PaintTool SAI .. and any other non-adobe painters.

ive seen lots of anime art done with PaintTool SAI ... so .. has anyone used it?.. is it better then adobe photoshop??...

anyone know of any other non-abobe programs that might be good for painting ?? (*with exception of coral *)

Are you looking for a general painting program? If so, there's a few I've tried. If you are looking for something similar to Photoshop, then I recommend GIMP.

When I paint in GIMP, I use pretty much the same method I use in Photoshop. I get most of the job done with hard round and soft round brushes, and use textured/custom brushes to add some flavor. GIMP doesn't utilize tilt and rotation of your tablet pen, but you can hardly fault it as it is a free software.

Here are some recent paintings I did in GIMP.
GIMP exercise 1
GIMP exercise 2
And one I did in Photoshop a while ago for comparison.
Photoshop exercise

As you can see, these are pretty similar. If I didn't say which program I used, you'd think these were painted with the same program.

If you are looking to simulate traditional media, Painter is the most obvious choice, but since you are not asking about it, ArtRage is another one. I haven't tried ArtRage, but I've heard good things about it. There is a free version, and the full version is only $25.

Corel Sketch Pad is a new program they just released. I have tried out the 30-day trial. I absolutely love the pencil brush in Sketch Pad, much more so than the pencil brushes in Painter X. You can get thicker lines by tilting your pen, and it feels very natural. Sadly, I can't recomment purchasing Sketch Pad as it is too expensive (around $120 I think) for what it does. I just wish I could use the same pencil brush in Painter X.
Sketch Pad Pencil brush example
Sketch Pad Chalk brush example

Now, if you want to try something totally wild and get your creative juice flowing, get Alchemy! It is another free program. I just got it a couple of days ago myself, and it is amazing. It is hard to describe how it works...you basically play around with lines and shapes. Here is my first Alchemy experiment worth showing.

I have no idea which would be best suited for anime art, but I hope this helps you find what you are looking for!

That Alchemy things looks veeeeeeeeeery intriguing! Very intriguing, indeed!

Wow, very nice Lousy. Personally, I'd love to see a Tute on how you created your GIMP exercises.

I haven't made tutorials before, but making one will probably be a good practice for me as well...so I will try to put something together in the future if I can figure out how to present it clearly. No promise when, though.

Good enough.

Wacom Intuos4 is out, and when you buy one, you can choose to download two of the following(why not all 3? ):

Adobe Photoshop® Elements 7 Windows or Adobe Photoshop® Elements 6 for Macintosh

Autodesk SketchBook Express® 2010

Corel Painter™ Sketch Pad

Intuos4 is expensive, but at least you can get big discounts on Photoshop CS4 and Painter 11 if you pick Photoshop Elements and Painter Sketch Pad.

I guess you can add Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to the list of painting programs you should try out. They have a free trial as is the case with the other programs.

I really want to try out the new features in Intuos4, but I guess I will stick with my Intuos3 6x11 for now, because I really like the size. A medium Intuos4 looks a bit too small and a large Intuos4 may be a little too big for me. Besides, I want to save for Zbrush...sigh, you can never keep up with all the hardware and the software they keep coming out with.

My next Wacom will be a Cintiq.

...one day.