PD Howler 9.6 Digital Painter and Visual FX box Reviews

Crashes WAAAAAAAAAAY too many Times- buggy and Glitchy. Not easy to set up the UI. Great abilities in terms of editing , although hard to find interface- wise.

So in version 9.6 I am left a little flustered with the transparency, its a difficult adjustment than what I am used to. Other than that I think its really great, I just use transparency ALOT and I didnt really figure it out in the 96 minutes I used it even after watching some of the tutorials. I do not have a wacom tablet so alot of things are beyond me and are always a huge task, though I did enjoy using PD Howler I did not use it as my main go to for image editing and creation, I feel that there are other alternatives out there that are comparably better than this iteration of the software... perhaps the newer versions will prove much easier to use. Honestly the software overwhelmed me as I required a huge change to adjust to it. I think the adjustment period will take weeks of in program use and lots of tutorials and reading up on how to use the software, that said I will probably not touch this version again.

Very good program for an absolute novice like myself. Some really good tutorial videos that are easy to follow whilst giving great insight into how it works and some of the detail that you can make whilst using this. Honestly, myself, can not rate this enough. I have yet to use PD 10 (i have it) but would like more practice on this version. Will definately end up getting other versions and hopefully be able to create some masterpieces on them.

I really love this program. I think I never got so much concentrated creative power per invested dollar from any other program. I managed to produce this in my first day and I can assure you that uses like 1% of the potential of the program. Like with any other tool of worth, you have also to put your own imagination into the "How to use this feature". So i don't promise you that you will be a pro PD Howler artist after 10 days. but every hour you put into learning PD Howler will be awarded with new ways to express your art. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=691560746 Also ... do you hate programs without documentation ? Me too. Many promising programs out there die fast due to lack of documentation. But not this one. The creators have a solid performance record over years of dedicated creation of videos. https://www.youtube.com/user/pdhowler/videos Ok I worked some more with PD Howler. I saw many bad reviews. What is true, is that you really need to put time in this program. But I don't remember the devs claimed it is easy to use. If you have experience with Photoshop and 3rd party tools you will agree that the brushes of PD Howler alone, are possibly worth the 70 dollars. And the program has much more to offer. Also I don't see why everyone always thinks that every program has to be a total jack-of-all-trades. Why I understand that not all can afford a Photoshop, there is the free Gimp. To produce good art is not something you do in 2 days. You have to put time into your applications. I think this tool is a MUST in the program portfolio of a pro. However, be prepared to put months until you realyl master it. But then be fair ... how much time did you have to put with Photoshop and Gimp ? Especially Gimp is a bit like PD Howler, very unusual approaches. But can you live without Gimp ? Me not, I need it next to Photoshop. Same with PD Howler, I am now working with it since a week seriously, and already I can't miss it anymore in my toolset. Here my latest work after a week with PD Howler: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692785160

1st impresions are good. It recognised my tablet and is pretty painless to get going. witthout a single referance to a tutorial or manaul. So for a straight 2d paint software it's good, though a little unintuative with erase being .. odd and the undo function soon hits the limet. The manaul seems out of date with dead links e.g http://www.gertrud.com.ar/ Brousing though the youtube channel for tutorials is confusing, with what seem more like demo vids, than something to learn by. A good one to start with is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18g0S0zkOVk&index=2&list=PLBqbdhU5umbcAiteIeILgE0xzVh5afOnf I'd rather have this unprofesional approach than a huge price hike though, so it's nothing I'm too concerned about.

Put it on sale at a decent discount for the first time in order to trick some people, knowing full well the next version is just around the corner. No warning on the product page. Now I'm stuck on 9.6 even though 10 just came out. Also, the brushes are way too small and there is no proper layer system in place, which all other drawing apps have had since version 1.

I wish there was a 'maybe' option, but for now I'll have to change this to a no (find my original review below). The reason I changed this to a no, is I personally feel the program is just too held back by its lack of opaque layers. There are a couple of workarounds one can do, but it gets exremely fiddly, saving all different kinds of alpha's, cutting out different parts of images, rubbing them through the swap image. While they are all possible, making a nice landscape scenery, and afterwards trying to correct mistakes becomes an exercise in futility. The developers say 'they like it that way', but I personally don't, and that's why I personally wouldnt recommend it anymore. The program has a lot of awesome features though, and one of the devs made a lot of tutorials and is active answering questions on the forums, but I just feel it's being held back by a lot when compared to programs such as photoshop. Furthermore the undo function is often very 'hard to use', and its easy to lose many hours of work because the undo stack works in weirrd ways. Really hoping they'll take the plunge and spend the time and resources on making this program support opaque layers etc., and I'll be sure to change my review when they do. As I said, you can do almost everything with the program, but many things just require too much fiddlyness for my taste. See my original review below: This software is very interesting, and my thumbs up comes with some reservations, but not enough to give it a thumbs down. In a sense it works a bit like photoshop/GIMP etc., but it's got its own style. It's very fun for people like me who just want to muck about. It has a ton of pre-set filters and brushes, and the 3d terrain rendering is great. That said, it takes a very weird approach regarding layers, and it can be very hard to get the results you want. I'm not entirely sure if there would be any disadvantage to just implementing normal layer alpha channels like other programs, but at least this one doesn't have it. That means it can be hard to add layers on top of each other without things messing up. There's some tricks you can do to try and circumvent it, but it's not perfect, and it's the #1 thing holding back this program. If it were implemented, I'm sure it would be an extremely successful product. That said, it is a powerful software that's lots of fun to use. There's also a ton of tutorials available on youtube, so I definitely don't regret spending the money.

