Piranesi 5 New Features

Welcome to Piranesi 5 for Windows!

In Piranesi 5 you'll find a reorganised user interface that makes it easier to learn, easier to find your way around, and yet manages to release more of the screen space for the image you're working on. There's a whole range of other new features and improvements to Piranesi and its sister program Vedute. There are also an extra 200 royalty-free images to use in your work.


 

Help Assistant

When you start up Piranesi 5 you will notice the Help Assistant that tells you how the current tool you are using operates, and gives you a few tips on how to use it to best advantage. It automatically changes according to tool that you have selected, and links directly to the full Piranesi Help if you want further information.

New Tools for Old

A number of Piranesi 4 effects have been promoted to be Tools in their own right. Making them easier to find on the Tools toolbar, and with the Help Assistant turned on you'll be given step by step advice on how to use them. So now you have specialised Tools for:

Text creation

Edge detection

Restore

Smudge

Construct

Filter


Prior to Piranesi 5, text creation was an option to the Montage tool, and the others were "Render Actions"

Meanwhile the Piranesi 4 Pen has turned into a Pencil! Use it and you'll find you can do everything that you could do with the old Pen tool and more besides - such as creating filled areas and choosing between single and multiple line operation.

Global and Local Fills have been streamlined into one tool, with an option you can toggle on and off.

If you lose track of which tool you're using just take a look at the cursor - it now looks like a miniature version of the tool. The cursor shape will also indicate if you have any Locks active.
 

Tool Options

Most Tools offer the user different settings, the brush shape and size, as example. In Piranesi 5, the most common settings for each Tool are right in front of you on the Tool Options toolbar. Most often you wont need to be bothered by advanced settings. Should you need them, just click the "Advanced" button that pops up a palette - which you can combine with other palettes to reduce the screen space used.

There's also a new Colour, Texture and Grain toolbar positioned alongside the Tool Options, it houses the remaining effect components. Locks are handled by a new Locks toolbar.
 

Working With Styles

To the left of the Tool Options toolbar you'll find a big thumbnail image which gives a constant reminder of the currently selected Tool. Place your mouse over it and many of the Tools will respond, offering you options to graphically "tweak" the settings such as brush size or cutout hook position.

On the down-arrow next to the thumbnail, and you'll find one of Piranesi 5's most useful improvements - the style library pops up as seen by the new Style Selector! Allowing you to quickly access your styles without having to lose all the screen space that the old Style Browser used to occupy.

Due to the Style Selector working on a per-Tool basis, a choice of different categories of your library pre-selected for each different Tool are available. Should you have the Brush tool selected, you are taken to predefined Brush styles, though should you have the Cutout tool selected you will be offered suitable Cutout styles. In the same manner you can ask Piranesi to show only the styles which use your currently selected tool.

Cutouts

Cutout placement is one of the most well-liked and productive features of Piranesi, and in response to user requests there are more new features. The new Multiple Cutout placement Tool places as many cutouts as you like, chosen randomly from a suitable set. You can quickly populate a shopping area with people, or create a shrubbery or forest.

Cutouts can be grouped and moved together, and there are new motion blur and silhouetting effects that can be applied to cutouts.

No Piranesi release would be complete without some new cutouts, and indeed there are 200 new royalty-free cutout images of people, plants, and street furniture provided as part of the upgrade, plus some new 3D model cutouts.

Take advantage of all the models out there on the web - you can now import fully textured SketchUp or 3DS cutouts.

Light Tool

Re-light your scene with a new Light tool, with four different types of light (Point, Spot, Strip and Parallel) that can be placed with the direction and strength of your choosing. The Light tool replaces the old illumination fades, and does everything the light tool did and more.

Stamp Tool

Paint one or more raster images with the new Stamp tool. You can use the colours from the raster file, or set Piranesi to use the raster as an alpha mask to the current colour.
 

Automatic Style Recording

Ever created just the effect you want but forgotten to save it? Piranesi 5 now has the option to record each variation that you use to paint with, then go back to save or clear later.

Vedute

Perhaps, Piranesi's unsung hero, but it hasn't been forgoten!
Vedute 5.0 contains a number of important new features:

Raster textures are now rendered.
Parts of the model can be exported as 3D cutouts.
Revised Materials dialog box.
EPix files can be created at specified paper size and resolution.
Material definitions can be saved (as .csv files) and re-imported.
 

Creating the finished article

When you're ready to save your image for final processing or to send to your customer, Piranesi 5 offers you some valuable new options. Exporting direct to Photoshop PSD files is now provided, with options to create layers from materials or cutouts. Piranesi also offers colour management facilities, so that the colours you see on your output device and those you saw on the screen are as close as possible.

Plus much more...

Piranesi 5 contains more enhancements than we have space to list, but here's a few more:

The Help information now contains several mini-movies so you can see the topic in action.
The menu bar can be floated and docked like other toolbars.
InfoTips have been improved especially for the colour picker (try it!)
New "Check for Updates" command for Piranesi 5 upgrades.
Improved graphic feedback when "tweaking".
Random size variation in brushes and stamps.
Invert Lock facility to reverse the effect of the active locks (e.g. paint all surfaces not in a given orientation).
Multiple material locks can be set with a wildcard.
Separate X and Y repeat control for grains.
New RGB grain based on the restore RGB channel.
New Style grain to vary the grain with each stroke, from those in a library/category.
Place hook point of a raster texture at the start of the stroke.
Style Manager (the Style Browser as was) has a new Details pane and additional search facilities.
Improved viewing via better texture mapping and anti-aliasing.
EPix files display thumbnails in Windows Explorer.
URLs can be used to access files (library files, raster files, etc) directly from web sites.