How are you doing during the COVID-19 lockdown? I must say, in some ways this lockdown has been good for me… while in others maybe not so much. Today, however, I will be telling you about two ways it has been good to me.
I may or may not have disclosed this information anywhere online before, but I have been using PaintShop Pro to do editing for over 20 years. OVER 20 YEARS! I started out playing with Windows 3.1’s “Paint Brush” (if you recall this) on a 386 PC. Later I got hold of a really early version of PaintShop Pro (PSP), which at the time was owned or published by Jasc Software Inc, which of course was bought by Corel around 2004. Ahh now there’s a familiar name, right? Well back in those days PSP came with GIF Animator or Animation Shop, if memory serves me. That was great fun – in fact I think my love for motion graphics started there already when I designed each and every frame in order to animate.
However, for quite some time I have had my eye on some functionalities available in Photoshop (PS), that I do not have in PSP; some of which would make my life easier in some cases. With knowing PSP so well, and pulling off whatever design my heart desires, I just never bothered much with PS… until yesterday…
Yesterday I decided to jump in on PS for a change and try a whole new composite artwork. The gist of the artwork you see here, was done within 30 minutes to an hour.
I am happy with how things function in PS to me, so far, and I have also gone through my settings to set some things pretty much the way I am used to them working, just so I don’t slow down too much being in a different application. And this was late last night… So one of the ways the lockdown has been good for me, is the fact that I started to finally get busy in PS. Because lets face it – if life was still such a rush or I kept busy with other things, I may not have taken this time to get into it.
Another way the lockdown has server me well, is that today I pulled out my WACOM Intuos 5 Medium Touch tablet again, which I have severely under utilized since I purchased it a few years ago. I spent some time on getting this to work as I expect/want it to. FYI I had the issue again of not being able to zoom with the touch ring as well, but its all sorted now luckily. As I continued working and trying other ideas with this particular artwork, I was using the tablet to do it. It slowed me down…. a LOT… but I keep thinking about how everyone always says “you gonna hate using tablet at first, but later you wouldn’t wanna be without it”. So while having had some ups and downs during the process of creating this artwork, I definitely also got to see the benefits of using the tablet again.
I am going to do my best to stick to the tablet and stick to some PS for now. I am already quite eager to sketch away on a blank canvas as well. Hmmm…