panel: The Color Samples Panel that used to be on the right hand edge of the window
is now a floating panel. You can also name your color samples.
- Languages: ArtRage now supports English, French, and German from the same install. You can select
your language from the Help menu.
- OSX Application Bundle: ArtRage now contains all of its resources internally on OSX so you don’t
need to store a folder alongside the application, you can just install ArtRage 2.5 directly to your
Applications Folder.
- OSX Window Resizing: The ArtRage window can now be manually resized on OSX using a resize handle
at the bottom right.
- Crash Recovery: On Windows, ArtRage attempts to save out your work to a temporary file
(arrestart.ptg) if the application crashes. For more information, see the ArtRage Support Forum.
- Import To Layer: You can now import an image to a new Layer in the current document, rather than
having to import to a new document. Use the Import To Layer option in the File menu.
- Bump Blend Modes: The way ArtRage layers the volume of paint on Layers can be controlled from the Bump Blend Mode menu in the Layer Menus.
- Canvas Zoom Shortcut: Holding down Shift + Space and click-dragging the canvas, or holding down Shift and right click-dragging the canvas zooms it.
- User Content Support Shifted: User content such as Custom Pickers, Canvas Size Presets, Stencils,
Canvas Presets etc. have been shifted to the user’s Application support folders. For more information, including
information on how to move your ArtRage 2.2 content to ArtRage 2.5, see the ArtRage Support forums.
- Reference Image Persistency: Reference Images are now saved with your painting files.
- Improved Vista Support: ArtRage 2.5 is Windows Vista Certified and supports Tilt and Rotate when using Ink Services under Vista.
Unofficial Technical Features.
- Light Switch: If you want to turn off the lights in your image, to remove the appearance of volume for the paint, you can do so by pressing F5.
- Export of Channels: For technically minded users, selecting ‘Export Layer…’ from the Layers Menu while holding down Shift will export the contents of
that layer to multiple image files for each channel (Color, Bump, Shininess, Reflectivity).
ArtRage 2.2 Update Details.
New Features.
- ArtRage Auto Updater: The ArtRage Auto Updater included in version
2.2 allows quick and easy updates when a new version is released.
- Mac OS X Universal Binary: ArtRage 2.2 OS X is now a Universal
binary for PPC and Intel Macs.
- Photoshop Blend Modes: ArtRage 2.2 supports all of the blend modes
in Photoshop CS2. You can access these from the Layer Blending menu in the Layers
Panel. Blend modes are imported and exported with PSD format documents.
- Improved Memory Management: Memory use has been improved so that
large documents with multiple layers use significantly less memory than in version
2.1.
- PTG File Thumbnails: Your painting files are now given thumbnails
in your OS.
- Magnified Precise Cursors: There is a now an option in the Preferences
Menu to magnify the Precise Cursor to make it more visible.
- Glitter Shape: Glitter now has 5 options for the shape of glitter
applied.
- Grain Roughness Range: Paper grain roughness can now be taken to
negative numbers to invert the texture pattern.
- Art Pen Option: The Felt Pen now has an 'Art Pen' option that allows
a denser pigment to be applied.
- Color Sampler: Added options to the color sampler to sample the
true paint color and from a single layer if required.
- Oil Thinners: The Oil tool now allows you to thin your oils significantly.
Everything over 50% thinners starts to make the paint transparent.
- Reference Image Zoom: You can now zoom the contents of reference
images without changing the size of the reference pinned to the canvas.
- Metallic Value Control: You can now adjust the level of metallic
color applied to your paint.
- Tablet PC Numeric Entry: Adjusted the Tablet PC
build so that using handwriting recognition to enter text in to the ArtRage numeric
text entries is easier.
- Progress Bar: Added a load progress bar when launching ArtRage
by double clicking a file.
- Show Panels Notice Fading: When you right click or press Enter
to hide the panels, the notice telling you how to bring them back now fades out
after a few seconds.
Bug Fixes.
- Fixed a bug that was causing strokes to shoot off down and right when using a Genius
tablet on OS X.
- Fixed some bugs that could cause the layer stack to update incorrectly when Merge
All Layers was selected, or after Undo.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the color sampler to sample transparency checkers on
transparent layers.
- Fixed a bug that was causing checkers to be exported to the background of transparent
PNGs.
- Fixed a bug that could cause artifacts on the trailing end of Tablet PC strokes.
- Fixed a bug that was causing metallics to be lost when merging layers with papers
that had metallic values and were at less than 100% Opacity.
- Fixed a bug that was causing ArtRage popup menus to behave incorrectly when they
overlapped each other.
- Fixed a bug that could cause empty tool settings panels to appear if tool selection
was changed while the interface was hidden.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the 'Remove All Colors' option to be available in the
color swatches menu when there were no swatches to remove.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the canvas to go blank when the painting was scaled
down.
- Fixed a rare crash bug encountered when opening some Photoshop documents.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the alpha value of the feathered edges of the airbrush
to be lost when when exporting to a layered PSD file.
- Fixed a problem that was causing spotty results in the trailing edge of an airbrush
stroke when running with Mouse Mode on.
