Hello all you digital painters!
I haven’t seen this little gem advertised too much on other boards, but if you’re into digital painting then I would give it a go. it’s called Paintstorm Studio. It’s like a cross between Painter/Manga Studio/Sai. The app has really good blending, a nice color wheel/mixer, a solid brush engine, and it’s gpu accelerated. At the current price of 19 dollars, it’s also very inexpensive. I can see this being a great addition to my workflow.
Enjoy!
Well very nice indeed great share, plus the $19 price tag comes in pretty handy, if you’re running a tight budget as in my case. So enough talk I’ll nab me a licence quick smart and start testing this puppy’s feature sets.
Cheers 
Great post, just bought a license based on the trailer alone. Seems like a lot of great functionality there, at $19 it’s a no brainer. Thanks OP!
For $20 its worth at least checking out. But I have to wait for the Mac version. :hmm:
Hopefully its still on sale then.
Glad you guys like it!
My criteria is fairly simple: Color Blending, Stroke Stabilizer, Color Wheel, Layers, and Blending Modes. In any case, it looks like a great tool for creating concept art.
Hopefully there will be a mac version in the future which will make it more accessible to other users.
Anybody else having performance problems with directional brushes when using pressure sensitivity? With my mouse the brushes are insanely fast but when using a tablet, directional brushes slow to a crawl. I’ll have to submit a bug report.
Holy smokes!
Insane painting application for 19$.
Totally awesome find, thanks for sharing!
Manga Studio doesn’t have the brush variety, and the same type of brush engine. If you check out the program, there are lots of parameters to play with to create your own unique brushes. I’d recommend giving it a go to see if you like it.
Also, although this program does work on my beastly Intel Graphics HD 4000, it’s meant for Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon cards.
Been playing with it all weekend, great tool. I would say that the direction here seems different from Manga Studio - this tool is more akin to Painter or Artrage, with a focus on really great natural painting tools. There’s a bit of fancy stuff thrown in though, like the particle brushes and “after” brushes which change shape after the stroke. Also, the “Sketch” tool is my favorite sketching tool I’ve ever used, out of the 7 or 8 programs I own. I think if you’re doing the “comic” workflow where you ink then color behind that Manga Studio might still be the best option, but if you are looking for a more “painterly” feel, I think this tool is worth a go. Honestly for $19 it’s worth it just to have the various brushes that MS lacks.
On another note, anybody else having issues with lag when using pressure sensitivity on brushes with direction? If I open it up and draw with the mouse it’s really fast, no lag, but as soon as I touch my pen to my tablet things slow way down for directional brushes.
Anyone else seeing the same issue?
I’ve yet to open it up for a good looksee myself, due to a backfill of pending work & personal commitments lately, but yeah sounds to me like a bug app-end, so it maybe also helpful for you to post a query about the issue, perhaps via this active Deviant Art thread the developer is currently running.
Cheers
In my opinion, yes the $19 really can not be beaten for this program. I use Manga as well, but that app is more about clean blending whereas this has beautiful “artistic” blending :).
I haven’t noticed any lag with pressure sensitivity on directional brushes. What kind of graphics card do you have?
What does it have that photoshop can’t achieve in the concept art field?
Why would a photoshop user use this program instead?
Just to hear from specialists…
Also, is it easy to learn? The video shows it is a great program, but makes it looks a bit hard to learn.
I haven’t used Photoshop for concept art in a long time, other than maybe color/level adjustments. Programs like Paintstorm Studio/Painter/Manga Studio/Sai blend colors, whereas Photoshop just sort of layers one on top of another. Photoshop also doesn’t have the same stroke stabilization tools, or a good color wheel.
If you want those things in Photoshop, you have to download plugins like Coolorus/Painters Wheel and Lazy Nezumi.
It’s not too bad :). Definitely not like going from Maya to Houdini, because in essence it’s a painting program. If you’re familiar with other digital painting software then you should be fine here.
Thank you for your input.
I was also wondering about this stroke stabilization feature, not sure it’s a good thing, how would you reach the mastering of art fundamentals with such “helpers” (at least for people beginning like me). Doesn’t it feel like cheating? 
And this perspective/vanishing correction of objects according to the distance… the first thing I thought about was: there is no more artistic skill involved with such tools, except maybe composition and image storytelling…
You’re welcome
No worries, because software can’t hide bad design. It won’t replace your core art skills like design, color, perspective and line-work.
Stabilization is important, because we’re handling digital styluses which are only as good as the company that makes them. If you don’t have stabilization, you will find yourself redoing strokes over and over. There’s a reason why Zbrush has this feature as well. It makes your life easier.