Best Digital Art Software

Procreate is a raster graphics editor for digital painting and illustration, built exclusively for iPad and iPhone by the Australian studio Savage Interactive. It is sold as a single one-time purchase through the Apple App Store with no subscription fees, and that purchase includes all future updates. The app is built around Apple Pencil input and offers over 300 customizable brushes, layers with full blend modes, and time-lapse recording of the painting process.

Beyond 2D painting, Procreate supports 3D model painting in USDZ and OBJ formats and includes Page Assist for building multi-page comics. It has won two Apple Design Awards and is widely used by illustrators, concept artists, and animators who want a fast, native iPad-only painting tool.

Sketchbook Pro is a digital drawing and painting application built around brushes and pens that mimic real physical media. Originally an Autodesk product, it was spun out in 2021 into an independent company, Sketchbook, Inc, based in San Rafael, California, which continues to develop and support it. It runs on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, with a customizable, collapsible interface aimed at artists who want a distraction-free canvas.

Core tools include a large library of customizable brushes, a layer system with blend modes, guides, rulers and symmetry tools, plus PSD and TIFF support for moving work into other creative apps. A free version covers core sketching, while Sketchbook Pro and a Premium Bundle unlock advanced editing, canvas resizing and export options.

Adobe Fresco is a drawing and painting application from Adobe built around Live Brushes, watercolor and oil brushes that blend and react on the canvas the way real paint does. It combines vector and raster layers in one file, supports many Photoshop brushes, and syncs projects as cloud PSD files across devices. Fresco is free to download and use for core drawing, making it a lower-cost entry point into Adobe's creative tools.

A Premium plan unlocks the full brush library, premium fonts and additional Creative Cloud storage for a low annual price, and Fresco is also included with Creative Cloud All Apps subscriptions. It runs on iPad and Windows, with a mobile version also available for phones and tablets.

PaintTool SAI is a lightweight Windows-only raster painting program from Japanese developer SYSTEMAX, popular among illustrators for anime and manga-style artwork. It offers full pressure-sensitive tablet support, anti-aliased strokes, 16-bit ARGB color channels, and a pen stabilizer that smooths shaky lines, all within a simple interface that is quick to learn.

The software is sold as a one-time license for 5,500 Japanese yen with no subscription fees, and a 31-day free trial with full functionality is available before purchase; after the trial, file open and save are disabled until a license is entered. A newer SAI2 build adds layer folders, symmetry tools, perspective grids, more blend modes and native dark mode.

MediBang Paint is free digital painting and manga creation software developed by MediBang Inc, a Japanese company, for Windows, macOS, iPadOS, Android and iOS. It combines a pressure-sensitive brush engine with manga-specific tools such as panel templates, screentone patterns and speech bubbles, along with cloud storage that syncs projects and brushes across devices.

The core application is fully free to use, with an optional MediBang Premium subscription that adds access to more than 600 additional brushes and materials from the ART street community, removes ads, and expands cloud storage up to 300GB depending on the plan chosen. It suits illustrators, comic artists and manga creators who want a no-cost entry point into digital art.

Infinite Painter is a mobile sketching and painting app for Android and iOS made by independent developer Sean Brakefield. It includes close to 200 built-in brushes covering watercolors, charcoal, pencils and oils, a custom brush editor, unlimited layers with layer groups, and adjustment layers for color and filter effects, all responsive to pressure and tilt input on supported styluses.

The app can be downloaded for free and includes a 7-day trial with full access to every feature. After the trial period, some features require a one-time purchase to unlock permanently, and the developer states there is no recurring subscription model. Infinite Painter also runs on Chromebooks through the Chrome Web Store.

SketchBook (formerly Autodesk SketchBook) is a drawing and sketching application known for its natural pen and brush feel, predictive stroke smoothing, and clean, distraction-free interface. Autodesk discontinued the product as an Autodesk offering in mid-2021 and spun it out into an independent company, Sketchbook, Inc., founded by former Autodesk SketchBook team members, so it is no longer distributed or supported by Autodesk itself.

SketchBook is available as a free mobile app for iOS and Android with an optional one-time Premium Bundle purchase, and as a paid desktop Pro app for Windows and macOS sold through the Microsoft Store and Mac App Store. The tool remains popular with concept artists, illustrators and designers for quick sketching and ideation.

Clip Studio Paint is a professional drawing and painting application made by the Japanese company Celsys, widely used for illustration, comic and manga production, and 2D animation. It runs on Windows, macOS, iPad, iPhone, Android and Chromebook, and offers tools such as vector layers, perspective rulers, posable 3D figure import, and panel and speech-balloon tools built specifically for comic pages.

The software is sold in PRO and EX tiers, available either as a one-time perpetual license for Windows and macOS or as a monthly or annual subscription that also covers tablet and phone devices. EX adds multi-page comic export and a frame-by-frame animation timeline on top of PRO's core painting and illustration toolset.

Adobe Photoshop is the industry-standard application for photo editing, retouching, and image compositing, used across design, photography, and video production. It offers layer-based non-destructive editing, AI-powered Generative Fill and Generative Expand, advanced selection tools like Object Selection and Select Subject, retouching tools such as the healing brush and content-aware fill, and typography and vector shape tools, alongside Camera Raw editing for photographers.

Photoshop is sold by subscription. The Photography plan, which bundles Photoshop with Lightroom and 1TB of cloud storage, costs $19.99 per month, while the standalone Photoshop single-app plan costs $22.99 per month with an annual commitment, or $34.49 month-to-month. Team licenses cost $37.99 per month per user, and students and teachers can get discounted access. A seven-day free trial is available, and Photoshop also runs on iPad and as a browser-based web app.

Concepts is an infinite-canvas sketching app from TopHatch, a US company, built around vector-based drawing rather than fixed-resolution pixels. Every stroke remains an editable vector, so lines, colors and brush styles can be adjusted after the fact, and the canvas can be zoomed in indefinitely without losing sharpness. It runs on iPad, iPhone, Windows, Android and Chrome OS.

The Free plan includes the infinite canvas, five layers and all paper and grid types at no cost, which the company says covers about 93 percent of its users. Paid options include a one-time $39.99 Essentials pack for core editing tools on one platform, and an Everything subscription at $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year for the full brush and object library across every device.