[damppuppy]

I was wondering if there was a "new view" feature in Painter 6 like they do in Photoshop? New view is a feature that creates an alias image of the currently open image. It's not a copy of the current image, because what is manipulated on the aliased image shows up on the current image. One of the uses is zooming in on the alias image, while zooming out on the current image, so a painter can detail a confined space, while still looking at the picture as a whole.

[Pat]

Painter does not have that function. Given the large menus it has that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does, however, have some functions which can help you if you wish to have 2 versions of the same image open at different magnification levels.

In Painter 7, you can simply clone the original image. Changes will not be reflected dynamically in the new image like PS, though. To update, you'll need to reclone your original. This is only useful because you can be at any magnification level.

If you want to see the entire image while zoomed in, I use the popup magnification tab along the bottom of the image window. Clicking on it will give you a preview of the entire image, and much like photoshop's Navigation palette, a red square indicating your current mangnified area. This is quite convenient (since it goes away after you're done with it) and saves precious screen real-estate. While it reflects all changes you make, the window itself closes when you return to edit the image So it's not quite dynamic. And, when open, the mini alias image covers the lower left of your original painting. That's about as good as it gets.

Part of Painter 7's other beefed up magnification tools also include:

Double clicking the hand tool instantly resizes the image to fit the screen. (again, like PS) and "constant" zoom in and out by just clicking and holding down the key combos for zoom in and out. It also has a slider bar for incremental zooms (with numerical input, even!) and more cache levels, so you can magnify in finer increments.

-Pat