Best painting software

Corel Painter 2022 review | Creative Bloq

Our Verdict

Still pioneering the digital art program market, Corel Painter is for those who are serious about being painterly, and it’s only getting better and better

For

Reasonable one-time price
Brush/dab customisation
GPU brush acceleration

Against

Heavy going for beginners, but worth it
Hardware hungry

Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

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Corel Painter 2022 continues the software's goal to simulate the use and feel of real paint. There are few that can hold a wet brush to Corel's software, so what's new? Is Corel Painter up there with the best digital art software?

An overhaul and, some might say unnecessary, reorganisation of the brush library is the first thing that grabs you about Painter 2022. It’s easy to forgive, however, and actually perfect for beginners, as every brush is now alphabetised and in easy to remember categories – with the addition of a filter search being its crowning glory. Use filters such as ‘watercolour compatible’ and hey presto – a list of every compatible brush from every category appears. You can now add the texture of wetness to dry media brushes, directly on watercolour layers, too. The possibilities just rocketed in terms of experimenting with mixed media.

Another super handy addition to the brush library is the ‘like’ button. You can keep a selection of your favourite brushes at hand in a custom palette, and the brush size library gives you easy access to your most used sizes, again, if you know what you usually need before you start painting it is now even easier to have everything at hand. If you draw comics for example, you may only use a couple of sizes and brushes to ink your work – now, your custom palettes mean your flow is even more super smooth.

Corel Painter 2022 at Amazon for £157.97

Corel Painter 2022 review: Custom Stamps

The new custom Stamps feature enables greater expression (Image credit: Corel)

If there was one overriding upset when it comes to making digital work of any kind, it is the fact that a digital painting… looks digital. Some valiant efforts in replicating ‘impasto’ mark making, or the wetting and drying of watercolour on textured paper have been made over the years with Painter, but the introduction of stamp-type brush customisation heralds a sharp increase in what's possible with variation in mark making, just when you thought Painter might have plateaued in recent years.

With an overhauled dab library you are now able to change the dab effects of your favourite brushes, bristle by bristle, giving you much more of a painters hand – repetitive strokes no more, you can edit dabs on the fly using slider changes, giving you all the variance you could need in any single brush.

Another favourite addition is the ability to view your work in greyscale via the Navigator panel. This works wonders for getting those tones and values right, much the same as being able to view a mirror image of your work – so you’re getting your eye in compositionally. These are age-old artistic tricks, and it’s nice to know Corel are thinking about you – as a real painter. A second screen works best for both of these methods, but isn’t mandatory.

Corel Painter 2022 review: improved speed

Refinement to the watercolour brushes and workflow is welcome (Image credit: Corel)

Corel Painter 2022 is heralded as the fastest yet, which it would be, being the latest version! In all seriousness though the GPU acceleration, added in 2020, has been tweaked to deal with those new and enhanced brushes.

Some of those ‘heavy weight’ painting techniques can seriously eat into your memory and graphics processor, but the brush performance accelerator you are presented with on opening Corel Painter 2022 does a fine assessment on how well the program will run on your setup, and offer handy suggestions as to how certain upgrades or tweaks might benefit your user experience. It basically shows you how well your baseline, CPU, and GPU are contributing to brush performance, offering you a score in red, amber, and green.

Because Corel Painter 2022 is aimed at replicating real media in immense detail it obviously becomes ‘needy’ in terms of your hardware’s attention, so to speak, so making sure you’re not running much else in the background is also recommended. When it is working in optimal performance though it is easy to see how engrossed one might get, considering the creative possibilities Painter 2022 offers.

Corel Painter 2022 review: the artist's app

Corel Painter 2022's UI and brush library has been overhauled (Image credit: Corel)

For serious painters and wannabe serious painters alike this is a reasonable one-time price, or even cheaper upgrade. A subscription option is available to those who can’t afford an upfront cost. Make sure you take advantage of the free 15 day trial if you are unsure. If you are serious about painting then this definitely the software to go with and stick with – it’s been a thing for yonks, pioneering software for over 30 years, and it shows in terms of capabilities, it feels like a ‘proper’ painter's studio inside your computer, and is compatible with any number of drawing tablets and pen displays. Screen mirroring on an iPad pro is a nice way to use it, also.

