ArtRage 3 Studio Pro, Waheed Nasir
An increasing number of artists, even those firmly committed to working in traditional media, are discovering the value of calculation digital painting and drawing tools to their repertoire.

The transition tin can be daunting, though, with some artists feeling intimidated past what they perceive equally circuitous and expensive digital fine art tools and the unsaid learning curve.

There are smaller, easier to apply alternatives, however, that tin brand the dive into digital art simpler and require less of an up-front investment.

One of them is ArtRage, a digital painting and drawing application by Ambient Design that represents an inexpensive alternative to the industry standard digital painting and cartoon applications like Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop (I might include Manga Studio Pro as a standard at this point besides).

I received a review version of ArtRage3 Studio Pro, and equally someone with both an eye to the needs of novice digital painters and a long personal history of creating digital art in both Painter and Photoshop, I put it through its paces.

Though not strictly necessary, ArtRage is meant, like those other tools, to be used with a force per unit area sensitive tablet and stylus when drawing and painting. (Wacom's Bamboo Pen model [more here] allows for basic pressure sensitive pen input for about $lxx U.S.)

ArtRage features digital emulations of painting and drawing tools for oils, watercolor, pencil, ink, airbrush, chalk and others. The Studio Pro version, which is what I tested, features layers and layer groups, layer blend modes, support for plug-in fliters, importing and exporting custom brush settings and a range of surprisingly sophisticated capabilities for its modest price.

The most direct competition for ArtRage might be AutoDesk's Sketchbook Pro, though I don't have a copy of that for comparison. Another relevant application would exist Corel Painter Essentials.

Despite a vaguely toy-like interface and inclusion of arts and crafts store sillyness like a "Glitter" tool, ArtRage in actual use defies your initial impressions and becomes a surprisingly powerful tool, suitable for creating serious digital artwork.

The application's strongest signal is the cartoon and painting tools themselves, particularly the default oil painting castor, which I recall is among the best in the industry, and the pen and pencil tools, which are at least as good as the tools from the more expensive counterparts.

Add to that features like layers, layer transparency, layer groups, Photoshop standard blend modes, and the additional capabilities in ArtRage Studio Pro for extra painting tools, selection tools and filters, and y'all have a very capable digital fine art tool for a very reasonable cost.

The downside, from my point of view, is the quirky and sometimes frustrating interface design, in which the designers accept felt it necessary to be clever and original, sometimes at the expense of ease of utilise.

Many aspects of the interface are articulate plenty, like the palette of tools and the colour picker, and many of the tools are actually easier to utilise than their counterparts in the more expensive applications, which can sometimes be bewildering to novice users.

However, there are other convention-defying interface design choices that seem different for the sake of existence dissimilar rather than "dissimilar because we think we have a meliorate way to practise this". (I happen to be a fan of the controversial interfaces Kai Krause and Phil Clevenger designed for the mid-90's Metacreations applications like Bryce and Poser, and so I don't object to non-standard interfaces out of hand).

I initially found it maddening that I couldn't use some simple UI conventions similar "Select All" and "Delete" that are an expected function in whatsoever digital graphics application. This frustration was eventually mollified equally I began to assign custom key commands (e.thousand. creating a custom key control for "Clear Layer" every bit a substitute for Select All and Delete).

The popular-up palettes for things like layers, presets, color swatches and tool settings are fine, even if they waste a bit of screen infinite on design elements, just I plant information technology mildly annoying that the tool palette and colour picker are part of the sail. They tin can exist hidden easily enough with a fundamental command, and automatically disappear when using a tool in their corners, but cannot be moved or pulled off of the sheet as far as I tin tell.

The tool and color palette arrangement is reminiscent of the old versions of Alias Sketchbook (now AutoDesk Sketchbook), but even they have moved to a more conventional tool and color palette arrangement in current versions.

The ArtRage tools themselves, however, once accessed, are a joy to use.

I found them easier to adjust and tweak (certainly for a novice) than comparable tools in Painter and Photoshop; and in general superbly implemented in terms of their action and response.

The pencil tool took much less tweaking on my office to produce a sketchy, light line for preliminary layout, easily adjusted for heavier lines (every bit if going from a 2h to a 2b in traditional pencil work). The pen tool (interestingly represented in the tool palette by the image of a technical pen instead of a steel quill) is smooth and fluid, with a nice response to pressure sensitivity.

The airbrush behaves well, the camel hair brush and mark tools accept the necessary basic settings to make them suitable for speed painting and the cosmos of digital concept fine art.

The oil painting brush, in the way it lays down colors over other colors, blends and gives the advent of blended brush strokes, is terrific. I similar it improve than whatever of the default oil brushes in Corel Painter (and I'1000 a big fan of Painter's brushes in full general), and, like many of the ArtRage tools, information technology's merely easier to employ "out of the box".

Those who are used to Painter and Photoshop's more sophisticated castor engines may find some elements of the brush controls express, but for someone who is just diving into digital art, ArtRage provides a less confusing range of options while allowing a expert deal of command and flexibility.

ArtRage Studio Pro is able to import and export a variety of paradigm formats, including (inside limitations for some advanced features) layered Photoshop files.

There are a series of tutorials on the ArtRage website to become you started, and at that place is an ArtRage user community — the webite includes user forums and galleries.

ArtRage Studio Pro is inexpensive (as of this writing, $80 U.Southward.), and an excellent value given its capabilities. It tin can be a corking place for novice digital artists to showtime, but is powerful plenty for professionals to turn out finished work, as in the two images by Pakistani visual evolution artist, Waheed Nasir, above.

There are two other versions, both more than express in features, only even less expensive, as you step down: ArtRage 3 Studio (currently $40 U.Due south.) and Art Rage two.vi ($20 U.S.). All are available for Mac and Windows. You can upgrade from the lesser versions to the more total featured ones.

In that location is a cursory overview of the versions and features hither, and a link at the lesser of the top section of this page to a more complete PDF list of the differences in features betwixt the versions.

I would certainly recommend that anyone interested in digital fine art give ArtRage a try, even if you are already comfortable with one of the more expensive tools.

There is a full-featured (but limited consign) thirty day demo version of ArtRage iii Studio Pro available for download.

However, I might advise downloading their free, limited-feature but unlimited utilise, ArtRage 2.6 Starter Edition first (link at bottom of this page). This is much more limited than any of the other versions, merely you tin can use information technology to acquaint yourself with the eccentricities of the interface, and so download and evaluate the full featured but time limited demo of ArtRage Studio Pro; and so you don't waste demo time getting used to the interface.

Fifty-fifty experienced Painter and Photoshop users may notice, as I exercise, that its small memory footprint, quick launch time and sophisticated drawing and painting tools make ArtRage a valuable improver to your digital toolbox.

I continue to work extensively in Painter and Photoshop, but ArtRage has become my favored tool to open upwards rapidly and brand sketches or visual notes, and to play with coincidental digital paintings when I have a few minutes between deadlines.

For those who are looking to make the bound into digital painting, it can be a great place to start.

[Annex: Cédric Trojani was kind enough to let me know that you tin can indeed divide the tools and colors palettes from the certificate surface area by right-clicking (Windows) or Control-clicking (Mac) on the grabber icon in each corner to access a contextual bill of fare. For more than see Cédric's comments on this postal service. So the key is actually just to familiarize yourself with the ArtRage interface. The more I learn virtually it, the more flexible and adaptable it becomes.]