Question about canvas size

Hello,

First of all, congratulations for having created this absolute jewel for painting.

I am having a problem with the demo (I'm considering purchasing Rebelle in the near future). I made the other day a test for a large canvas project I am working on right now, to see how Rebelle could take it, but I realized that, while is a very extreme case for my machine, Rebelle struggled quite more (surely as uses very advanecd effects) than a certain other app I have with a particular case, a 152 centimetes wide per 102 centimeters tall canvas at 300 dpi, as is a project for print. It was not just brush lag, it happened also doing other operations.

I know this is expected, I have an i7 from 2009, first generation, below 3 GHz, HDD disk, and only 8gb RAM. But I was wondering about two things that can decide my future purchase :

1) Are there any tricks to tweak all in preferences for working with large canvases for print, settings that change this situation drastically ?

2) Is it all about hardware issues, or is there a software hard limit ? I plan on finally upgrading my machine on June (when AMD's Zen 2 is released). I am going the AMD route, so it wouldn't be very clever to purchase now a 2700x just to replace it with a 3700x in June (probably released then).  Also, I am wondering if a 3700x with 16 GB RAM, and a RX 570 8 GB, GTX 1060 6 GB, or nVidia GTX 1660 6GB would suffice for what I am trying to do (or would I need 32 GB RAM, etc).

I mean, one 2.5 question is if with such a system, it would run smoothly (as to paint without lag and operate well) when working with such a huge canvas (I know it is extreme), that's what I mostly would need to know.

Thank you !

The canvas size seems to be mostly limited by memory.  I tried to open a canvas size you mentioned, and even with 32gb my machine struggled (I eventually gave up trying to get it to open).  Your machine was likely running slow because it was continually swapping memory to disk.  Rebelle is a fairly memory hungry application, and I would recommend at least 16gb if you are doing larger canvases or want more levels of undo.

Try working at a smaller canvas size and with a dpi around 150. Then increase the canvas size only as much as needed for the finer details. Finally do a resize and dpi increase to the final print dimensions, using an app specifically designed for resizing photographs. Photos have a lot of small details and depend on the details for impact. Art work usually does not require such tiny details, and can get by with a lesser dpi and smaller dimensions until time to print. I use Super Resize on a Mac for my final size/dpi adjustments, and it works fine for this final step. I'm sure there is something equivalent if you are using a Windows machine.

Thank you both for your kind and detailed replies. I will try to do something in the line of that scaling up technique (although it's never adding detail, even with the most clever algorithms to disguise it/avoid blur), but the clients I tend to deal with might have a problem with that approach. It's an interesting workflow. I will try in a lower scale (as with my current project, in this old machine, not even a new file operation works) , and will see how it goes, with the demo.  (It is going to be quite some time yet till I upgrade the machine... couldn't Ryzen 3 come sooner...  :)  ) . I will find a way, as having been a traditional painter (and a lot of years as a digital painter) I do appreciate how this has no competition.

Thank you very much, again.  :)

Hi @Jamespainter,

right now, Rebelle's performance depends mainly on two aspects of the computer configuration - RAM and processor.
At this stage, 18k x 12k px canvas size is quite much for Rebelle to handle. At this moment the Rebelle's code is not fully optimized to handle such large canvases. The math running behind Rebelle is quite complicated, we are working on the app's optimizations and speeding up of the painting for higher resolutions, but it is quite complicated and requires time.
I hope my answer is not disappointing for you and that you will give Rebelle a try for lower resolutions or in the future when Rebelle is more optimized.

If there is anything else you'd like to ask about, please let us know.

I just would like to chime in and say that for me too large canvases are important. I create digital artworks that often end up around 20k pixels wide or more. I would appreciate it if the further development of Rebelle would make large canvases and associated stability issues and brush sizes a priority. Often I am stuck doing everything in Photoshop because other (and sometimes way more innovative) applications just can't handle the size. (I am running a Mac Pro with maxed out 128GB RAM, my next machine will have more).

Hi @MarciaFunebre,

thank you very much for your insights! We want to optimize Rebelle as much as possible for painting on large canvases.

I apologize if I did not reply anymore, I just forgot to setup email notification here, and I am not around these forums, as I was testing the software. I thought there would be no more posts, as actual solutions were provided (but the more, the merrier :)  ).