- Fixed a problem with printing whereby a black box would be printed on output with
some older print drivers.
- Adjusted Canvas Rotation so that rotate and zoom happen around the centre of the
screen.
Artrage 2.1 Patch Details
ArtRage 2.1 includes a number of fixes to technical problems with the original release version, and some new features too. These notes list all the changes made in ArtRage since the original release, including those made in ArtRage 2.05.
Tweaks & Features.
- Palette Knife: We reworked the Palette Knife to improve smearing and blending quality.
- Dry Brushing: Added a 'Dry Brush' function. When you take the Oil Brush or Paint Roller Loading to 0% the tool applies no paint, you can use it to blend existing paint as if it was clean.
- Quick Mirror Check: Added a 'Quick Mirror' function that allows you to do a quick 'mirror check' of your painting. Holding down the H key flips your painting horizontally, holding down the V key flips it vertically. When you release the key, the painting returns to its normal orientation. This function is for people who like to be able to do mirror checks of their work to check for structural problems.
- Background Colour: You can now change the background colour used by ArtRage. If your canvas is smaller than the ArtRage window, select the colour you want and Alt/Option-Click the background. The default colour is white.
- Painting Name: Added the name of your current painting to the titlebar of the ArtRage window.
- Spacebar Move & Rotate: The Spacebar can now be used to move the canvas. Hold the spacebar down and left click/drag to move the canvas. When you release the spacebar, your selected tool will work again. To rotate the canvas, hold down the spacebar then the Alt/Option key and left click/drag the canvas.
- Multi-User Support: Changed how ArtRage stores its registration and user preference information so that multiple user accounts on one machine will have easier access to the application.
- Larger Tool Sizes: Added the ability to 'oversize' tools. When you single click the tool size preview you are prompted to enter a percentage value for the tool size. You can now manually enter sizes up to 500%. You can stil only use the standard size preview slide functionality to reach 100%, but some users had requested larger tools. Please note, you may experience some unusual behaviour in tools over 100%, we do not suggest using this feature unless you are working on extremely large documents.
Bug Fixes.
- Removed the painting's file name from printed output.
- Adjusted the felt pen to make it cut in to bump when you use it with moderate to high pressure.
- Adjusted the flow rate of the airbrush to improve its look when used with the mouse.
- Increased the base size of the roller so that it can get larger.
- Fixed some bugs with the PSD import/export system, generally related to empty or 0 size layers.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing changing paper settings prompting the user to save the document at appropriate times.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the bottom layer being dragged up in the layer stack.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the wrong canvas grain to appear in the canvas grain sample when creating a new document.
- Fixed a bug that was causing incorrect updates in the canvas grain sample of the new file dialog when loading a custom grain.
- Fixed a bug that prevented users right click/dragging the canvas to move it on OS X.
- Fixed a bug that caused ArtRage to fail to load (with a file not found message) on OS X when launched from an account that did not 'own' the application in terms of permissions.
- Fixed a bug that caused artifacting when moving a canvas that had been rotated 90 degrees.
- Fixed a bug in the right click and hold tools (Airbrush and Glitter) that caused problems for Tablet PC users.
- Fixed some smearing/smudging problems with glitter relating to when the paint was considered wet.
- Fixed a bug that caused paintings created at unusual aspect ratios to appear off centre when displayed for the first time.
- Fixed a bug that was causing opaque paper above layer 1 to be removed when merging.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the felt pen to behave incorrectly when used with high Wetness on layers with transparent backgrounds. Blending should work properly now.
- Fixed a bug that caused multiple transparent layers stacked on top of each other to produce halos around dark strokes.
- Fixed a bug that caused custom paper grains that had colour to be loaded incorrectly when converting to greyscale.
- Fixed a bug that caused ArtRage to close after trying to load an invalid file.
- Fixed a bug that caused ArtRage to lock when double clicking an invalid painting file to load it.
- Fixed a bug that would prevent overwriting canvas presets from the New File dialog even after being prompted to confirm the action.
- Corrected some errors in the shortcut keys listed in the manual.
ArtRage 2.05 Patch Information.
ArtRage 2.05 includes a number of fixes to technical problems with the original release version. Details on these changes can be found here.
1. Cursor Offset Problems.
- Added a preference to the Tools/Preferences menu that allows users of graphics tablets that are set to use Mouse Mode to indicate this to the application. Fixes a bug whereby cursors and paint strokes would be offset when using Mouse Mode. See notes on Tablet Settings below.
- Fixed a bug whereby cursors would be offset when using ArtRage on a second monitor.
- Fixed tablet mapping problems when using ArtRage on a multi-monitor system with various tablet mapping modes active.
2. File Import/Export Problems.
- Fixed a bug that would cause some ArtRage paintings exported as Adobe Photoshop documents to be unloadable in Photoshop.
- Fixed a bug that would cause Photoshop documents exported without a suffix to be saved as .psd files, but contain ArtRage .ptg data instead.
- Improved the speed of file load and save. This will be particularly noticeable when loading or saving over a network, and significantly reduces network load.