Slick upgrades to brushes and dab customisation means greater variance in painterly mark making – ensuring Painter 2022 is still a pioneering digital art platform, worth sticking with if a veteran, or worth investing in for first timers with real painting aspirations.

This article is also published in issue 204 of ImagineFX , the world's best-selling magazine for digital artists. Buy it here .

Read more: The best graphic design software

Corel Painter 2022: Price Comparison

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out of 10

Corel Painter 2022

Still pioneering the digital art program market, Corel Painter is for those who are serious about being painterly, and it’s only getting better and better

Ben is an artist and illustrator based in Bristol. He works in traditional woodcut, drawing and digital mediums. For Creative Bloq, he reviews drawing tablets and styluses, as well as the latest and greatest digital software for artists. His artwork has been exhibited across Bristol, and his words have also appeared in ImagineFX magazine.

Krita 5.0 review | Creative Bloq

Our Verdict

A powerful piece of free software for digital painters and illustrators, Krita is ideal for hobbyists and art enthusiasts who want a comprehensive toolbox without the price tag. Photoshop is more advanced and GIMP is more versatile, but Krita is more user-friendly and intuitive than both, and its enthusiastic community will welcome you with open arms. A more advanced mobile/tablet version would be nice, but we can wait.

For

Powerful brush selection
Free and open-source
Easy and fun to learn

Against

Less versatile than GIMP
No proper mobile version

Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

In our Krita 5.0 review, we’re taking a look at one of the most popular free digital art programs around. First released in 2005, it’s a very similar prospect to the better-known GIMP in that it’s free and open-source so anyone can tinker with its code. As such, there’s a small but dedicated community of people devoted to improving Krita by creating downloadable plugins and features.

As an image-editing program, Krita does a lot, but it’s mainly geared towards digital painters and illustrators. It’s known for its huge brush catalogue, and for offering a digital art experience comparable to that offered by heavyweights like Photoshop, with the most notable difference being that it costs $0 up front and $0 per month.

Krita is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, and there’s an Android version in beta – though it’s still very much a work in progress. You can download your preferred version at krita.org . If you want to support the creators financially, the Microsoft store has the Windows version of Krita listed at $14. 99/£12.49 – the Krita developers have assured us that the money does directly to them.

Krita made it into our guides to the best digital art software and the best graphic design software, but is it the software you’re looking for? Let’s dig right into our Krita 5.0 review, and if you do decide to download Krita, then check out our Krita tutorial for a quick spin through the basics.

(Image credit: Jon Stapley/Future)

Krita 5.0 review: in use

To review the software, I downloaded the latest version of Krita for Windows and spent several hours exploring its features and functions. Krita is now in version 5.0. In the past, I found it to be a bit of a resource hog, sucking up RAM and crashing somewhat frequently, but in this latest iteration, I can see there's been a concerted effort to fix this, and it has paid off. Krita 5.0 ran very smoothly on my Windows laptop with 8GB RAM – and as a notorious multitasker, I was pleased to find that it didn’t stutter even when I was watching videos, listening to music, doing a bit of online shopping, doing my taxes and all of the above while using it.

The Krita interface is simple, effective and well laid out. The main Toolbar sits on the left of the canvas, and you can add windows (Krita calls them “Dockers”) to the right-hand side when you want to pick colours, brushes, or whatever else. In terms of user-friendliness, I'd say Krita is a little less intimidating than Photoshop – though it doesn’t have Photoshop’s comprehensive guided tutorials – and it also makes more of an effort to be comprehensible than GIMP. Unlike those programs, feeling your way around learning to use Krita is actually fun, and doesn’t feel like smashing your head against a brick wall.

It’s the little things that make a difference. If you’re the type of person who often accidentally selects the wrong tool (hands up here), Krita has a knack for knowing it, and will pop up a little message explaining that you probably want, e.g. the Move tool. It’s helpful without being intrusive.

