PROTIP: What App For What Chart 2014 by fox-orian

PROTIP: What App For What Chart 2014 by fox-orian

UPDATE: Chart takes into consideration on some recent app updates and some altered opinions on previous apps. Most notably, the release of the absolutely fantastic new Manga Studio 5, which has changed my perception of both Photoshop and SAI compared to the old chart. Give it a look at!

NOTE: These star ratings are pit only against each other relatively, not every app on the market!

NOTE2: My opinions on COREL PAINTER are NOT based on the latest version, X3, which I have not used yet.

I keep seeing lots of debates about what program should be used for what. This is different than the Filetype tutorial I did, where this is dealing with the type of work being done, versus export purpose.

I’m not claiming this chart I made is gospel, but it should give a pretty good idea on what the strengths are of each particular program are based on some basic needs and parameters.

(Of course, your mileage may vary on these ratings.)

By the way, this chart is totally a rip on the old Speed/Accel. chart in the Super Mario Kart instruction manual. (See page 25.)

WHERE'S GIMP????????? (or --other program here--)
I've never ever used Gimp before. I have no professional experience or informed opinion on the program. Thus, I will not list it here since I have no history with it.
On the plus side, Gimp is free -- so why don't you go give it a try and see for yourself? You have nothing to lose!

Purrloinedlove Featured By Owner Feb 5, 2017 Student General Artist

FireAlpaca is great, especially for the price!

dsp2003 Featured By Owner Edited Oct 14, 2014 Hobbyist General Artist

Jasc's Paint Shop Pro (don't confuse with Corel Painter! It was rebranded as Corel PhotoPainter) has extremely powerful type and design features, since unlike Photoshop it uses vector layers for text and allows to manipulate it just like any other vector object, including node editing, slicing, distortion and anything you can imagine with Beizer curves.

Also, I don't see InkScape in this chart, which is a direct OpenSource counterpart of Illustrator. Neither I see MyPaint, which has tons of brushes and options and can be compared with Photoshop in drawing features (yet still loses to SAI due to lack of stroke smoothing).

SAI's vectors: they are non-existent. The only "vectors" SAI is capable of are lines with nodes yet no shapes - that severely cuts out the range of their appliance.

After SAI's brushes, stroke smoothing, floodfill algorithms and transparent mode for ANY brush Photoshop's painting process is a pain in the arse.

Also, where's Krita (way better than GIMP, can be considered a direct replacement for SAI in Linux environment) and Mischief (vector drawing tool which beats the crap out of SAI's vectors)?

Hedisaurus Featured By Owner Aug 26, 2014 Student

To be honest Sai would be the best painting tool due to the fact that there are better blending brushes. And you don't have to rely on the eyedropper tool that much to over paint

dana123girl Featured By Owner May 12, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

try out ClipStudio too^^

BOONJAGGA Featured By Owner May 12, 2014 Student General Artist

MangaStudio is essentially the Western release of Clipstudio. I personally think anyone considering MangaStudio should get clipstudio as that would support the developers directly, as buying MangaStudio mostly supports SmithMicro instead of the Japanese developers of the program itself.

SpaceTurtleStudios Featured By Owner Apr 23, 2014 Professional General Artist

A very helpful chart. I have heard a lot of good things about SAI but hadn't heard of Manga Studio; I'll have to check that one out.

favmir Featured By Owner Apr 16, 2014 Hobbyist

Clip studio would be pretty much the same with Manga studio I guess?

And it has an awesome price too!

Ashwings Featured By Owner Apr 3, 2014 Digital Artist

Hooo doggy!
Thanks so much for this. I was humming and hawing over if I should get Manga studio 5 or not but reading this simple guide really helped!
What are the differences between 5 and EX 5 for manga studio? I have played around with EX 5 but not just with 5.

FXMorph Featured By Owner Mar 31, 2014 Professional General Artist

Thank you for this

SSJ-Videl Featured By Owner Mar 8, 2014 Hobbyist

Niceee <3

Koogleblitz Featured By Owner Mar 6, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

i cant believe so many people use photoshop instead of MS5 given the the gap between their prices. it is simply an injustice.

favmir Featured By Owner Apr 16, 2014 Hobbyist

Ikr? Photoshop's price was simply ridiculous, it's MS-tier

Glimon91 Featured By Owner Mar 6, 2014

Quite an informative piece. Thanks!
By the way, any suggestions about tutorials to start trying Manga Studio? I got really interested.

KahzZzZz Featured By Owner Mar 5, 2014 Professional Digital Artist

quite informative

oKaShira2 Featured By Owner Mar 4, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

I love you! ^v^

Cetriya Featured By Owner Mar 3, 2014 Professional General Artist

seems no one is using Illuststudio?

Snapai Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Professional Filmographer

You're not including free programs on the chart, I suppose, but you should give

(for vector work) and

(for drawing/sketching/tabletpc) a shot if you haven't.

I am SOOOooo addicted to MyPaint's infinite canvas. :u

Dualmask Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Professional Digital Artist

Yeah, Manga Studio is a dream program. It's my new artistic best friend. I still use Photoshop for some things, but 99% of the art I've made over the last 9 or so months was all done with MS5 on my Surface Pro.

IAmAir Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Student General Artist

Will check this out later. Thanks for the info.