- Made a change to the Photoshop file importer so that layers with transparency are imported without paint volume. This is to fix an artifact that would appear around the edges of the transparent blocks due to bump levels. See File I/O notes below.
- Fixed a bug that would cause a 'save changes' prompt to appear twice when exporting Photoshop files.
- Updated our OS X file dialog support to handle extensions properly. You should now have familiar OS X controls for hiding/showing extensions, and correct extension behaviour.
- Fixed a bug that was causing tracing image offsets to be lost when loading a file that had one.
3. Cintiq & Monitor Problems.
- Fixed a bug that as causing cursor offset problems when using ArtRage with a Wacom Cintiq. If you find you're still having a problem after the patch, turn on the Mouse Mode toggle in the ArtRage Edit/Preferences menu.
- Fixed a bug that prevented ArtRage from maximising and operating correctly on secondary monitors. The app should now be able to be sized and used properly on any monitor on your machine.
- Fixed a bug whereby cursors would be offset when using ArtRage on a second monitor.
- Fixed tablet mapping problems when using ArtRage on a multi-monitor system with various tablet mapping modes active.
4. Tool Problems.
- Changed the single 'dab' profile for the eraser to match its cursor shape.
- Improved tool performance to improve accuracy while sketching high speed curves.
- Fixed a bug that was causing intermittent failures of the 'eraser tip' of a two tipped stylus to operate as an eraser.
5. UI Problems.
- Fixed a bug whereby Save As for a painting file could allow the progress bar to go above 100%.
- Changed the construction method for the New File dialog so that it can operate on screens smaller than 1024 x 768. On smaller screens you won't have access to Canvas Presets in the New File dialog, but they will still be available from your Paper Settings dialog after you create the new file.
- Fixed a bug whereby the tool settings pane could appear when it had no controls in it, specifically if hotkeys were used to change tools while the UI was hidden.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing deletion of canvas presets after the first page.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the wrong grain file to be loaded with canvas presets. You should now have a bunch of more interesting canvases!
- Fixed a bug that caused the Load Tracing Image / Edit Trace Settings button to display the incorrect text when loading a file that has a tracing paper.
- Fixed a bug that caused the color picker to lose its automatic color selection warning when loading a file that has a tracing paper.
- Fixed a bug on OS X that would cause you not to be prompted to save changes in an edited file when creating a new one, if you had panel transitions turned off in the Preferences menu.
- Changed the About Box so that it displays the precise revision number of your version of ArtRage.
- Changed the Online Update box so that it can display more text.
6. Miscellaneous Problems.
- Fixed a bug whereby horizontal lines could appear across the canvas while painting.
- Fixed a bug whereby paint could suddenly lose its ability to smear. The problem related to a convoluted and uninteresting mix of drying code and stroke indexing, or something. *yawn*
- Fixed a bug whereby using an ArtRage settings file (artrage.prs) that had been used on a machine with a larger monitor could cause you to lose your movable panels.
- Added the color sampling hotkey to the shortcuts page of the manual (Alt-Click).
- Added Page Up and Page Down as zoom in and out, to solve some mapping problems on JIS layout keyboards.
- Fixed a crash bug relating to atanf2 on OS X 10.3.8, the crash was generally killing the application on loading.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the tracing image to offset when zooming.
Tablet Settings Notes.
A number of different tablet settings were causing problems in ArtRage 2.02. ArtRage uses the high precision point tracking of the graphics tablet for sub pixel input and in some cases that was having problems where tablets didn't support it, or other issues arose. Windows users can now set ArtRage to use 'Mouse Mode', which turns off the high resolution input support and should allow proper operation of the tablet. You may find that this reduces the quality of the paint strokes, and if that is the case you can zoom in to get more accurate lines.
Printing Notes.
Some users have reported that when they print an image from ArtRage, they get a black box printed instead of their painting. This appears to be due to the print drivers not supporting the high quality stretch ArtRage is using. In all reported cases so far, updating the drivers for the printer has solved the problem.
File I/O Notes.
We're working on a file import and export guide at the moment that goes over some of the details of how to get the best results from the system. There has been some confusion regarding save/load and export/import. Save and Load work with ArtRage painting files only. Import and Export are used if you want to save your work in a format other applications can use.
When exporting a multi-layered ArtRage file as a Photoshop document, the layers will be preserved. When you import a multi-layered Photoshop document, layers with bitmap content are loaded in to individual ArtRage layers. Each layer in ArtRage has a number of properties that require additional memory for storage on top of the standard color information (for example, the volume of paint, the metallic value etc.) so you may find that the file size increases when loading a document.
When importing a document that has layers with transparency, ArtRage does not give those layers 'paint volume'. Giving them volume would cause problems around the edges of the layer contents. This means that the layers with transparency can only be smudged, not smeared. If you merge a layer like this down on to another layer that already has paint in it however, you can smear the result.
Download the ArtRage 2.05 Updater for Windows.
Download the ArtRage 2.05 Updater for OS X.
Note for OS X users: If you purchased ArtRage 2.0 in the first few days of release you may find this patch does not apply. In that case, please contact us directly at support@artrage.com and we'll arrange an alternative update for you. |