And if you’re one for working with plenty of Layers, Krita offers a few good quality-of-life tools that make that easier. You can filter your layers by name to quickly navigate to the one you want – e.g. “shading”, “lines”, “blue” or whatever else. You can also group layers, and easily copy them from one project to another.

Krita 5.0 review: new tools

The latest edition of Krita has a few useful new tools, so let’s take a look at some of the highlights:

2-point perspective assistant: this is a cool new feature that makes it easier to draw using perspective. It allows you to create perspective guides by placing down perspective points and overlaying a grid onto your canvas, which you can then snap brushes to in order to make sure your lines are just right. You can edit the vanishing points, move the guidelines around, or limit the area that they affect – which is handy if you want to keep your perspective drawing to a certain area of the canvas (e.g. an individual comic panel).

The grid can be really handy as it helps you visualise how perspective will affect different objects you’re drawing, as well as creating discrete units of distance you can use to check that everything’s in the right place.

(Image credit: Jon Stapley/Future)

Create/rotate shapes: this is a small addition but it’s neat. When you’re using a create tool to make a shape like an ellipse or a rectangle, you can hold Ctrl-Alt to rotate the shape with the stylus as you’re drawing it. This is really intuitive, and much less fiddly than trying to rotate the shape afterwards using the Transform tools.

Drag and drop colours: this one's a useful time-saver. Krita now lets you drag a colour straight from the Docker to an element or layer. This is especially good if you want to try out a few colour variations in quick succession. Bear in mind that this doesn’t work with the Advanced Colour Wheel; you need to have the Palette Docker open.

Improved gradients: creating and using gradients has also been improved for Krita 5.0, and it's really easy to do. This is especially useful for quick design work like knocking up graphics for social media. You can open up the Gradients tool to design your own bespoke Gradient, quickly select a few colour stops, and move them along the bar in accordance with how dominant you want one colour or another to be. If you select a lot of colours for a complex gradient, you can also have the software automatically sort them by brightness or by hue with one click.

(Image credit: Jon Stapley/Future)

The appearance of gradients has also been improved – particularly when working with 8-bit images. Krita’s makers have implemented dithering for gradients in 8-bit images, using blue noise to smudge the boundaries between colours. The upshot of this is that transitions are much smoother than they used to be.

Krita review: brushes

I've already mentioned that the star of the show in Krita is the brush library, and it really is tremendous. From the moment you open up the software you’ve got a huge range of default brushes to choose from, and they're hugely customisable. Open up the brush settings editor and you can basically tweak any value imaginable, trying them out on the scratchpad until you have just the quality you’re looking for.

(Image credit: Jon Stapley/Future)

Also, thanks to the active Krita community and the fact that the software is open-source, there are loads of downloadable brushes out there to try, with new ones being cooked up all the time. It knocks the socks off GIMP in terms of brush selection, and while you could use plugins and downloads to give GIMP a similar variety, with Krita you’ve got them from the get-go.

Should I download Krita?

(Image credit: Jon Stapley/Future)

If you want a good piece of software for digital painting and illustration, Krita is definitely worth downloading and trying out, especially if you haven’t paid for any software yet. Like GIMP, it’s free, so there’s no downside to giving it a whirl. If after a few hours you don’t like it, you can try other free software, or consider biting the bullet and paying for software like Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop or Affinity Photo.

As free image editing software goes, GIMP is more versatile – if you want to edit photos as well as do digital drawing then it’s a better overall package (see our GIMP review for more on that). But given that both GIMP and Krita are free, this doesn’t have to be an either/or decision. If you think you might want both, why not download both? The only thing holding you back is disk space.

As for the comparison with paid software, Krita isn't as advanced as Photoshop and never will be. Adobe is forging ahead with futuristic features like neural filters, and its integration with other offerings like Adobe Stock and Adobe Illustrator makes it a better all-around package for professional creatives. Ultimately though, if you’re someone who just needs a great digital drawing and painting program and isn’t fussed about anything else, there are few reasons to lock yourself into Adobe while something as good as Krita exists. You can download Krita now and find out for yourself.

