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Elcet · 5th February 2008, 22:05

Dear Cedric,

To choice between pixel and vector drawing mode is a matter of personal taste and feeling. I must recognize that I immediately jumped to vector because I have been since a long time aficionado of Illustrator. However, I consider that, even they are not very well built, the vector functions are of a fantastic interest for who is looking for very regular, soft and "pure"-looking curves, because in that field the pro version (EX) has great possibilities of edition: softening the irregular strokes, thickening, thinning, altering the path by tilting on one end, both ends etc… which all are unavailable in pixel mode: you simply have to wipe a bad brush stroke. Because I am telling the story of a kind, sweet-hearted and sexy woman (even if she is sometimes very agressive and very proud), soft curves are a benefit. Vector mode is also an help to draw technical objects that need regular curves that before I draw with a soft lead-plastic ruler or curved plastic guides. I add that I use a very crude screen-tablet, a Wacom LS-400, which is far from the precision of the current Cintiq.

Unfortunately, Celsys seems not to have discovered that one should be able to draw fills in vector mode (if they are intelligently conceived by the software programmer, that I am not), therefore in MS 3.0 EX with vectors you can only draw lines, thin or thick but lines! So, unlike Piem commented yesterday, I noticed is that if you convert a raster Layer into Vectors, the fills are destroyed (!) and transformed into paths (the manual confirms this stupid feature)!

Having done this sad experiment, I decided to ENCLOSE every black surface (such as the hair of my heroin who is Asiatic) completely by vector lines, either thin or thick. If I must leave these opened (such as to draw eyebrows), the surface that I draw is in fact a thick vector stroke. This way I should not be bothered if there is some pixellation of the black surfaces, anyway these surfaces are reduced to very simple ones because they are immediately selected with the Magic Wand tool. If some problem happens, I should be able to replace the surface into Photoshop with the equivalent tool.

A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE FOR MAC USERS: IF YOU PLAN TO JUMP TO MAC OS 10.5, NEVER DO IT EXCEPT IF YOU USE ONLY MANGA STUDIO DEBUT!!! STAY IN MAC OS 10.4.11 (MS works on 10.4.11 correctly) OR OLDER SYSTEMS BECAUSE MANGA STUDIO 3.0 EX DOES NOT WORKS AT ALL UNDER THE SYSTEM 1.5!!! ALTERNATIVELY BUY AN OLD MAC SUCH AS AN AFFORDABLE POWERFUL G4 TO OPERATE MANGA STUDIO EX.

Cedric says also that he has problems with Vista… Stay on Windows XP or buy a good old PC running on XP, this is cheap today!

Thanks a lot for friends Cedric and Piem to participate to this useful discussion.

Edouard

5th February 2008, 22:05	#9 (permalink)
Elcet Vertex Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Paris Posts: 14	Dear Cedric, To choice between pixel and vector drawing mode is a matter of personal taste and feeling. I must recognize that I immediately jumped to vector because I have been since a long time aficionado of Illustrator. However, I consider that, even they are not very well built, the vector functions are of a fantastic interest for who is looking for very regular, soft and "pure"-looking curves, because in that field the pro version (EX) has great possibilities of edition: softening the irregular strokes, thickening, thinning, altering the path by tilting on one end, both ends etc… which all are unavailable in pixel mode: you simply have to wipe a bad brush stroke. Because I am telling the story of a kind, sweet-hearted and sexy woman (even if she is sometimes very agressive and very proud), soft curves are a benefit. Vector mode is also an help to draw technical objects that need regular curves that before I draw with a soft lead-plastic ruler or curved plastic guides. I add that I use a very crude screen-tablet, a Wacom LS-400, which is far from the precision of the current Cintiq. Unfortunately, Celsys seems not to have discovered that one should be able to draw fills in vector mode (if they are intelligently conceived by the software programmer, that I am not), therefore in MS 3.0 EX with vectors you can only draw lines, thin or thick but lines! So, unlike Piem commented yesterday, I noticed is that if you convert a raster Layer into Vectors, the fills are destroyed (!) and transformed into paths (the manual confirms this stupid feature)! Having done this sad experiment, I decided to ENCLOSE every black surface (such as the hair of my heroin who is Asiatic) completely by vector lines, either thin or thick. If I must leave these opened (such as to draw eyebrows), the surface that I draw is in fact a thick vector stroke. This way I should not be bothered if there is some pixellation of the black surfaces, anyway these surfaces are reduced to very simple ones because they are immediately selected with the Magic Wand tool. If some problem happens, I should be able to replace the surface into Photoshop with the equivalent tool. A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE FOR MAC USERS: IF YOU PLAN TO JUMP TO MAC OS 10.5, NEVER DO IT EXCEPT IF YOU USE ONLY MANGA STUDIO DEBUT!!! STAY IN MAC OS 10.4.11 (MS works on 10.4.11 correctly) OR OLDER SYSTEMS BECAUSE MANGA STUDIO 3.0 EX DOES NOT WORKS AT ALL UNDER THE SYSTEM 1.5!!! ALTERNATIVELY BUY AN OLD MAC SUCH AS AN AFFORDABLE POWERFUL G4 TO OPERATE MANGA STUDIO EX. Cedric says also that he has problems with Vista… Stay on Windows XP or buy a good old PC running on XP, this is cheap today! Thanks a lot for friends Cedric and Piem to participate to this useful discussion. Edouard