Last Updated on May 27, 2021 by Markeyus Franks
There are so many drawing softwares that can help you to draw your best desired illustrations. These softwares can help you draw the best illustrations in digital form. The interesting thing to know is that having a professional level Software is very easy to access if you own a good device. The following article is comparing eight best drawing softwares for windows.
1. Adobe Photoshop CC
2. Coral Painter 2021
3. Clip Studio Paint Pro
4. Corel Draw standard 2021
5. Adobe Illustrator
6. Twisted brush pro Studio
7. Krita
8. Art weaver 7
Adobe Photoshop CC
Adobe Photoshop CC is one of the most advanced, reliable and powerful image editors for your windows PCs. You can take the help of this software to design different kinds of complex 3D artwork. It can help you to achieve basic level editing to a more complex editing for various purposes. It can also help you to add simple retouches to your images or artwork. Adobe Photoshop is considered the best choice as compared to the rest of the softwares. Instead of all the good qualities, every software has its pros and cons. Few of the pros & cons of Adobe Photoshop CC are as under :
Pros :
1. It can offer various unparalleled editing features.
2. It can provide you an ease to edit different image formats.
3. You can transform your ordinary images to a more professional image through this software.
Cons :
1. Although this software has a lot of good functions, it is quite difficult to master. It means that it has a complicated learning curve.
2. Even if you are Experienced, you can still face so many problems while editing your images due to the complexity of the software.
3. You can only get access to it if you are paying a monthly subscription. It shows that it is not free software. It is not a cheap software to be affordable by everyone. Hence it doesn’t have easy access to be used.
Figure 1 Adobe Photoshop CC
Corel Painter 2021
Corel painter is one of the most popular painting softwares for windows. Alot of efforts are being by Corel to update its Software on yearly basis. The natural media illustration of the painter is updated to keep it more advanced. Just like few previous years, Corel has introduced a new update to its software in 2021. It is Corel Painter 2021. The new version also consists of previous functions. The new things that has been introduced to this software are GPU-accelerated brushes. There are so many new AMD GPUs that can support hardware acceleration. Having all the good qualities, it still consists of various pros and cons.
Pros :
⦁ You can switch between brushes faster than the previous versions of software.
⦁ You can pick the orientation of your canvas.
⦁ You can paint professional black canvas painting through Corel Painter 2021.
⦁ Corel painter can be your best default choice to draw your creative images.
Cons :
⦁ One of the biggest disadvantages of corel painter is that it doesn’t allow you to enjoy all the painting and drawing features, you will have to pay for its premium version. You will have to pay a subscription for a specific time period.
⦁ It has less professional features as compared to photoshop.
Figure 2 Corel Painter 2021
Clip Studio Paint Pro
Clip studio paint is also one of the most popular drawing softwares. It was previously marketed in North America as a Manga studio. In Japan, it is informally known as Kurisuta. It has been developed by graphics company Celsys in Japan. As comics has got much popularity in Japan, they decided to make a software that can help them to create better illustrations for their comic books. This software can help you to create digital comics creation, 2D animation and general illustrations. It can also help you to share and manage digital assets. Clip studio paint is available for iOS, Android, windows, macOS, iPadOS and Chrome OS.
This software also keeps changing in editions with so many varying features.
Pros :
1. It is a perfect software with a user-friendly budget to give its users plenty of benefits of brush and vector tools.
2. It can be used for professional work as its varying features can highly help you to make best illustrations for your comics.
3. There is a story feature in Clip studio paint pro that can help you to organize longer projects.
4. It consists of a Frame-by-Frame animation.
Cons :
1. It has an immense interface in the system.
2. It doesn’t allow audio support in its animation features.
3. It consists of a complex keybinding.
4. It manipulates the Fonts as well as texts.
Figure 3 Clip Studio Paint Pro
4. Corel Draw standard 2021
This software CorelDraw was created in 1989. The basic purpose of its developers was to develop a vector based illustration program that can help them to bundle with publishing systems of their desktop. CorelDraw standard 2021 is also marketed by the Corel corporation. It is a vector graphics editor. The latest version of 2021 is equivalent to version 23. It was released in March 2021. It can help you to design 2 dimensional images such as posters and logos. CorelDraw standard 2021 can help you to create nice mockups. It is an amazing software that also consists of Flat style artwork. It is also available for macOS and Windows in seven different languages.
Pros :
1. It can help you to make creative logo designs for different purposes.
2. It gives you certificates for specific skills.
3. It consists of an engraving layout.
4. It has signage rendering and the functionality of this program is solid.
5. It is really easy to use if you are intending to draw vector drawings.
Cons :
1. It cannot enable you to import AI files in its system.
2. CorelDraw has complex functions to achieve conversion of images and photo design.
3. CorelDraw standard 2021 hangs a lot.
4. The PDF files created by this program are much larger than those created by other programs.
5. It lacks so many editing tools as compared to its competitors.
Figure 4 Corel Draw Standard 2021
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe illustrator is one of the most popular and most used vector graphics editors. It is a design program marketed and developed by Adobe Inc. It was originally developed for the Apple Macintosh. The illustrator was released along with a Creative cloud. The latest version of Adobe Illustrator was released on the 20th October 2020. It can be the one if you are looking for the best software to help you design the best vector graphics editing. It is a free form drawing app for vector graphics. Both Android and iOS users can take advantage of this application. It also supports scalable vector graphics.