Read more: The best Photoshop alternatives

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out of 10

Krita 5. 0 review

Jon is a freelance writer and journalist who covers photography, art, technology, and the intersection of all three. When he's not scouting out news on the latest gadgets, he likes to play around with film cameras that were manufactured before he was born. To that end, he never goes anywhere without his Olympus XA2, loaded with a fresh roll of Kodak (Gold 200 is the best, since you asked). Jon is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq, and has also written for in Digital Camera World, Black + White Photography Magazine, Photomonitor, Outdoor Photography, Shortlist and probably a few others he's forgetting.

7 best free drawing software for PC| ichip.ru

1 Krita

A list of the best programs for drawing on a computer should start with an application called Krita. One of the main features of the utility is the infinite size of the canvas and the imitation of the materials of real art canvases. And also - support for the Russian language, strokes and lines close to real brushes and drawing tools, overlaying layers, stylizing paintings in oil and watercolor, creating comics and layouts, correcting photos and adjusting the location of panels depending on personal preferences. nine0005

Download Krita

The pluses include support for all popular platforms: Windows, Linux and Mac OS. Plus, you don't have to pay to use it. The utility can be downloaded from the developer's website for free, and the program can be downloaded from the Microsoft website for $9.97. This will support the developer community and receive automatic updates. At the same time, from most other resources, including the site of software creators, the editor is downloaded completely free of charge. nine0005

2 SmoothDraw

In the list of PC drawing programs, there is a utility called SmoothDraw that is aimed at beginner artists and designers. You can draw here with sprayers, markers, pencils and different types of brushes.

Download SmoothDraw

Pixel technology is used to create pictures, and the interface is not overloaded with unnecessary icons and add-ons. Each effect or tool is indicated by an icon, and you can switch them by pressing the keys on the numeric keypad - this allows you to draw faster without being distracted from the process. On the other hand, linking to numbers limits functionality, but for beginners, this will be enough. nine0005

Among the features of the software are small hardware requirements, although the latest versions require at least Windows version 7 to work. Projects are saved in almost all popular formats, and you can download the utility for free - without ads and functionality limitations. And among the minuses - a limited number of functions and the lack of support for the Russian language. Although, due to simple settings, experienced users will also deal with the English-language interface. nine0005

3 Gimp

A free Gimp PC program that can replace Adobe Photoshop and save you up to $53 per month. In terms of functionality, the editor is quite comparable with its conditional “rival”. And although he has a little less opportunities for image processing, the user can create, process and retouch images, layer-by-layer processing and smoothing. In addition, unlike Photoshop, Gimp takes up less space on the computer and runs on a PC with weak hardware: 512 MB of RAM and an integrated graphics card. nine0005

Download Gimp

Software features include support for Windows and Mac OS, Linux and other Unix-like platforms. And also - a simple and convenient interface compared to most editors and work with file formats of other programs, including PSD images created in Photoshop. Among the shortcomings, one can only note the lack of support for 16-bit color space.

nine0004 Operation

How to clean the registry on a computer?

4 Artweaver

Multifunctional graphics editor for a computer based on Windows OS. It features a simple interface (although without the support of the Russian language) and realistic drawing tools - including brushes that you can create yourself. Artweaver also allows you to clone colors, create symmetrical pictures and record a sequence of actions for repetition in the next project. The advantages of the program include small size, minimal hardware requirements and support for working with scanners. nine0005

Download Antweaver

The program is free, but in addition to the Free version, there is another one - Plus. It allows you to use the editor for commercial purposes, enable a dark theme and save edited files in EXIF format. Among the minuses, it is worth noting the lack of some tools - for example, a “healing brush” and plug-ins for Photoshop.

