dA Muro is an online painting app created by DeviantArt. It doesn’t have as much functionality as Photoshop, and it takes a bit to get used to the tools and understand how they work, but it still can be used to create high quality art. It comes with a variety of brushes and filters. Most of the time working with it is a smooth experience, but once and awhile it can lag a little.
When a project is first created in dA Muro, it has a resolution of 1063x574. The app doesn’t have the option of picking a different resolution size, but that’s good enough to work with. If that's not the size you want your work to be, you can always export it and crop it to the right size after you’re finished--just plan for that while you're creating.
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| The original size of this piece. I created it mostly using the sketch brush. |
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| Here it has been resized in Photoshop to fit a 8.5'' X 11'' sheet. It's not truly resized, just zoomed in. |
One of my favorite features of dA Muro is the ability to import pictures as layers and to also export projects as .png so they can be worked on in other photo editing programs. If the app doesn’t have a feature that you need, just export your work, do whatever you need to do to it in another program, and then import back into dA Muro.
But if you have to export and import again, make sure you're at a place where you no longer need the layers you originally created. If the exported .png is imported into dA Muro, the layers it had will not longer be there. However, new layers can be made to adjust things. Files can only be exported as .png, but .jpegs and .pngs can be imported.
I also like the Redraw feature. Redraw is like a recording of the drawing process, so if you want sit back and watch all of the steps you took to create your art, you can. This app comes with a special plug-in for Wacom tablets, and I noticed that it does detect pen pressure.
The best thing about dA Muro is that it’s social, and that’s probably it’s biggest advantage. It’s possible to share your work in progress with everyone, and they can pretty much watch you work on your art from start to finish. Roses Girl is the first piece I’ve created with the app, and I’m happy with the results and it was amazing how I could share my progress almost every step of the way. I think I will keep using it, alternating between that and Photoshop.
If you would like to try dA Muro, you can test it out here.
Feel free to share what you think of it!
Thank you for this, I do have a question though. D:
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to manage prints in DeviantArt and make them a size where I can at least print up to 24inches, though bigger would be even more awesome. However some of the art I made is only 1000 x 950.
Does this mean I can't print them larger than 10x10 (which is what DeviantArt is saying?) Is there a way on Muro I can make it larger than that? The max says its like... 2000 x 2000... And I'm not sure if that's much bigger.
I would take this to the forums on Deviantart but no one answered me. D:
I really don't want to find out that I can't make large, useful prints out of these... I was really hoping to sell some. :(
Thanks for your help!
~ Mil
Long story short, I haven't seen any way to increase the size of artwork WITHIN Muro. The picture will have to be exported and edited in another program, which is kind of counter productive.
DeleteThis is definitely one the limitations of Muro. I wish there was more control of the canvas size.The only way for me to increase the size was to export it and then open it in Photoshop. I created a blank document that was the size I wanted the artwork to be, and then imported the artwork as a layer. As far as Photoshop goes, I've noticed that when I use this method to make photos bigger, there is very, very little quality loss.
After the import, the new size was 6600x5100, which is good if I wanted to make a 16x16 print on DA. If I increased the size just a little more, I could even meet the requirements for a 20x20--which is near the size you were hoping to get. A little smaller, but close.
For this piece, these resolution sizes were fine because I wasn't planing on making this picture into a very large print.
The problem with using another program to increase the size of artwork is the risk of quality loss. I don't know how other image editing programs handle this, but I do know that Photoshop does handle it very well--however even with Photoshop there is a point where the artwork will start to lose quality if it's made too big, so that's something to watch out for.
Typically, a picture that is resized too much even looks grainy in the digtal preview, so that’s a sign that the picture my need to be a little smaller.
This may not be the answer you hoped for, but it's the best I could give. Hopefully, it helped you some!