Any advice for a complete n00b?

[Strangechilde]

Greetlings!

Hi all-- I just got Manga Studio Debut for Mac (I've been sick for more than a month now and I figured I deserved a toy to cheer myself up). I'm hoping some of you might be able to give me a few pointers. I'm not a proper artist-- I dabble with Poser and Photoshop and I do the odd character sketch for games I'm involved with, but I have no training and about as much talent. ;) I must say that a lot of the work I've seen from you people is just amazing.

I've been playing with MSD for a few hours and I'm finding the interface fairly easy to understand, as it's not that far off Photoshop, but I'm puzzled by some of the tools... how do you all get such nice clean lines???? I can turn the correction up to 20 and my strokes are as wibbly as anything. It's better if I use the brush, but then I find that I can't really predict where the line will go. Is this just something that takes time to learn or is there some setting I can fix somewhere?

Any general advice is most welcome, as are pointers to tutorials and the like. I've found a few and read them over, but I reckon you know where the good ones are that I may have missed.

Thanks for reading!

[sergey500]

Well...what do you try to use? Pencil? Well I use pencil for sketch layer and pren the rest, sometimes go brush to make it more...varied. That produces nice lines (with tablet). But I use more then one program so yeah. I later export it to Photoshop and pen tool or brush (if i am lazy enough) the rest of the gaps that somehow appear through pixels. Then I get nice enough lines. Or maybe you;re probleam lies in what DPI you use.

Now for my question. When exporting, what is the difference between exporting by pixels or exporting by length?

[Strangechilde]

Of course it's the resolution... thanks. I don't know why I didn't think to look at that. Just too overawed by the coolness of the program I guess. That and my brain must be getting soft.

As far as I can gather, there's not much difference between exporting by pixel specification or by size-- perhaps it's just for your convenience, in case you need to resize and know the value in one but not the other? The user's guide just says

2a.Export Image by Pixel Specification [Output Image Size] Specify the size of an image to export in pixels. Enter an appropriate value based on the [Original Image Size]. If resizing is not required, leave the value unchanged.

2b.Export Image by Dimension Specification [Output Image Size] Specify the size of an image to export in [mm], [cm], or [inches]. Enter an appropriate value based on the [Original Image Size]. If resizing is not required, leave the value unchanged.

Somebody else may know better...

[ouch]

Well, it actually is the same thing...if you know the relationship of DPI and printsize pretty well.

The Export Image by Pixel Specification is best for web image output, because you can specify the pixel measurement by Pixel. Let said you want to put a TP standard size manga on the web. A 480px x 714px @ 72dpi image will be fit nicely on a 800 x 600 monitor. The goal to display image on the web is you don't want your readers to scroll all around to view the image. Beside, the small file size (72dpi) may look good on screen with fast download time, while the image quality is bad for print out...well you don't want people download and print out your art work..don't you? :rolleyes:

Export Image by Dimension Specification is for printing, and most printer/publisher would demend for specify document size and dpi. For example, TP demand for a 5.4in x 7.84in @ 1200dpi. (including bleed.) When convert to Pixel, the measurement will be 6000 x 8928. It will produce smooth and crispy line for the print out. Obviously, you don't want to put that on the internet because the big file size. ;)

Strangechilde: Try not turn the correction all up to 20....I only use 5...sometime smaller, depand on the line I want. And...what kind of tablet are you using...I don't know, it sounds like you got some driver problem. (Because it shouldn't wibble at correction 20....basicly it will turn it to a straight line.)

[Strangechilde]

I shouldn't really have any driver difficulties. I'm using a Wacom Graphire 2 with a Mac. Pressure sensitivity and all that is just fine. But to be honest I don't notice any difference if I turn the correction up to 20 or down to zero... it seems to behave exactly the same way.

Edit: that's because I had the box un-ticked. I am a complete goose...

To a large extent my difficulty has been fixed by upping the resolution from the default. I've just got a lot to learn, but the more I play with this program, the more I like it.