Liz-DarkWarrior Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Hobbyist General Artist

I really want to upgrade to MS5 now ~~but Christmas already passed and I'm broke~~

Koogleblitz Featured By Owner Mar 6, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

its like less than 30$ on amazon

Liz-DarkWarrior Featured By Owner Mar 9, 2014 Hobbyist General Artist

REALLY?

Koogleblitz Featured By Owner Mar 10, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

for the basic version (which has like 85% of the features of the EX version), yes

Liz-DarkWarrior Featured By Owner Mar 11, 2014 Hobbyist General Artist

I have the older version of the basic right now, but I've always wondered, what exactly is the difference between the EX and the basic?

Koogleblitz Featured By Owner Mar 12, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

here is the comparison sheet:
manga.smithmicro.com/compariso…

from looking at it, i think basically the EX version has more features geared towards making entire comic books whereas debut is for single illustrations only

ps. if you have an older version, its highly recommended that you upgrade to version 5, from what ive heard, ms5 is leaps and bounds ahead of any version before it

Liz-DarkWarrior Featured By Owner Mar 12, 2014 Hobbyist General Artist

thank you so much!

Koogleblitz Featured By Owner Mar 12, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

no prob

Retronator Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Professional General Artist

And as an additional alternative to the poor value of Painter, you can get ArtRage for awesome (probably even better) traditional painting simulation for $50!

smokeTH Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Hobbyist General Artist

you forgot pixelart category. >_<

SambaNeko Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Just to note on SAI, there has been new, recent development: www.systemax.jp/ja/sai/devdept… (page in Japanese, but latest release date for 1.2 beta 6 version is Dec 2013, and it also notes that SAI2 is in the works - sounds like SAI owners will get a free upgrade to SAI2 as well.)

fox-orian Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Professional Digital Artist

If true then that's really cool. Once it becomes available I'd change this chart definitely

I do wonder how long it will take for them to make an english release, though. If I recall correctly, isn't the current english version of SAI just a fan translation that was made for Systemax? (That being, they were never planning on an english release until that guy did it for them?)

SambaNeko Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

It seems like there's an official English version, as well as a fanmade one for SAI - I'm not sure if they're one and the same. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a fan translation happen for SAI2 if it debuted without one.

Blofu Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Smith Micro really upped their game quite a lot with MS5, it is a great app that works for basically everything i need to do.

Pharan Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Student General Artist

Smith Micro is actually a localization company.
The developers are called CelSys and they now sell the English version of the more frequently updated Clip Studio Paint (MS5) themselves... and for pretty cheap too, I'd say.

Blofu Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Thats right, I had forgotten that. Thanks for the reminder.

Pharan Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Student General Artist

Anyway, I share your opinion of this program. It's awesome.

fox-orian Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Professional Digital Artist

Oh, interesting. I didn't know about this. Was Manga Studio developed in Japan originally? (Yeah, I know, I could go look it up myself but for the sake of conversation-----)

Pharan Featured By Owner Mar 3, 2014 Student General Artist

lol. Yeah.

Clip Studio Paint is like Photoshop and SAI had a genius baby. It does a lot of the things both are able to, and more. I appreciate a lot of the features geared towards illustrators and constantly wonder why Adobe hasn't stuck the same features in Photoshop. I'm sure you'd like the program.

Technically, it's an entirely new program. I think the branding SmithMicro did, calling it "Manga Studio 5", does it quite a disservice as... I thought Manga Studio 4 and everything prior were utter pieces of crap compared to this. XD

compliment-pin Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Hobbyist Digital Artist

ahh, nice, very informative!

Kaiazes Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Student Traditional Artist

I used to use exclusively Photoshop, but wound up switching to MS5 after adobe essentially told Australia they could get stuffed. I've gotta say, I was surprised by how functional it was. I only jump back to Photoshop if I want to make a texture seamless or something. The only real drawback is that almost all of it's documentation is in Japanese, at least last I checked.

fox-orian Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Professional Digital Artist

It really is dumbfounding how much better Manga Studio is than you'd think it would be, ESPECIALLY given that LOW price. I agree, there are SOME specific little things it doesn't do that Photoshop does, but for 95% of the time I'd say Manga Studio does everything I need it to (if a little slower.....)

Kaiazes Featured By Owner Mar 3, 2014 Student Traditional Artist

Yep. Interesting that you bring up the slow bit. I actually noticed that it's slowest function is probably saving on large file types, and that it's native file type (.lip, I think) almost always saves slower than a .psd counterpart. Still, minor complaints. I'm willing to give it some leeway considering a) it's price and b) the fact that it easily installed on all my machines without telling me "this license only works on two computers" or some garbage.

ReferenceDesk Featured By Owner Mar 1, 2014 Student Artist

Adobe PSD and Ai. That's it. CorelDraw for Signs. Quark died I think, replaced by InDesign. Sketchbook - does anyone really use it?

fox-orian Featured By Owner Mar 2, 2014 Professional Digital Artist

Like the chart shows, Sketchbook is really best for Tablet PC's. It's perfect since it has a gestural based UI with no need for a keyboard to be used efficiently. It's SUPER low price makes it worth owning for its simplicity.

Make no mistake though, Manga Studio 5 is seriously good. Ever since I got it, I almost never use Photoshop anymore except to make stuff like this chart here or large format work (at my job.)

I never hear Quark mentioned anymore. Only outdated print shops and marketing firms seem to still list it in their job requirements.