Vikki Olds
November 2005
PD Pro 3.5, where have you been? In this day and age of the internet sometimes things just get hidden by the voluminous quantities of information and products available. PD Pro is one of those products I've missed. Get some coffee and get ready for a lengthy overview of this terrific piece of software. I'll cover as much as I can but I don't think I can cover it all in one review. There are so many terrific features in PD Pro.
I'll try to take you through this software from beginning to end and hopefully I won't miss anything as there is a lot to see. We'll start with the interface and some features there and then we'll get into some really fantastic and unique painting tools.
Below is a screenshot of the main user interface as it looks when you first open PD Pro in its default setting.
You can change the way that PD Pro is set up when you first start it up and this can be done from the Prefs panel. Below shows the General tab and this is where you allocate how much memory you want to reserve, if you want to have a blank image opened automatically and the size of the buffer. The buffer is a place that holds your image information in memory. You can also adjust the amount of memory you want to allow for undo actions by clicking the Memory Options button and setting an amount. You can set it up so that if there are plugins you use a lot they can be set to start when the program starts. A really cool feature on this tab among all the others is the option for the Startup well file. The well is the color palette and you can use the default or create your own at any time using the color mixer. Wells can be saved so you can create custom wells and use them at will.
The Interface tab allows you to set how the interface acts with pointing devices and screen refresh rates. You can also customize the look of the main interface and panels to your liking by choosing colors and even images to replace the default look. Smooth scaling is an option that allows you to have a smoother looking image when you are in zoomed mode. Spline based input reduces segmentation caused by slow sample rates from a mouse or tablet. Checking this creates smooth lines instead of choppy ones.
When PD Pro starts you have a panel with some tools and the color palette. The color palette has four mixing modes which should cover just about every persons preference and it doesn't stop there. You can open the mixer and actually mix colors with a brush and then select that mixed color to use.
The color mixer allows you to set the size of the brush you use for mixing, allows for undo, allows you to clear the palette completely and start with all new colors. It's simply a matter of picking colors from the palette, dropping them in the mixer and using the brush to mix them. This is really cool!
Or, you can hit the little button on the top right and choose from other blends that will load in the mixer for you.
One more thing before I move on from color options. For those of us who are color challenged, and we know who we are; there is the red, yellow, blue wheel. Pick a color on the wheel and it will give you the colors you need that go together. You can lighten and darken them with a push on the slider.
Or, here's a real treat! Open an image that has the colors you want to use and you can create a palette from that image automatically. You can create a gradient with those colors automatically also. This is color power! With the click of the mouse a whole palette with all the right colors! It doesn't get easier than this.
That's not even the whole story for colors in PD Pro. You'll need to download the demo and try it out for yourself.
I want to get back to this buffer stuff a little because it is a very powerful tool. First off, the buffer in PD Pro is really just the image that you are working on, a swap image or buffer and an alpha channel. The alpha channel is similar to a selection area. You can use this buffer in several ways. You can use it to store a copy of your original image so you can get back to it if you don't like the adjustments you've made to it, or to store a place in your image that you've worked to and like the results before making more changes to it, you can rub one buffer to another and you can use filters to modify your main image. You can also clear your buffer completely plus a lot of other things that are represented in the screenshot below.
Before we go further I'd like to mention one of many little features that PD Pro offers. Notice the shortcuts. You have the normal everyday Windows shortcuts for familiarity but then PD Pro offers what I will call more intuitive options for shortcuts. What better shortcut for undo can there be but 'u' or for redo (again) 'a'. You'll find lots of one key shortcuts that make sense in PD Pro to make the work flow much simpler. There's lots more that buffers offer so you'll really want to download the demo and try them out.
Another very intuitive feature in PD Pro is how it allows you to find things easy. For most things all you have to do is right click on something and most times a menu will appear with many options. You don't have to wade through menu items and guess where something might be hidden. Simply right click on a button and there you will have the options associated with it. Below is a screenshot of the tools panel and next to it a screenshot after right clicking on the brush tool. Each set of menus has many more options that speed your workflow by offering brushes that we use everyday to paint with.
You can set up how your brush works with the Brush settings panel. Adjust how it reacts to your tablet and mouse.
Below is a screenshot of brushes.
There are a lot of pre built custom effects that you can use and as is the case with most of PD Pro, customizable to your liking.
The PostFX options are simply amazing. Using a regular brush, in the example below an oil brush a simple stroke can give the effects shown below. These effects are drawn after you complete your brush stroke and are done automatically.
I haven't seen anything yet that makes creating a drop shadow for text and art as easy as PD Pro. I might add also that just hand writing something in a lot of other apps has its problems. With PD Pro, I wrote it once and it came out smooth and readable. Wonderful stuff!
While we're on the subject of brushes, here's a little feature that I really like! It has to do with clipboard operations. Let's say you find an image that you would like to use as a brush. You simply copy it to the clipboard, right click on Custom Brush selector, apply some settings and wallah! you have your image as a brush.
PD Pro has layers so you can work on each part of an image and its options for working on the Alpha Channel are amazing. Its fill options are second to none as well as its paper textures. Some of the many painting options include painting with textures, patterns, and it has novas, lens and flares galore! PD Pro has scanning capabilities digital image editing tools as well.
It doesn't stop there. PD Pro has a full animation engine that is as intuitive as the main user interface. You can even create animated brushes!
There is an SDK for PD Pro for those of you programming gurus who like to make plugins!
You can make brushes out of your text and you can even make it animated so that you can draw your text in a free form way. Each letter of your text is placed in a frame.
Now, the next set of tools is most awesome! Most graphics editing programs have their own little special set of brushes. For PSP it's the Picture Tube tool. For PD Pro it's Particles and Bristles and in particular Optipustics. And, as the manual says, the shortcut is 'i' for incredible. There's not doubt about it. Optipus is incredible!
Trust me, download the demo just try out this part of the program. These effects are fantastic! You can set these up in many different ways for different effects. You can set it so that the particles actually follow the mouse or pen and much more. There are a bunch of free particle effects that you can download to add to those that come installed with PD Pro. You'll want to get those.
There are a lot of tutorials to get you started and the manual is wonderfully full and complete. Painting couldn't get any easier than it is with PD Pro! One of the tutorials I played with was for creating textures. You have to try it out. It is simply amazing how few steps it takes to create very powerful textures.
A list of the FX Filters included with PD Pro are too many to list and all very powerful.
I haven't had this much fun reviewing a piece of software for a very long time.
This review is getting quite long, and I could go on for much longer but I think the best way for you to learn more about PD Pro and how great it really is for you to download the demo. Try it out!
Pricing: $97.00
Company Website or URL: http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/index.html
Requirements:
Windows
Copyright (c) 2005, Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved