A sea of information for creative professionals & hobbyists.

- This software uses an extreme amount of computer hardware when pushed as hard as it can be pushed. I have a file for an extremely detailed, 120-layered video game map project that uses 4 GB (gigabytes) of RAM (random access memory) as well as 13 GB of virtual memory on the hard drive. You need an amazing machine to use this software to its fullest potential without damaging your hardware by extreme pressure. And don't fill your hard drive up if you want it to use virtual memory... so slow if you do!

- This software uses a moderate amount of computer hardware when pushed hard. However, it seems to recover successfully from "Not Responding" more often than Adobe Photoshop in my experience. Ran well on 4 GB of older RAM and I never noticed a huge amount of virtual memory being used by it.

- Newer versions have a weird quirk: When you are copying something off a layer, it creates an entirely new layer called "Promoted Selection." At first this is a real pain in the butt if you are Adobe-trained, but it is actually helping preserve computer resources while helping to prevent mistakes and it is easy to adjust to using this function once you realize this. When you use the "copy" function on any machine, it pastes it to the digitial "clipboard" in the operating system (OS). It stays there until something new is copied, afterwhich it is automatically deleted from clipboard memory by the OS. By using promoted selection, if you accidently copy something new before you pasted the old item, it is already saved on its own layer inside the project and a new promoted selection with the new item is created. Instant backup!

-Amazingly powerful. Like, it still blows my mind how well it runs on so little resources. It must have amazing algorithms functioning in the subsurface of the program, especially when using the 3D aspects of the software. Rarely do I get it to lock up using 4 GB of RAM, it just might slow down slightly with this amount when using 3D... Wow, just wow!

-For how little the program is in terms of processing, mind-blowingly capable on any machine with any specifications. Worked wonderfully on an Energy Star-branded HP netbook without any complaints or problems on only 2GB of RAM. That machine barely ran Windows Home Basic. For those of you that are not hardware tech-savy, an Energy Star-branded computer is essentially an electricity-starved machine, so it runs at the most minimal possible usage of power and therefore these machines really just suck at doing anything media intensive. They cannot get the power feed the softwares need. These netbooks are for word processing and college notes, period. This netbook I was using was not even capable of watching Youtube videos on Chrome or Firefox without horrible skipping and lag (partially the fault of the wireless card), but it ran Paint Tool SAI like it was the Ferrari of computers. This softare is amazing for the price and can be used on practically anything in my experience. It is also more simplified than software like Clip Studio, so if you are just starting out in digital art, this might be right for you.

- Quirk: Graphics tablet pen pressure sensitivity is not always shared between tools and the software seems to neglect any proprietary tablet software (such as Wacom software for setting your desired pressure sensitivity and other features). You will have to play with it a bit to find which pen sensitivity and stability is right for you. I pre-set all of my tools to a stability of 15 and found it to be good for all drawing situations. Going over a stability of 15 makes it take longer to render the line you drew, as it is using calculations to smooth and perfect the line.

- I cannot provide a link or copy of the English-cracked version I use as that would be illegal redistribution, but I can provide you with a helpful cheatsheet so that using the Japanese version does not have to just be a pipe-dream! By the way, if you did have to learn an Asian language, Japanese is by far the easiest in my experience since it has simplified "alphabets" [katakana and hiragana] which are almost always used in any reputable newspaper next to the more complicated, Chinese-borrowed symbols [kana], as well as having the easiest sounds on English-speaking natives to master. Katakana and hiragana break words down into their syllabic sounds, such as A (ah), I (ee), U (oo), E (eh), O (oh), KA (kah), KI (kee), KU (koo), KE (keh), KO (koh), etc. Hiragana marks Japanese-native words and names (which have kana equivalents), while katakana denotes borrowed words and foreign names (which do not have kana equivalents). For those in the technological media fields, being familiar with Japanese is invaluable. The Japanese are forerunners of the newest media technology and are computer visionaries. You know those little QVC codes that are on every product right now, the little "static boxes" you can scan with your cell phone and learn about sales or special offers? They had that for about ten years before we adopted the system in America! Japanese is a must for the tech-nerd of now in order to stay on top of the future here in America. It is also just poetic and musical sounding once you start speaking it. Just my two cents. ^_~