This week’s FreewareFrenzy is for artists and those who appreciate art. I will be taking a look at the virtual art studio program: ArtRage 2. Van Gogh and Da Vinci had large studios to work in, but with the various tools and mediums in ArtRage, you can quickly create a masterpiece on your monitor that is worthy of any art gallery.
As is common with freeware, there are some key differences between the free and full ($20) versions. The Free version of the program gives you a paintbrush, pencil, palette knife, chalk, felt pen, crayon, eraser and color sampler. The Full version adds an airbrush, paint rollers and tubes, metallic paints and glitter, Paint Shop integration and the ability to work in layers. Each version supports both mice and drawing tablets.
I found the layout very simple and intuitive. Tools are arranged along the edges of your workspace, giving you not only easy access, but also plenty of room to work. When you first open ArtRage, you can choose a canvas size and type. In Free, you can also edit the grain type and color of the canvas. The latter is especially helpful to avoid background coloring.
First choose a tool from the bottom left arc and adjust its width with either the plus/minus buttons or manually with a double click. A bar on the left edge offers additional tweaks to your tool of choice, such as pressure, angle, loading (for paintbrush) and auto clean (to prevent unwanted color mixing with the paintbrush).
Next, choose a color from the arc in the bottom right of the canvas. Choose from the full rainbow of colors and adjust the hue via the slider along the side. Available only in the full version, there is an area to store frequently used colors, above the wheel on the right. However, you can easily overcome this slight inconvenience using the color sampler tool. Just select it and click on any area of the canvas. You will then see that color in the color wheel and you can use it again.
The bottom-most of the tools controls zoom, move, trace and layers. Tracing images
(Opacity can be adjusted for easy tracing or faded hints) lets anyone re-create an image with an artist’s touch. Or it can simply help the less artistic with difficult objects such as the human body or complex landscapes.
Finally, the bar along the top has access to each tool and option available in ArtRage. I found it most helpful for Undo/Redo when I made frequent mistakes. All tools can be hidden individually with a manual click on their green button. They will also auto-hide if you are drawing close to or under one of them. You can also easily hide everything with a right click, for a clean workspace.
The main complaint I had about the program was that the leading edge of my color did not show up exactly as I would have liked. Because there is not an actual brush to obscure my view of the edge of the color, I felt it would have been helpful for the edge to show up exactly under my crosshairs. Instead, a tiny bit of extra color showed up after I released my mouse button. Once I realized this, I was careful not to make a mistake, but it was a minor annoyance.
In conclusion, ArtRage 2 is certainly not a replacement for Paint Shop Pro, but it is a well made program for anyone with a need for some artistic tools. All of the tools react realistically, meaning that brush strokes start out thin and widen slightly as the stroke continues. Paints and the other mediums mix and blend when added on top or along side of other mediums and colors. With a bit of practice, you could be opening a gallery in no time.
