From the article: Top 12 Art-Oriented Software Programs
Art software is designed especially for painting, drawing, coloring, and creating original art work on a computer. Although some art software offers tools for working with pre-existing images, the emphasis is on art and the creation process. Art software allows you to mimic traditional artistic media such as oils, watercolors, acrylics, pencils, markers, crayons, chalk, pastels, and felt pens, using your computer. Tell us about your favorite art software--describe a bit about how you use it, and why you like it! Suggest Your Favorite
Fotosketcher - FREE and Creative!
- A few years ago, I found out about fotosketcher.com app. The programmer is French, but everything is in English. He does a fantastic creative job with his soft. Offered at first only for Windows, Mac users can now enjoy it. I have no relation with that software, or programmer. I'm just a very happy user!
- —Guest PeterA
Livebrush
- Livebrush is free and the styles of lines are really good!
- —Guest person
Twistedbrush
- TwistedBrush has more than 5,000 brushes available, along with all the features that artists love to use: layers, realistic media, photo cloning, tracing, masks, particles, filters, script recording, scripts to AVI, drawing tablet support, brush shapes, patterns, textures, Adobe compatible plug-in support, integrated scanner support, image brushes, drawing guides, reference image views, dirty brushes, scratch layer, dynamic palettes and a whole lot more. TwistedBrush runs on all versions of the Windows operating system and is designed for all realms of digital art. There is also a free edition with less brushes, both available at www.pixarra.com. Twistedbrush is very advanced and runs on computers which can not run the gigantic programs Photoshop and Corel Painter. Twistedbrush is very actively developed and has been released in 275 stable releases since 2003. Considering its capabilities it should be mentioned as one of the big three paint programs.
- —Guest Roger Johansson
Krita
- This program has grown by leap and bounds in the past year to a powerful painting environment. Its main goal is to provide artist an intuitive program with features like digital paint mixing, procedural brushes, pinching, mirroring and many more.
- —Guest Gert Huizenga
Paint.net & Paint Shop Pro
- I like both Paint.net & Paint Shop Pro 7. There are so many things you can do with both these programs. Paint is free to download. It doesn't get much better than free...lol. Both are user friendly. I use these programs for things like making desktop wallpaper, invitations, writing letters, calendars, and sometimes just for fun! I have also used Paint Shop Pro for touching up photos, resizing pictures, etc. My daughter uses both as well. She creates "manga" pictures or comics. Her favorite is Paint.net.
- —caoriginl
Dynamic Auto Paint
- I'd like to recommend Dynamic Auto Paint, a VERY impressive piece of kit. The only downside about it is that it ignores several basic windows commands. These don't interfere with the workings of the software, their absence is just a minor irritation. The programmer doesn't seem to want to implement them, I know because I requested some to be added and was told he wasn't planning on it. It took him a long time to add "Rotate Image" but he gave in as so many users asked for it. It's still great kit and easy to use. There is a free download to try it before you buy at: http://www.mediachance.com/dap/index.html
- —Guest GJ
Favorite Paintware
- It always was Corel Painter, but it is far from stable, may hang or crash without warning, and Painter11 on Win7 has been a disappointment. When pro quality illustrations have to be done, save frequently to avoid losing work. Because Corel supports most any technique or effect you can imagine, it's complicated, but there's nothing like it for creativity. When I go to Photoshop CS5 as a backup, there's a nice menu of features and brush styles that will even allow you to paint fields of wind-blown wheat, but there are few equivalencies to Corel's special effects. For the best artistic text, calligraphy, and editing effects, nothing beats Freehand MX. Unfortunately, Adobe bought Macromedia, the creator of Freehand, Flash, and other software, but Freehand has fallen by the wayside. Both Freehand and Corel offer flatlander and interactive perspective grids that are extremely helpful. So if you know a high-end paint program as good as Corel Painter without the headaches, please let me know.
- —Katu01
Paint Tool SAI (Windows)
- Best for manga artists. Pressure-sensitive for tablet suckers like me. Sadly, no mac version (YET!!)
- —Guest sara
Drawing for Children
- If you have children who enjoy drawing on the computer but you have a limit amount of space and your children want to do more than the drawing program that comes with your computer lets them do then my recommendation is Drawing for Children because it has several features and is less than 10 megabytes in size.
- —Guest A.R.K.
Postworkshop
- It has pretty much everything to create art masterpieces.
- —Guest Yasser
CorelDRAW and Photoshop
- Normally I have to use the CorelDRAW and Adobe Photoshop. Because both are very powerful applications. CorelDraw is much stronger software for art work or logo designing instead of CorelPaint. That is why I use Adobe Photoshop.
- —Guest Waheed Ahmed
Dynamic Auto-Painter
- Dynamic Auto-Painter is a fantastic program, especially for Christmas. It lets you take any editable JPG file and create a terrific painting. You can tweak the results as well as pick a painting style. More important you get an unlimited trial and put up with a register mark until you really want it for only $50.
- —Guest Jane
My Addictions
- Irfanview is a definite must---that should go without saying as it's a staple. I also love ZBrush for morphs and design, Carrara for rendering, Poser, with Livebrush for background work. These are all important additions in my graphics arsenal. http://www.irfanview.com http://www.pixologic.com http://www.livebrush.com http://www.daz3d.com http://poser.smithmicro.com
- —chaserblue
Photoshop CS5 Extended
- I've started out using Photoshop 7 and now I use Photoshop CS5 Extended. I do all my projects with Photoshop and I love it so much. I'm still learning different ways to use to use it Adobe Photoshop is the way for me.
- —laborettelatina
Photoshop and Illustrator
- I mix up images using scans of drawings and found objects, photos, and other kinds of graphic inputs using mostly Photoshop with some help from Illustrator. I'm trying to build a portfolio.
- —Guest BJ
Finish in Photoshop Extended CS5
- I use several apps regularly to create my works... but i always seem to finish in Photoshop Extended CS5... I am currently giving new life to some of my older works using the new Vibrance/Saturation tools. IT ROCKS!
- —Fractal3DArtist
