We’ve discussed a ton of mobile apps for designers who like to work on the move. However, if you’re looking for some top-notch digital art software for drawing, illustration, painting, drawing, and more for amateur designers and professionals. Here are ten of our favorite artist utilities!
These wide range of art applications all have their own USPs (unique selling points), with some excelling at vector graphics while others excel at making illustrations. You can find dedicated design programs for photo manipulation, 3D modeling, hand-drawing, and more on our list of the best digital art apps and programs for multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac, web, and smartphones.
What is Digital Art Software?
Digital art programs are dedicated utilities designed for artists to deal with emerging art forms, where several traditional painting and drawing techniques are used. This includes watercolors, hands-free paintings, oil paints, and more. In addition, these tools are equipped with advanced features to create flawless futuristic designs.
A collection of the best drawing, painting, illustration digital art software
No matter what you’re looking for in the drawing, painting, or illustration category, here are the best options to help you make the right choice!
Adobe Photoshop
Price: Creative Cloud is $9.99 per month | $20.99 per month as a standalone app
Compatibility: Windows, Mac, and iOS
File size: 12.8 MB
Digital Art Software Download: Adobe Photoshop is a household name, and all credit goes to its simplicity and effectiveness. When it comes to world-class graphic editing and photo enhancement, digital art software is undoubtedly one of the most resourceful solutions. Photoshop isn’t just designed for photos, you can use the tool to create illustrations, do packaging designs, create banners, logos, websites, icons, and more. You can use great pre-loaded templates and plugins to get professional-looking output.
merit
- Over the years, it has stood out and is seen as the go-to app for creating digital art.
- Plenty of plugins to boost productivity.
- Wide range of effects, filters, and design tools.
- Reliable and best digital art software for all design needs.
shortcoming
- Complex subscription-based model.
Our verdict: Use Adobe Photoshop
- Get a complementary iOS app.
- Constantly updated with new features and improvements.
- Has an impressive library of plugins to add more functionality to the tool.
Corel Painter
Price: $429 one-time purchase
Compatibility: Windows and Mac
File size: 1.3 MB
Corel Painter brings the perfect combination of tools and features to make both traditional paintings and futuristic designs in one place. Corel Painter is a well-known app that is mainly used to make canvas art, book covers, illustrations, and much more. It even allows you to save a personalized collection of brushes, pencils, and presets to apply the same strokes. The digital art program has a unique “Cinematic” feature that lets you merge multiple drawings and paintings to create a storyboard. Cool, right? Let’s know what makes Corel Painter one of the best digital art software on the market.
merit
- Extensive collection of effects.
- Ability to change the texture of the canvas.
- Save a preset for batch painting.
- Excellent cloning feature to turn snapshots into impressive works of art.
shortcoming
- Expensive digital art software.
Our verdict: you should use Corel Painter because it:
- Receive frequent performance updates to optimize your overall workflow.
- Use accelerated brush technology to create eye-catching graphics.
- Let amateur artists get started with traditional tools on a blank canvas.
Rebelle 4
Price: One-time purchase – $89.99 | Discounts for students, educators, and educational institutions
Compatibility: Windows and Mac
File size: 149.4 MB
Rebelle 4 is a powerful digital painting app that comes with tons of drawing tools, captivating effects, and lots of natural painting tools to improve your artistic skills. For amateur artists, Rebelle 4 provides an introductory tutorial to help users better understand digital art software. It has a stunning array of brushes, pencils, fountain pens, watercolor paints, acrylic paints, markers, airbrushes, and power erasers. Now, let’s see what makes Rebelle 4 the best digital art app:
merit
- A clean and versatile workspace.
- Powerful painting app with a wide range of drawing tools.
- A pack of brushes, pencil tools, fountain pens, markers, airbrushes, etc.
- Different types of essays are offered to develop your artistic skills.
shortcoming
- Digital art software uses a lot of system resources.
Our Verdict: Get Rebelle 4
- Are new features added frequently, such as watercolor diffusion, blending modes for smudge smudge, and more?
- This digital art app allows you to redo the entire process and start over instantly.