5 Paint.NET

One of the best free raster graphics editors. Just like GIMP, it is considered a good, albeit simplified, analogue of Photoshop. The program has many useful tools and effects, allows you to create three-dimensional images, and even make them transparent or moving. It is possible to process several photos in parallel, and even an inexperienced user can figure out the interface. And those who lack the standard functionality can install additional plugins by downloading them from the utility's official forum. nine0005

Download Paint.NET

One of the best free paint programs is Paint.net for supporting old or office computers (1 GB RAM and 1 GHz processor), although it has optimizations for 2 and 4 cores as well.

There are no paid versions of the utility. This is due to the fact that the program was created as a student project. And the only negative is that it supports only one operating system, Windows. Moreover, the latest version works with OS version 7. nine0005

6 PixBuilder Studio

Multifunctional and powerful utility for drawing and photo editing. Among its features: working with imported images and layers, redoing and undoing actions, adjusting curves, adjusting blur and sharpness. The interface is simple and Russian-language, with the ability to customize to the user's preferences. Therefore, even a novice artist or designer can create images in it.

Download PixBuilder Studio

Among the features of PixBuilder Studio, it is worth noting a lot of built-in filters and effects, saving and converting to almost any popular format - from PNG, BMP and JPG to GIF and PSD. The application supports work with "hot" keys. The disadvantages of the software include a limited set of functions and intermittent errors when working with the CMYK format. nine0005

7 Inskape

The list of the best free programs for drawing on a computer can be completed with the Inskape utility. The vector editor can be used to develop advertisements, drawings, booklets and other graphic products. And then save them in almost any format - despite the fact that the software runs on Windows, Linux or MacOS. The program has many tools: brushes, pens, text insertion and a calligraphy function. It allows you to draw primitive graphics and fill them with patterns, gradients or solid colors. nine0005

Download Inskape

Among the possibilities of Inskape is the creation of vector graphics from photos and other digital sources. The utility is distributed free of charge, without ads and restrictions, and any novice artist can handle its simple interface. The disadvantages include the lack of work with the CMYK color model and a module for importing images from a scanner.

See also:

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Drawing Software for PC

Reviews (88)

Rating

Total votes: 5. Rating: 2.75 out of 5

If earlier for drawing you needed albums or canvases, felt-tip pens, brushes, paints and other tools, now to create high-quality pictures it is enough to have a regular computer or a graphics tablet. At the same time, even professional artists use special tablet devices. You can not do without installing specialized software - programs for drawing. They are based on raster or vector graphics. The first type of graphics is based on the designation of the properties of each point (pixel), it is considered traditional. Vector graphics are based on an algorithm for constructing directed lines. It is used to create logos and layouts for printed products. nine0142 Yes Yes Yes Yes Trial

The GIMP

various types of brushes;
palette dialogs;
multifunctionality.

relatively complex interface;
would like to see more art brushes; nine0034
there are no blanks for "complex" objects.

This program is considered the main free "competitor" of the well-known Adobe Photoshop editor. Most users associate The GIMP with software for processing digital photographs, often the program is used to process finished drawings - transforming individual objects by selecting and shading them, applying layers of transparency, converting contours. nine0005

In the program you will find sets of "simple", "color", "animated" and "parametric" brushes, it is possible to edit their properties. Note the convenient implementation of the mode of working with textures. Together, this provides good opportunities for creating projects from scratch.

SmoothDraw

simple menu;
has a portable version; nine0034
support for legacy OS versions.

English interface;
limited functionality.

Editor with a very simple interface - you will not find an abundance of auxiliary consoles and complex menu branches in it, all actions are performed in a single interface window. Here is the brush panel, the area for working with the gradient, the block for specifying the characteristics of the pen and the section for working with layers. The main part of the window is occupied by the drawing area. nine0005

Among the "chips" of SmoothDraw, we note the presence of a small collection of stamps, when they are applied, they rotate around their axis in a random order.

Artweaver

co-editing mode;
good set of brushes;
has a Linux version.

not suitable for traditional art paintings; nine0034
possible interface response with small delays;
English menu.