Pros :
1. Adobe illustrator can provide you with a very helpful user interface. It means that you can achieve an extra level of flexibility while working with this software.
2. Adobe illustrator is a completely scalable software. It is because the graphics in this software are designed based on different mathematical equations rather than stored pixels.
3. Adobe illustrator can help you to work on almost any kind of computer system. It needs to be made clear that it doesn’t work well on mobile devices.
Cons :
1. Adobe illustrator offers you to learn through a steep learning curve. It Means that if you are using it as a beginner then it may take you at least 6 months to excel it.
2. Adobe illustrator has a subscription if you want to enjoy its all features. This subscription works for a specific time period.
3. Adobe illustrator provides limited support to work with raster graphics as it is a vector based illustration Designing system.
Figure 5 Adobe illustrator
Twisted brush pro Studio
Twisted brush pro studio is an amazing software with a strong focus to create natural media paintings. It has a vast function to edit photos and various illustrative styles. It has over 250 Artists with more than 9000 brushes. It is the highest number of brushes that are included in any software. Even if you think these brushes are not enough for your creative images, then you can create your own brushes through the help of a powerful brush effects system. It can help you to accomplish an incredible blending.
It consists of a large array of various color pallets. It also consists of unique mixing models with different layers and transparency. Twisted brush pro is the only software that has a mask to protect and select parts of your images. It has file format TBR and almost all image formats are supported by this program.
Pros :
1. The biggest advantage of this software is that it allows you to have different options in terms of brushes and effects etc.
2. It can be used easily through a mouse or a tablet.
3. It has an easier user interface to design different images.
Cons :
1. Although this software has been advertised as a pro, still it is unable to produce high quality results unlike other softwares.
2. It may arise from random problems out of nowhere which means that it is pretty buggy.
3. Changing your brushes from one to another may also create issues.
Figure 6 TwistedBrush Pro
Krita
Krita is one of the most popular softwares to draw and design raster images. Name of the software was decided by getting inspiration from a swedish word krita which means crayon and rita means “to draw”. The most interesting thing about Krita is that it is free and open source software. It is known as a raster graphics editor. It was basically designed for 2D animation and digital painting. Its special features include OpenGL-accelerated canvas, advanced brush engine, color management support, non destructive masks and layers, vector artwork support and group based layer management. It is an interesting software that allows each texture or brush to be tagged by its user. It can help the user to search its brushes quickly. Krita is providing its users with interesting brushes and texture bundles on its website.
Pros :
1. One of the best advantages of Krita is that it can easily import videos as well as brushes.
2. Those files that are edited within Photoshop, can also be converted to files of different formats.
3. Krita is very simple to learn as compared to its competitors. It is because it has a lot of online learning tutorials.
Cons :
1. As krita is specifically made for raster based graphics, it supports limited features for vector based graphics.
2. Although it has a lot of interesting features, still some users can not take advantage of every single feature.
3. Krita can take a lot of space in your device so you will have to take high Memory space.
Figure 7 Krita
Art weaver 7
Art weaver 7 is one of the most popular best drawing softwares for windows. It is a fully featured software with a lot of amazing features for painting. You can use a variety of predefined realistic brushes to draw or paint creative designs.Art weaver has an easy to use interface for its users. If you are a beginner, you can experience or practice to learn about designing creative images through your Art weaver drawing software. It means that it is more suitable for beginners as well as advanced users. Just like its amazing features, it supports an amazing motto for its users, unleash your creativity in an artistic way.
Pros :
⦁ It supports an amazing variety of different brushes which include charcoal, chalk and pencils etc.
⦁ It consists of a wide variety regarding its adjustment settings that can help you to customize default brushes.
⦁ It has an interesting function of event saving and playback.
Cons :
⦁ Artweaver cannot support storing any file in a PDF format.
⦁ It lacks the ability to have collaboration with others.
⦁ If you are looking for a painting or drawing software with full features of painting, then you will have to purchase Artweaver Plus. It’s a paid version otherwise a free version cannot offer you the best features of the software. The free software has a very limited number of drawing features in it.
Figure 8 Artweaver 7
Conclusion
You are living in a golden age for advanced digital artists. There are so many acceptable, both free and paid, softwares out there that a digital artist is just restricted by their abilities or creative mind. That being said since there are so many drawing programs accessible for PC and Mac that as an advanced digital artist it has become vital to begin with the correct software for you as it will be difficult to change to another software in the long run. You can pick any of the above discussed softwares if you are looking for the best software for windows.