- Comes with traditional tools and uses ultra-realistic painting effects such as blur, spread, blend, and many more.
Krita
Price: Free
Compatibility: Windows, Mac, and Linux
File size: 115 MB
A collection of the best drawing, painting, illustration digital art software: Krita is one of the best digital art software, designed for artists to create comprehensive and realistic illustrations and artistic drawings with the help of various drawing and painting tools. The app has a modern-looking black theme user interface with an extensive feature set available on the main window. With Krita, you get CMYK support, the ability to paint in HDR, and effects like smudge, texture, spray, duplicate, morph, and more.
merit
- Simple and intuitive dashboard.
- More than 100 professional brushes are available.
- Brush the stabilizer to smooth the lines perfectly.
- Customizable interface to maximize workflow.
shortcoming
- There isn’t much support.
Our verdict: the reasons for Krita
- A completely free and open-source drawing software that comes with a variety of drawing and illustration tools.
- Tons of customizable brushes that you can save and reuse as quickly as you want.
- Excellent digital art software for newbies and creatives.
Affinity Designer
Price: $34.99
Compatibility: Windows, Mac, and iPad
File size: 508 MB
Digital art software downloads: Affinity Designer is a great choice for intermediate and advanced users to create masterpieces digitally. With this drawing and illustration software, you can get various tools such as pencils, brushes, pixel editing options, photo retouching features, and many more. In addition, this digital art software enables you to manipulate layers and control alignment, arrange objects, rotate, flip, and more.
merit
- Amazing stabilization options.
- Extreme zoom power for detailed painting.
- A complete vector art toolkit.
- Tons of photo editing features make it the best digital art software.
shortcoming
- Requires a high learning curve and is not suitable for beginners.
Our verdict: Why you got Affinity Designer
- Significant performance improvements when working with large documents.
- Multiple effects can transform your photo and enhance the overall look.
- Digital art software comes with a rich range of raster tools for creating realistic works of art.
Adobe Illustrator
Price: Free trial | From $20.99 per month
Compatibility: Windows and Mac
You must already be familiar with this popular and professional vector graphics app to design illustrations, digital graphics, and develop engaging web/video/mobile content. Adobe Illustrator is the best digital art software with features like real-time distortion, adding 3D effects, symbols, blending shapes, and more. Unlike most digital art utilities, Adobe Illustrator supports cross-media design. As a result, the layout adjusts itself to preference, whether it’s for printing, digital publishing, or for a proper mobile view. Useful, right?
merit
- High-end vector graphics creation tool.
- Generate scalable illustrations.
- Super integration is possible.
- Special discounts are available for students and teachers.
shortcoming
- It crashes sometimes
Our Verdict: Reasons to Use Adobe Illustrator
- Support for cross-media design, useful for print, publishing, or mobile development.
- Ability to collaborate and edit documents on the cloud.
- This digital art software has added a new feature – Align Japanese Glyphs.
CorelDRAW
Price: Free trial | $249 per year
Compatibility: Windows, Mac, Web, iPad, and other mobile devices
File size: 1.9 MB
Digital Art Software Download: CorelDRAW is the leading graphics suite used by professional and advanced designers worldwide. Digital art tools are very popular in the market for creating eye-catching logos, advertising banners, and entire websites. In addition to being an expert in the vector graphics software category, CorelDRAW also specializes in page layout programs, so you can effortlessly design complete stationery such as business cards, logos, letterheads, catalogs, and more. Let’s take a look at some of the main pros and cons that come with this digital art solution.
merit
- Draw an object or illustrate scene in perspective.
- Manage all your project’s digital assets in one view.
- Enhanced color replacement tool.
- Next-level collaboration tools.
shortcoming
- Freehand brushes are difficult to use.
Our Verdict: Reasons to Get CorelDRAW
- An intuitive dashboard for managing, organizing, and sharing files on the cloud.
- A true cross-platform experience across Windows, Mac, Web, iPad, and more.
- The powerful vector drawing tool turns something basic into a complex masterpiece, making it the best digital art software.
