Beyond the stabilizing, the way Photoshop handles brushes is different and not well suited for inking. Sai treats every line like a temporary vector, similar to Manga Studio (and I'm pretty sure openCanvas), where Photoshop it's a bunch of really close together dots. The vector method is much better for pressure sensitivity, too; Photoshop even with the spacing at zero is jittery.

(I'm not talking about drawing with vector tools, by the way, I'm talking about how the program renders a line)

Yeah, it's like vectors only not as annoying and I can see while I draw...SAI's setup is just so confusing for me though and sometimes it really doesn't do what I want it to (and of course I can't colour in it)...

I really wish there were some sort of plugin for Photoshop to give it SAI's stabilizer and more bold lines, but of course there isn't. :/

What's this Manga Studio thing?

It's a program from the same company as poser, intended for manga-style comic book pages. I has features for story-boarding, really nice inking tools, and can handle retardedly huge canvases no problem- I would draw at like 5000-10,000*5000-10,000 pixel canvases in it on my old gateway. Just like Sai, it renders lines as temporary vectors. It doesn't have anything it calls a stabilizer, but honestly even in sai I keep it at 1-3 most of the time and break out the real vectors for long things like tails. It is necessary to draw at higher resolution in Manga Studio, because it exports in black and white with hard pixel edges (it just looks like a soft clean line when it's sized down).

The tools and set up in the non-pro (super cheap) version are a lot better overall, to me. I really regret upgrading when I lost my disk. It has some new tools for perspective and symmetry, but I haven't used them, personally.

http://manga.smithmicro.com/

hmmm that might be useful for when I try to do my comic... *bookmarks*

So say if better for non steady hands.

SAI is really much better for lines in general if you can manage to suss out its weird interface (which took me forever to understand and I still don't quite get it). You also need quite a bit of CPU to draw at the higher smoothing settings (right hand side near the top, there's a drop down menu with a number)

I sort of have a love/hate relationship with the program...

I was wondering when i would go digital but what i been earing out so far i think ill keep myself with paper and ink pens x)

I plan to buy SAI this month purely for inking. I do all my inking freehand in photoshop at the moment and its a pain in the ass XD I love it for colouring, but inking is getting annoying when I am after a nice clean cut line.
I am liking the face on that by the way.

Yeah...the lines come out much much bolder, and you can set this (laggy/CPU intensive at the really high settings) stabiliser option thing to make them not wobbly...I'd love it if the interface was more intuitive, if it treated my tablet mouse properly, and I've got a few other little nitpicks with how it does the lines...but overall you can see it looks way better than Photoshop when you can make it work.

And thanks. XD;

I actually chose sai because it was easier on the computer I had at the time, and found I liked it more as it was really low when it came to resources compared to photoshop, but my offer to help still stands ^.^ did you see the brush thing I linked in the other journal?

Yeah...I can't figure out how it's not just a calligraphy brush. :x

See the issue I had with inking in Photoshop is I just.. HATED the 'fluffy' puffy look that lines gave when inking. It just looked fuzzy and fat and I never really liked it. Because I used Flash MX for so long, the lines in that programme were just amazingly smooth and clean, one stroke and it was perfect. So when I decided to give up Flash for SAI, it wasn't that much different in terms of lines and I'm really happy with that. I've always preferred the smoother clean 'vector' lines to anything else. It just makes art look so much cleaner.

How long have you been using SAI :3?

Uhhh...really not long. Like a collective two days. MAYBE.

You got to give it more of a chance than that man XD I'm about a year and a half into it and I'm still learning things all the time x3

Help me learn it D: I need it for inking...coz I gotta turn the stabiliser somewhere between 9 and 15 to draw proper lines...

I've had the same problem with Photoshop too, which Is why I don't use it.

To be honest, I've heard from a lot of different people that to make their lines in Photoshop look clean they just draw it huge and then scale it down afterwards.

Sai is a bit tricky. After a while of foolng around with the pen tool, with different sizes and different settings, and using it for I don't even know how long, I'm slowly starting to get the hang of it.
I played around with the "binary" tool for a while, making sure that pressure sensitivity was turned on, due to the fact that the binary tool has a much smoother flow, even with stabilizing/smoothing on.

SAI is a very highly customizable program, and it might take a while, but once you get the hang of it It'll start to show.

I love sai more than my proverbial first-born child. It takes some getting used to, but now after having used it for a year or two, I look back at my flash or photoshop ink and color work and I just cringe. x_x

You shuld try sketchbook pro as well! :) http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=6848332

i feel like a noob... where is the line stabilizer setting O_O

it's not in Photoshop, it's in SAI...if you're talking about SAI, it's on the top right as a little dropdown menu with numbers

i know you ment sai XD i never noticed that dropdown..X_x

Took me awhile to find it myself. @_@

You've grown so much in the past 10 years!