Pixiq

Best Digital Painting Programs

Digital painting has a large niche market of artists, photographers and hobbyists. There are many different kinds of programs available both as stand alone or plugins to other programs. Here is an updated list of the ones that are considered the best. Some have an easy learning curve and others have a broader curve and hands on workshops are always the fastest way to learn the deeper programs.

COREL PAINTER 12

Corel® Painter™ 12 is the world’s leading digital art software. Designed for artists by artists, it opens up a world of creativity by offering progressive drawing tools, lifelike Natural-Media® brushes and the most realistic digital painting experience. With its impressive array of brushes, paper textures, paints, oils, watercolors and more, there are no limits to what you can create! And thanks to extensive file support, you can also build upon projects you've started in other programs, making Painter a great complement to Adobe® Photoshop®. A SURPISE is coming on January 12th! See the new update to Painter 12 and the awesome new brush management! Update will be available on January 16th but you can go watch the video on the 12th. There is much that is new including Enhanced Photoshop plugin support! 

Alienskin SnapArt 3

Oh Alienskin how do I love thee? Let me count the WATERCOLOR ways! I am in love with SnapArt3. So easy to use and can paint masks and work in layers and adjust almost anything. While it has many other modes for crayons, pencils, oils and much more, I always go back to the watercolor.

Alienskin really rocks this out with so many adjustments you will never be bored. Render any image in an unlimited variety of real-world art styles including oil paint, pencil sketch, pen & ink, comics, and more. Great for stylizing photos or graphics, Snap Art works without laborious hand editing and is more versatile than Actions or brushes. the versatility of this little program is well worth your time to check it out. Don't forget to use the CODE to save some $$ on it! CODE: MSH0901

Postworkshop Pro Edition

I have been talking about this one in PIXIQ lessons and videos. It's the newest contender in the market. Start here on Lesson One and by the time you get thru a lot of the lessons you will find you can download and install my FREE 12 STYLES to use on your own photos to create paintings and art. Don't forget to also use the CODE to save on your purchase. There is a FREE download to test it out but you really need the PRO Edition to take advantage of it's power! CODE: xyco-u8s3

ARTRAGE

Artrage has been around a long time now. With all its recent improvements and being available for the iPhone and iPad it's a strong contender for original art. ArtRage Studio Pro 3.5.4 creates raster images (pixels) rather than scalable vectors, but you wouldn't know it from the smooth, beautiful brush strokes you can achieve. Since raster images are not re-sizable, choosing the appropriate size for your artwork a key step. Fortunately for beginners, ArtRage offers an easy-to-understand conversion to screen or paper size. Check out this amazing program and test drive it.

Studio Artist 4

Synthetik has come out with a version for PC after all this time! It's amazing! Studio Artist 4.0 comes loaded with custom-programmed Presets all of which are fully editable. You can also create your own Presets or let Studio Artist make them for you Automatically! This gives you the power of unlimited painting, drawing, vectorizer, and image processing styles. From mild to wild and everything in between. There is a FREE trial so you can test it out and their website is full of tutorials.

LUCIS ARTS

I love the full version Pro 6.0. Can't help it. It's simple and powerful and easy to run. I'll post a little short tutorial for this soon but here is the interface. Go to the SPLIT CHANNELS and click that....UNCLICK Display Composit Image. Then highlight each of the color channels. Slide the slider until you have a good contrasty black and white. Do this in each channel. Then adjust the smooth detail and turn back on the Display Composite image and VOILA...you have more detail than you ever saw in your image and a beautiful painterly effect if you want it. Too simple, too powerful!

Want to SAVE some money when you buy it? Use Coupon CODE: hiddenimage

Also you can compare all the versions of Lucis Arts HERE The coupon code will work for the ED and SE versions also!

Topaz Adjust 5

Bet you never thought about Topaz Adjust being used to "paint". Well it CAN! Here is one I did with my own preset. I will be putting a set of Presets up for FREE in the Digital Paint Shop soon so watch for that announcement. This was so easy it was silly stuff. It looks totally different from the raw capture!

And YES we have a discount for Topaz too! CODE: msholin will save ya $$

AKVIS Artistic Bundle

Akvis has a few programs I love using. One is SKETCH and the others are Artwork and Artsuite. All have their own place in my heart and workflow. 

SKETCH creates realistic color and B&W drawings that imitate the technique of graphite and color pencil, charcoal and watercolor painting. I especially like the Color pencil effect and the Watercolor painting. A lot of versatility in that little program! Artwork does a nifty job of a variety of effects using oil painting or comics. This cutie is painted with Akvis OILS.

Here is a great example of a SKETCH

And here is what I did with it in layers to change the colors

How beautiful is THAT! Go get it HERE

Mediachance DAP

Super secret painting software! Also has an app for your iPad and iPhone! A lot can be done with this one. Very easy but has a lot of controls also. This one is fun to watch it process also. Dynamic Auto Painter 64 Pro is awesome. You will love this software. Just spend some time learning it and share your paintings.It's easy and fun. Watch the painting form itself and learn while watching. Now that it's 64bit it makes huge paintings possible!

There are also some apps that are fun for the iphone and ipad but you can't turn the "canvas" off on them. I ALWAYS turn the canvas off because I want to add my own textures and not theirs.

Here is one using one of my water reflections from Venice.

Pretty cool  huh?

Fun ONLINE Painting!

Just remember I am WATCHING you paint! Here are two fun sites online to paint on! You can paint on Picassohead here

And Paint Like Jackson Pollack You have to keep clicking to change the colors!

Another really fun online site is here to paint like Pollock

So I gave you a bonus of one....11 ways to digital paint!