What is PD Particles?
PD Particles is a software program for sketching, doodling, painting, and drawing with particles. In addition it is also a natural painting program, just like his big brother PD Pro but with less features. It's a natural painting program because it's lets you copy the effects of traditional materials like oil paint, watercolor but also charcoal, tempera or pastels.
What are particles?
When you paint with particles, the PC generates numerous particle traces that shoot out of the cursor under the control of the mouse or tablet pen. These particles leave traces that shrink in size, change color, are affected by gravity, mouse speed and motion. They can also split into more particle traces and carry other brushes that paint natural media effects. The resulting effect produces effects like foliage, grass, shrubbery, hair, furr, waterfalls, fireworks
and more. It can also be used with effects brushes such as smearing to turn photos
into a handpainted or stylized look.
The interface
The interface of PD Particles is very straight forward. You have the Drawing tools, the Zoom tools and Color tools at the left side of the interface, and the settings for the particles sytem, brushes and bristles on the right side. At the top the menu bar and the preset menu. All very simple and easy to understand.
|
PD Particles interface - Click image for larger view |
 |
PD Particles - Tool panel |
Next to the brush tool you have the color selector tool and the Undo and Clear option. The tools panel and Particles panel are open when you open the program. You can open some extra panels like a Brush images panel, Gradient settings panel, and a Paper panel. There are also four filters you can choose from: a fade last action, adjust, color, and blur filter.
Presets
For the Presets you can choose between the following categories: particles, simple, airbrush, pen, pencil, oils, tempera, pastels, watercolor, effects, and organic effects. There are enough presets to spend a lot of time exploring and with the additional settings unique styles can be created and saved. There are extra settings if you use a tablet; you can set the pressure controls, size, and opacity. Besides the settings for the tablet there are various other settings for your brush to create a unique look like: size, opacity, angle, scale, hue, and more.
The Particle system also includes a Bristles mode. This can be used to give a bristled painted look to an existing image. Great for turning a photograph to a unique piece of art that appears hand painted. Bristles mode also supports tablet pressure and even tilt.
You also have the option to add a paper texture to your brush which can add a 3D surface look and bumbiness to your painting.
|
 |
Bristles presets |
Paper texture - Click image for larger view |
Import & export
You can open more than 60 different file formats. The default file format of PD Prarticles is Targa. PD Particles can save images as BMP, JPG, PNG, and TIFF images.
Conclusion
A great and complete art program for anyone who is interested in digital painting, sketching, drawing or just doodling. It's great for novices who want to get familiar with digital painting but also for experienced users because of the endless results you can create with the presets and brushes, the professional results, and of course the natural paintings effects. PD Particles is also great in addition to Adobe Photoshop because you can open and save images in
Photoshop-compatible formats like Tiff, Targa, PNG and more, and Photoshop does not support the ability to paint with particles brushes or with natural effects. Also, with a price of $19,- you really can't go wrong.
Click here to read a short tutorial about using PD Particles by Bernard Dumaine.
Availability & Pricing
PD Particles is available as a download of 7 MB and costs only $19 USD.
The best3D.com
PD Particles, PD Pro and Project Dogwaffle are trademarks of Dan Ritchie.
Visit Dan Ritchie's homepage: Squirreldome.com