I have a client requiring *huge* prints and very deep detail, and have to use other tools (which do not have the very advanced Rebelle's traditional touch), but it does *not* diminish my enormous interest on Rebelle. I absolutely look forward to purchasing it once I get a modern, very powerful machine around June/July. 

And I say this because I simply have not seen anything better mimicking traditional media, and I can say I have tested practically all what is available in the market. I do my digital painting in a more "digital paint style", and it has good acceptance among  the people receiving this art, but I would so much love to go back to the roots, and paint like when I started. There are other good solutions, but seems Rebelle gets it the best.

Some tricks mentioned here are also very key. I might be too obsessed in painting at 300 dpi, while could make better sense something in the range of 150 -300 dpi, for the kind of large piece that we are talking about. As people would rarely get that near to the canvas (in exhibitions sometimes is even prohibited), and also, the nature of traditional painting, canvas coarse texture, smudging, etc, help in disguising a lower DPI.

Surely the maximum recommended now by Rebelle is already a good size. Counting on a Ryzen 3000 series (ZEN 2) high-end machine (I believe there would be even available models with 16 cores, 32 threads, yet in the mainstream line!, and reaching 5GHz, large CPU cache sizes, etc), or an intel i9 9900K, and loads of RAM (32GB or so), an SSD for the OS and app, and a good graphic card, I'm hoping that together with playing with te DPI values / observer distance, I probably will manage to print very large canvases with Rebelle, once I have this setup.  :). Thank you very much for your kind and detailed answers.

If reaching the moment, I get some productive, positive results to share with such a machine, I'll be sure to do so here.

Best Regards.

Thank you very much, James, for your very kind words about Rebelle. We appreciate it greatly. This is why we love what we do :)

Please, do let us know how you like working with Rebelle once you get it on your new machine. We would also be excited to see your artworks as well. If it is possible on your side, definitely share them with us and other users to the Community gallery and your Portfolio.

If you have any other question regarding R3, let us know :)

All the best,
Veronika

Hello,

Wanted to offer a little of feedback here, about Rebelle 4.0 Demo version.

AMAZING software, I just downloaded it, and tried painting on canvases of 82x82 cm & 300 DPI (a bit below 8k x 8k  pixels, I think it was (so, slightly over iPad pro max resolution and close to a frame to be retouched of a 8k  video)), with only one layer and paper canvas background.

I was pleasantly surprised having an acceptable performance of the great new oil brushes at even 83x83 cm at 300 dpi.

The not so happy moment was when checking the undo function. At all sizes I tested, (increasingly as one goes up in size) which were 83x83 cm at 300 dpi, 43x43 cm @ 300dpi, 30x30 cm 300 dpi, all take a whole second or a bit less to peform an UNDO. This is really a worfklow destroying issue, for those of us using UNDO a lot (like I also use a lot alt key color picking).

Anyway, when increasing memory in preferences, it worked slightly better, but not enough. Same than when working in smaller canvas sizes (of course, not print ready, too small, not practical for most of the projects).

I have tried everything I could think off: increasing the RAM used in preferences (to almost my whole 32 GB of RAM). Decreasing it. Putting it to the minimum, also at middle, etc. Unabling the line stabilizer completely,  removing the paper texture using a plain white background only, etc.

I wouldn't mind at all to reduce to just 5 the number of UNDOs, if that would appear in preferences. I am fine to work with 5 undos only. What I can't work is without undo at all. And with my fast, realistic technique, can't be having a 0.5 - 1 sec undo delay each time...

So... while I know I can't work in my initial desired sizes of 12k wide canvases, I don't have currently and neither for the closest future the need to go that big in canvases, till 8kx8k is kind of fine. The problem is that the UNDO delay of almost one second breaks the workflow. I'll keep testing every demo till I see the tool fully suiting me. BTW, I am not stating this happens to everyone. Might be just me, altho every app I use works fine.. My PC is a Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM, X570 mother board, gtx 1650 4GB video card, 1 SDD , one HDD disks, Wacom Intuos 4 XL. Using Wintab in preferences, not Windows Ink.

All these traditional painting tools are wonderfully done. Special kudos on my technique favorite since always: oils. I like a lot how they behave and imitate real oils.