[h1]PD Howler[/h1] PD Howler is a very capable digital painting software that as you learn the workflow, you may wonder if it's more of a video compositing software without nodes. There are 2 tutorial playlists that you should walkthrough, starting with Tunnels. [b]Workflow[/b], [b]Floating Transparency[/b], and [b]RGB morality[/b] are what confuse most people coming to Howler. Howler's workflow is different because it is more like a compositor workflow. Howler is also different as it uses [b]floating transparency[/b] instead of layer transparency. [b]Workflow[/b] is shown in the older Tunnels series. Working with floating transparency is shown in the [b]Transparency[/b] series. [b]RGB morality[/b] is more of a joke on my end, but basically I mean that the RGB value will always display regardless of whether transparency is on or off. For those who want to do 2D animation, there are no bones, so while Howler has exceptional potential for quality background work, you're going to want to import those backgrounds into software that has bones(rigging). [h1]The Floating Alpha Tools Menu[/h1] Found in this menu - View > Other > Alpha Panel... Floating transparency is transparency you call whenever you need transparency, whereas layer transparency is always there, you just turn it on whenever you need it. Neither is necessarily better, as they both have advantages, it's only that every other program in the digital painting category does not use floating transparency so even Howler in the future is planning to change to layer transparency too. So, if you try to bring a photoshop file with transparency included on every layer whether it's used or not into a program that relies on only the efficiency of floating transparency, well, the result makes people scratch their head. [h1]1. Tunnels[/h1] Tunnels is THE series to watch to understand PD Howler. That's all there is to it. Anything else might assume you're already familiar with the Tunnels series. There are 11 parts. Unorganized Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/user/pdhowler/search?query=tunnels+part The River Canyon series is like a themed redo of Tunnels, but some people have said it moves too fast. [h1]2. The Transparency Tutorial Playlist[/h1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiZC0xHQfT0&list=PLBqbdhU5umbeIHL-qR8gULywPvC5ZzXeh Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBqbdhU5umbeIHL-qR8gULywPvC5ZzXeh [h1]Other Tutorials[/h1] There's hundreds of tutorial videos for Howler all on one youtube channel. Among the more interesting ones are some of the space ones, the 2 part series on creating many different landscapes in minutes, and the following 3 part series on painting 3d rendered landscapes. The space ones can be found by keyword searching, while the other ones mentioned are found in the River Canyon playlist. Also, look up glazing and color palettes, that's a good one too. Good luck Howlin'.

This is a fantastic art studio, animation creator and more! The interface takes a bit of getting used to as does remembering where everything is located. There are extensive short cut keys but again they need to be learned. I am used to programs like Paintshop Pro 13 and the menu systems employed by them. PD Howler does have menus and a RIGHT CLICK system for accessing the properties of the menu item if available. The results that you can get even in a few minuets are astounding even for a poor computer artist like myself. There are so many options, tools and effects at your disposal that you don't know when to stop editing your work and just finish it! Add to this the fact that you can even create your own brushes and effects and you really do have a powerful art media toolbox! Overall for around £50 you can't go wrong with this product..... If I had one critism its that this program is really only going to be be any good for the more experienced art program user. Novice users may find the interface and menu system a little overwhelming..

There are pros and cons to get this software. I am mostly speaking of the drawing part of it, I haven't touched the animation part. Let's start with the pros : -You can quickly achieve a result -There are a lot of filters/effects -You can play around and have fun -devs look friendly :P Those are the main pros I see in this software. Now here are the cons : -There is no alpha channel, which means no opaque layers (if you want to have a layered rendering with a background, a foreground, layers in between, this won't work well for you). You can do stuff still, but you lose a lot of flexibility. This can be fun, if you're not serious, but for serious and precise work, this gets really hard with just that issue. -There are bugs, some of which can destroy your entire work. You will have to save often (which is good practice, but still..). Undos can paste an image from a different layer into your current layer, for exemple. -The devs don't seem to want to address those issues, although they do answers in the discussions, it seems hard to progress on something. Or at least, I'm very confused if they do, it's not clear. -The UI is getting outdated Overall, I would say, this software is cool if you want to be play around or if your work requires you to have very quick results that doesn't require precision. However, if you want to be a bit more serious, you'll be pulling your hair out soon enough ;) Note : That's for the drawing part of the software. The animation might be very cool, I do not know about it ;)