YouiDraw Drawing
Price: $9.99 per month
Compatibility: Web | Chrome, Opera Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and more are supported
File size: –
Best Drawing, Painting, Illustration Digital Art Software Collection: Don’t want to install any other software on your device? Select YouiDraw. An extraordinary web app that creates gorgeous art around vector graphics. It offers a complete package of essential utilities to turn your imagination into reality. It has a powerful image editor, ready-made templates, and the ability to merge and adjust individual components in one place. Additionally, you can take advantage of an extensive library of shapes to create top-notch logos and icons.
merit
- Minimalist interface.
- Many tools such as crayons, brushes, and effects.
- Ability to export your work in PNG, JPEF, SVG, and more file formats.
- Interactive grid and layer interaction is supported.
shortcoming
- Do not receive frequent updates.
Our Verdict: Reasons to Get YouiDraw Drawings
- Ready-made templates and slides are available.
- The ideal starter pack for emerging artists who want to get used to digital drawing, painting, and illustration,
- Free digital art software with all standard tools, brushes, pencils, and more.
Paint 3D
Price: Free
Compatibility: Windows
File size: 65.8 MB
Digital Art Software Downloads: Get the ability to create, customize, print, or share your drawings, paintings, and illustrations with Paint 3D. It’s a suitable choice for beginners, intermediates, and advanced users, all thanks to the simplicity of the interface and support for a wide range of photo editing and doodle features. It even supports popular file formats, and it’s an upgraded version of the default MS Paint, and you can definitely rely on its reliability factor, making it one of the best digital art software to use.
merit
- Age-appropriate options.
- A great toolkit for drawing, painting, and organizing.
- Best for 3D modeling and animation.
- Make realistic textures.
shortcoming
- 2D objects are not extruded.
Our Verdict: Reasons to Get Paint 3D
- A great starter pack that inspires beginners and youngsters who love digital painting.
- Reinvigorated UI with a modern and intuitive layout.
- Perfect transitions, background controls, and canvas.
ArtWeaver
Price: Free for personal use | €34 for a one-time purchase
Compatibility: Windows
File size: 14.6 MB
Collection of the Best Digital Art Software for Drawing, Painting, and Illustration: Get creative with Art Weaver digital art software, which offers excellent drawing and painting compilation tools. The app is very easy to use, and you can apply all kinds of features at once. With ArtWeaver, you can customize your brushes and save them for later use. Aside from some stability issues, you can use two styles of digital art tools, such as the free version and the premium version. You can check the comparison chart to see the differences between the two versions. Some of the main advantages and disadvantages of the tool are listed below:
merit
- Feature-rich drawing and drawing tools.
- Easy to use and user-friendly interface.
- Customizable brushes.
- Amazing collaboration features.
shortcoming
- Digital art programs sometimes seem to lag.
Our Verdict: Reasons to Get ArtWeaver
- A top-notch digital art utility for all ages, including children.
- A free version is available as well as an affordable Plus version compared to other digital art apps.
- Powerful collaboration features allow multiple people to work on the same piece of art at the same time.
Our personal favorites: our recommendations
Well, we’ve covered some of the “super hot” picks in the category of best digital software. Some of them are suitable for amateur designers and individuals who tend to create digital art, while others are comprehensive solutions for creating eye-catching graphics.
Photoshop is a neat design solution with tons of features that can be used to create both basic and complex artwork. It’s all thanks to its ability to integrate plugins and more. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a 3D design tool that isn’t just painting in general, Paint 3D is worth considering. If you’re looking for a professional design utility, you can opt for Affinity Designer, which has a powerful dashboard and numerous features that make it seem limitless what you can create.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q1. What are some examples of digital art?
Well, there are many types of digital art, such as: data movement, motion painting, pixel art, 3D/2D computer graphics, fractal art, photo painting, and many more.
Q2. Which software is most commonly used by digital artists?
Most designers and artists rely on Adobe Creative Cloud to create eye-catching graphics and top-notch designs that meet professional needs.
Q3. What tablets do digital artists use?
Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, XP-Pen Artists, Microsoft Surface Book 3, Huion H610, iPad Pro are becoming the go-to devices for digital artists around the world.
