My honest thoughts on photoshop

[kappapeachie]

Basically...the vector tools are crap. I'm going be really honest. It's hard to make balloon tail tips look decent without a few tweaks.

It's also a chore to make word effects look decent without the use of auto actions. There's is no text warp took soo you have to use the transform tool for that. The text ends up looking like carp as a result.

Those are my gripes with the program.

Oh, and there is no gradient fills for text balloons. I hope they implement this eventually.

While there at it, gradient text.

[Raven_C]

Hmmm yeah, PS has some cool bells and whistles, and photo-editing capabilities (if you're into that), but otherwise it's not really a great dedicated drawing program, imo. I have Photoshop CS6 and I use it only for the font tool tbh. Lol. I guess it's because I don't really care about the fancy effects... So this opinion is coming from someone who doesn't really make use of filters all that much.

What I like about CSP is that it's a smoother experience, and doesn't require 10,000 horsepower and a donkey on a treadmill to use it like PS does.

But i think we can all agree that Adobe CC is expensive as f*ck My sister has the subscription because she's used to Adobe programs, but her wallet is always crying.

[ZombieOwl]

I only have photoshop elements, so it doesn't have a lot of snazzy features. It does what I need it to, though. It was a freebie with the graphics tablet I bought through Wacom (2 programs and a tablet for $200). Hope that helps in your quest ^^

[morcalivan]

I have both, but I can count the amount of times I've used Photoshop for my comic on one hand. It has nice layer effect options, which are especially cool on text... only I have never been able to get any of those to not look cheesy when I use it.

I shifted over to CSP mostly because Photoshop's draw tools felt meh to me. Also panels are a pain to create.

[dfairwise]

CSP has a built in stabilizer

The current Creative Cloud has that now. But it's a very recent addition.

Photoshop's lowest costing plan- $10 bucks a month; at 1 year that is $120 bucks. Their "regular" plan above that is $20/month- that's $240/yr...compared to getting CSP Pro or EX on sale for $25 or $90 bucks- a one time payment, and it's yours for life.

I don't live in the US. Photoshop would cost me in the thousands in my local currency for one time payment. The subs would only cost me a few hundred in a year. That's a great deal to me.

[holithefox]

Hey dude, you should check out Medibang Paint Pro. It's like bootleg photosshop but I used it to kick off and it's pretty good AND free to donwload online.

not promo

[indigodrawing]

What's wrong with Clip? Maybe it doesn't have all of Photoshop's features but it's got more than enough for what I need, plus its vector drawing tools are really nice. I used to use Photoshop but moved to Clip because my old version was getting harder to run on modern OSes and I was no way in hell forking out for a subscription.

[joannekwan]

Per making speech bubbles, I just draw it out by hand with a normal brush/pen.
I've gone 10 years without a stabilizer, you can only get good with practice.

And text does take some extra work in CSP but it can be done.
As for a gradient fill, you could hand-paint a gradient to lay over the ballon or drop in a gradient file.
Same for text, you can render the text layer and then do a mask with a gradient layer.

[fleohr]

Medibang is 100% free and it can work with script brushes, which means the brushes don't lose resolution if used in a larger size!

They also have option to create your own brushes (they won't be script brushes if you use image instead of coding), just like photoshop and SAI

As for the filters, I use the color mode settings to make them, and there are also tutorials, materials, brushes, etc on Medibang website

[punkarsenic]

It's funny you say that because CSP is the industry standard, at least in East Asia

ive been told before by british comics people that photoshop is the industry standard, so i suspect theres a bit of a regional divide there.

CSP seems way better suited to comics than photoshop (and i hate adobe as a business), although a lot of their brushes are designed with manga in mind from the looks of it.

[okellymx]

Personally, I despise Clip Studio Paint and it runs terribly on all my computers from a cheap laptop to my gaming desktop. However Photoshop runs better even at higher resolutions. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but that doesn't affect how my artwork/comics come out. You just need to really learn the program to get what you want out of it. That's why people can manage to do anything with Photoshop because they spent the time to learn how to do it. CSP doesn't have the same industry resources as Photoshop, but search long enough and you'll find someone who knows what you're looking for.
You could try getting affinity designer and use that with Clip Studio. To make up for the lack of design tools that's what I do.

[andrew17]

I don't know about industry standard but I use PhotoShop because it integrates well with all the other apps in the suite. And because it's effectively free. But that's because in real life I'm in magazine publishing and have a subscription at work that allows an installation on two workstations - thus I have one at home and one at work. So if anyone knows someone who already has a PhotoShop subscription, there may be an installation laying dormant waiting to be used.

[Cavechan]

Erm, I guess I must be an exception because I find CSP to be WAY more clunky than Photoshop. One thing I like about PS over CSP is that it doesn't lag nearly as much. It's so frustrating in CSP to have to wait... and wait... and wait... for an effect to load/update. There is also the HUGE problem with the text tool. I type my text all into CSP so I can get the word bubbles the right size, but at the end, I import my page into PS to finalize the text, crop the page, and resize/save for web.

Don't forget that PS and CSP were made for very different uses. CSP was made for comics (which amazes me even more that the type tool is such a pos) and PS was made... for photos. It wasn't made for drawing or coloring or making comics.

I personally think it's best to use the two together.

[punkarsenic]

There is also the HUGE problem with the text tool.

oh yeah csp's text tool is absolutely awful, i think everyone can agree on that

[FedoraSpooky]

Last time I checked, Clip Studio Paint will often have sales where you can grab it pretty cheap. I bought my license for it for like 15 bucks. I will say it does have less tools than photoshop, at least as far as filters and photomanipulation goes, but it's more suited for illustration and there's tons of amazing free brushes you can get for it!

It's got it's problems, as all programs do, but honestly I've found it to work well enough. I've used it for all my pages so far, haven't run into any trouble save for the occasional bug caused by windows updating. Most importantly- no monthly fees, especially just to be able to use the thing! That was the biggest selling point for me. XD

[TheBryceKrispy]

hell, I seen people make decent webcomics with ms paint

Is this really true? I don't believe you.

[Daknight]

I am in the otherway around. I used photoshop and then move to CSP (still use Photoshop for work though). Is easier on having the comic option (easy panel making, easy bubbles and for me the text works perfect). I really like that if there is a ballon the text instantly recognize it and goes to the middle of it.

[vworksart]

I moved to CSP from Photoshop as well. Photoshop wasn't really built for drawing or digital art but photo editing instead. Not sure when the shift to art happened but in my experience I think Clip studio is a better tool for what I do over Photoshop. It has great brushes, awesome tools for comics, etc. Not to mention it doesn't break my bank... Which I value a lot lol!

[NickRowler]

I was introduced to Photoshop when I was in middle school, so back in 2003-ish and I have been playing around with it over the years. I think I mostly use it now because it's just what I have used for all these years. I like the shortcut keys and the navigation. I also use Photoshop at my job. I'm sort of worried that if I tried to switch to something new, I would get super frustrated by how different it functions. I hate using Flash due to how different it is to Photoshop.

[NickRowler]

When I was in high school, I didn't own a copy of Photoshop so what I did was draw the comic by hand and scan it in at a high resolution. I then brought it into MS Paint to color it. When uploading it to DeviantArt, I set the setting to display it at a smaller size to remove the jagged edges and I ended up with something that looked like this...