This editor allows you to emulate various types of artistic tools - oil paints, pastels, acrylics, airbrushes, pencils and others. Various filters and effects are available in the program that create the effect of relief, mosaic, blur. Standard tools like the magic wand and the lasso are available. The program can work with layered drawings, export is possible in its own AWD format. Note the presence of a joint work mode, it is possible to install plugins. nine0005

In addition to the free version, there is a €34 Artweaver Plus variant that improves performance and adds a number of advanced features. However, the Free version is quite functional, so we classified Artweaver as free software.

PixBuilder Studio

convenient implementation of the preview option;
portability.

basic functionality for drawing;
subjectively - a bit outdated interface design.

Another layered editor, which was originally created for photo processing. This is evidenced by a set of appropriate effects, the presence of functions such as auto-correct colors. In the program, you can draw with a brush, pencil or pen with the image of simple geometric shapes. Stamps available. nine0005

The application developer is the Russian company WnSoft, so program users receive Russification out of the box.

MyPaint

set of brushes;
notepad;
preview of each brush;
extensive gallery of examples of work.

it would be ideal to see a co-editing mode.

This is a very popular software, where brushes are quite well implemented. Firstly, they are logically divided into sections - "Classic", "Experimental" and "Favorites". Secondly, when you select a brush, a thumbnail of its pen is displayed. Thirdly, each of the brushes can be "subtly" edited for each of more than 20 parameters. The program has an excellent solution in the form of the "Notepad" function, in which you can try to make test strokes. nine0005

A feature of the MyPaint interface is the minimum number of functional panels. Almost the entire area is occupied by a painting canvas.

Paint.NET

traditional interface;
many plugins.

only one web mode;
few brushes. nine0034

A good alternative to the standard graphics editor, this drawing program visually has the same interface as Paint, but contains a lot more features. Due to a sufficient number of effects and the ability to download new ones, the program is suitable for quick photo processing.

As for tools for creating drawings from scratch, the application includes typical brushes, tools for selecting objects, cloning fragments and a basic set of shapes. The functionality of the program can be extended by installing plugins. nine0005

Crita

selection of brushes;
recording macro scripts;
cross-platform;
supports many different file formats.

relatively heavy load on the PC.

Krita is deservedly considered one of the best free editors. Using the application, you can draw on a conditionally infinite canvas, while the base can be not an ordinary blank sheet, but a substrate that imitates real canvases. The integrated set of brushes deserves special attention - even a special block for mixing brush colors is available in the program.

It is interesting that initially this software was created for drawing from scratch, only then it acquired the capabilities for high-quality processing of digital images. nine0005

Tux Paint

uniqueness;
simplicity;
when saving, it is not necessary to specify the file name;
interface translated into 130 languages.

is not suitable for professional use.

Drawer for the smallest PC users - do not expect an abundance of brushes and other features from Tux Paint, but this application can be recommended to those who want to learn how how to draw correctly on a computer .

The drawing process is accompanied by tips from the built-in helper, Tuxie the penguin. The canvas itself has a fixed size. Among the drawing tools are not only shapes and brushes, but also a huge collection of ready-made stamps. nine0005

The developers of the program claim that their product is aimed at an audience aged 3-12, but we would also recommend Tux Paint for the older generation - large buttons and a simple control algorithm will make it easy to master the interface.

Inkscape

one of the few completely free vector editors;
compliance with generally accepted standards; nine0034
built-in XML editor that supports SVG format.

narrow specialization;
seemingly complicated interface;
support for a limited number of color schemes.

Through the use of vector graphics, the application can be used to create logos, icons, web banners and buttons, interface elements, diagrams and cartographic images. Ready-made projects are fully compatible with the current standards of the Web industry. The application contains a special 3D Box Tool for drawing three-dimensional geometric shapes. nine0005

PaintTool SAI

good set of brushes;
support for "hot" keys according to generally accepted standards;
error-free import of PSD format.

not the best value for money;
non-localized interface. nine0034

A manga drawing program from a Japanese developer that fans of cartoons in oriental anime style will definitely appreciate. The interface of the application resembles something between the usual Pain and Photoshop. The application conveniently implements the possibility of layer-by-layer editing, it is possible to open different areas of the same document in different windows.