Flambé pictures – Flame Painter 4

Flame Painter is a painting programme with a difference. The main feature of the software is vivid brushstrokes that are controlled by various particle systems. This makes it possible to create fascinating effects that can hardly be realised with normal software – at least not without effort. Anyone trying out the software for the first time will easily understand how the programme got its name.

The tool invites you to experiment with a wide variety of brushes and different particle systems – with almost limitless possibilities.

A short but fiery introduction

The operation of the programme is similar to that of conventional painting programmes. You can get started without having to study the software too much: In principle, after creating a new file and selecting a brush, you can start painting straight away. In most cases, the results are astonishing – at least in most cases hardly predictable.

Below the standard menu bar (File, Edit, Layer …) there is a drawing area (canvas), arranged on the left, a tools palette, an options window and the brushes library. On the right-hand side there is a navigator window, a colour palette and a layers panel. The user interface can be customised to suit individual requirements by scaling and positioning the work windows. In the current version, the “Reset Layout to Default” option is available under the “Window” menu item. This allows you to restore order to the screen after a restart. A brush and a pen tool are available for drawing. There is also an eraser, a fill tool and an eyedropper. A symmetry and mirror option can be switched on for the brush tool. Flame Painter has various selection tools (rectangle, circle, polygon, freehand, magic wall) with Boolean functions to combine selections. With a crop tool, the creations can be brought into shape by cropping the canvas (absolutely similar to the crop tool in Photoshop) or the image size can be changed by dragging handles. At the top right is a navigator for quicker orientation in large documents, below this is the window with the colour palette.

At the bottom right, the Layers window is reminiscent of the layer window in Photoshop. A special feature are the vector layers, which allow strokes to be edited afterwards (both curve points and parameters of the particle system). Only one stroke at a time is possible on a vector layer. If the painting stroke is interrupted and restarted, the previous stroke is deleted. A separate vector layer must therefore be created for each stroke.

It is precisely these vector layers that elevate Flame Painter from a hobby tool to a real tool, because this is the only way to achieve a certain degree of control over the living brushes. It is also possible to import SVG graphics, for example. Any brushes can subsequently be assigned to paths.

Flame Painter imports Photoshop files as well as PNG, JPG, BMP and TIF formats. Images can also be dragged directly from an Internet browser into Flame Painter.
The complex features of Flame Painter are the particle systems, the painting modes of Flame Painter. These are standard:

• Flame – the classic painting mode, in which the brushstroke follows the cursor with different oscillations depending on the speed, creating the most bizarre colour patterns of varying brightness.
• Follow – here the brushstroke follows the cursor more precisely.
• Ribbon – the manual calls this painting mode “Loop”.

Various parameters can be set for each of these particle systems, all of which influence each other. Hundreds of brush effects (settings) are available to create seemingly infinite variations of strokes.

Palette – hier Farbverläufe – links die Gradientenbibliothek

Newly burnt in Flame Painter 4

• The particle systems have been expanded to include the additional “Liner”, “Elastic” and “Fuzzy”. Around 250 prepared brushes (brush presets) are waiting to be downloaded from the Escape Motions page (this online collection can also be accessed via a button in the Flame Painter library, where there is also a button for uploading your own creations).
• The Brush Creator expands the setting options of the brushes enormously with new variables. You can easily create your own brushes by varying existing brushes. The Symmetry tool with Mirror option creates symmetrical graphics, which is particularly helpful for maps.
• Palette Panel – The palette window has been revised and expanded. It is now possible to choose between different colour models (HSV, HSL, HSLuv and RGB). In addition to the colour selection, the colour gradient and image library can also be called up here. Gradients are still only available as linear gradients. Angle settings are also not yet possible. The matching colour selection tool allows you to pick up colours from the active or all layers, whereby the tool shows the current colour of the palette and the respective colour under the cursor for comparison.
• In addition to the Blur, Glow – the name says it all – and Tile Layer filters for creating endless tileable patterns, there are 9 new filters for adjusting brightness, colour and contrast, among other things. White or black can be made transparent using filters or coloured layers can be converted to shades of grey using various options (Desaturate).
• With the Photoshop plug-in “Flame Painter Connect”, layers can be exchanged directly between Flame Painter and Photoshop
  can be exchanged. However, Flame Painter Connect for Flame Painter 4 is only compatible with Photoshop CC 2015 and higher.

Conclusion

What started out as a small, experimental tool has now become an application that is not only fun to use, but also fulfils professional requirements.

Flame Painter is still a fun programme that invites you to experiment (almost) endlessly. But this tool should also offer professional users interesting possibilities for quickly creating a wide variety of unusual effects, e.g. for backgrounds, textures, as additional image effects, etc. New particle systems, lots of new, customisable brushes, an editor for creating your own brushes, editable vector layers to which hundreds of brushes can now be assigned with a single click, import of SVG graphics and improved exchange with Photoshop CC are all reasons to update to the latest version.

It’s a bit of a shame that the personal edition is no longer available. On the other hand, the large version that is now available has really grown up. With the latest innovations, the creative boundaries have been pushed further and Peter BlaškoviČ’s vision that anyone can be an artist if they only have the inspiring tools to hand has become more tangible.