Graphic tablets from Wacom, Huion, XPPen and more are indispensable tools for creating digital art and performing more complicated photo editing.

Having only a drawing tablet will not be enough for your unleash your creative self. You would also require the right software to pair with your tablet.

Looking for the best drawing app for your graphic tablet? You come to the right place.

Technically, Almost any professional graphics software will work well with a drawing tablet, what you need to figure out is what software will allow you to accomplish what you want to do.

In This article, I will review each of these software options and provide recommendations to help you make the informed choice.

Some of these drawing programs are full of advanced features that can help you take your digital painting to the next level.

Additionally, there are free software options available for those who are on a budget or just starting out.

The 12 Best Drawing Programs to Use with Graphic Tablets for Digital Painting

The best painting software for a drawing tablet varies by preference, but popular options include Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, Clip Studio Paint, Krita, etc.

Each has unique features tailored for digital art, offering various brushes, effects, and tools to enhance creativity.

1. Photoshop CC

Photoshop is the Industry Standard and can be used for many different tasks such as: image editing, sketching, drawing, painting and image editing in general. A lot of professional artists use it for their work.

Although in the starting it can be hard to use Photoshop for painting because there are so many brushes and the brush engine in Photoshop is pretty awesome ! Once you get used to it you will never switch back trust me.

You can find a lot of tutorial to use it on youtube and find a lot of brushers alternative on internet. For example cloud brush, fire brush, etc to helping you on drawing.

Professional color management and a wide range of layers can take your work at the next level.

Whether you’re into painting or photo editing, Photoshop’s got you covered. The only catch is that it comes with a subscription cost, so it might be more suitable if you need those extra features and are willing to pay the price.

platform: Windows & MacOS

2. Clip Studio Paint

Clip Studio paint is a specific software to use for digital painting and comic drawing. Any professional artist use this software usually have manga style drawing.

This software offer a lot of easy method to drawing comic (something like comic panels, comic page, comic cloud etc) and have a lot of artistic brushes to help you on drawing.

I personally use Clip Studio Paint, it is just perfect to use with my Wacom Movink 13 pen display tablet as everything is controllable as far as the sensitivity is concerned and all can be done on the fly.

The array of tools is perfect, with 3d models for reference, custom brushes are easy to create, you can even import photoshop brushes, very good spline tools if you’re into lineart and much more.

I would consider the best all-around program to be Clip Studio Paint. It has a lot of features in all areas and is a pretty stable and reliable program.

One time purchase at about $50. I actually picked up my copy in blackfriady sale at a meager 25$… you would need to check on pricing…

platform: Windows & MacOS

3. Corel Painter

Corel Painter is a favorite for many professionals due to it’s power to emulate real life tools/ traditional media.

Painter is better mainly for the brush engine , texture management and it’s all ready to go . It has a huge selection of brushes and painting materials, like pencils, crayons, oil paint, watercolor and so on.
The feeling of painting with actual oils and the like is second to none. If you come from a traditional background this one is the very best bet.

It’s also on the pricey side with an approximate price of $400 dollars. Just like photoshop, profesional love it but I personally don’t recomend it for hobbyists, like me, due to the fact that it’s too pricey.

It’s also very complex, heavy to computer, and it has a high learning curve so it can be incredibly confusing specially for people that don’t know anything about digital painting.

platform: Windows & MacOS

4. Rebelle 7

If Corel Painter is a little too expensive, Rebelle 7 could be your best alternative – less than $100.

The Rebelle software has more than 240 brushes that mimic physical mediums like oils, gouache, water color, pastels, etc. It also has a great system that mimics the spread of water.

I’ve been using Rebelle 7 recently and it’s great for creating realistic-looking watercolours or oils with plenty of thick impasto effects.

The only thing I am disappointed with is the quantity of brush presets included. However, you may create your own ones via a built-in Brush Creator.

platform: Windows & MacOS

5. Artrage 6

Like Rebelle, ArtRage 6 is also a cheaper alternative to Corel painter that simulates real-world painting, with brushes reacting to the textures of the canvas.

It packs in a good range of painting features, such as pencils, pens, and oil painting brushes, as well as digital editing features such as layers, transform, filters, and custom brushes.

Collaborative workflow tools also means it’s ideal for wortking with colleagues and classmates on projects.

This impressive digital art software is available as a full package or a Lite version, which is half the price but limited in comparison.

So, there’s flexibility here, but it’s worth checking the version you want does what you need.

platform: Windows & MacOS

6. Sketchbook Pro

Available on Windows, Apple MacOS, iPadOS, and Android devices, Sketchbook Pro is one of the best drawing software to use when you’re working across multiple devices and platforms.

The software’s minimalistic interface provides an uncluttered workspace – 100 mpx canvas, allowing artists to focus on their creative process.

The extensive library of brushes and responsive drawing tools make it ideal for anyone from beginners to professionals.

Sketchbook Pro is available as a one-time in-app purchase at about $20 on Windows and MacOS. not free, but by the standards of professional graphics tools, not that expensive either.

The pro version brings some extra tools such as: larger canvas, selection tools, more brushes and tweaking options, blending brushes, perspective guides, advanced layer options, …

For sketching and line work i recommedn Sketchbook Pro. The interface is nice and simple, entirely gesture based if you want it, and fast.

7. Paint Tool SAI

Paint tool SAI is amazing for starters. It’s the most comfortable, least awkward, and most paper-like way to draw of all softwares, specially lines.

Krita is very lightweight, quite simple, fairly intuitive, user friendly, and very easy to learn and master, which is amazing for digital art starters.

Artist love it for it’s lack of lag, great paint feeling and it’s superior linear to even photoshop’s.

Manga artist love it. As it has an amazing watercolor brush and eight out of ten times most manga style art, on the internet, is made with this software.

The cons are that SAI doesn’t have many filters and functions, only available in Windows OS, and that the brush engine is less complex than CSP or Photoshop.

SAI is not very expensive at a very reasonable price of $54 dollars, and that’s lifetime cost. I would only not recommend it if your drawing style is based on drawing color blobs to define shape instead of linework.

8. Krita

Krita is probably the best free and open source tool out there. This program can easily compete with commercial software when it comes down to digital painting.

There are numerous brush options, great brush engine, a customizable workspace and multi convenient functions.

You can make use of unlimited layers and enjoy all the necessary features that illustrators need such as brush stabilizer, transform tool, and more.

Krita also doubles as an animating software to create simple animations all for free. It’s a good starter option if you’re not ready to shell out any cash.

My wife who’s a professional concept artist has been using Krita extensively for years. It has a few performance issues when working on huge file sizes. Other than that it’s pretty good.

platform: Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Android

9. Medibang Paint

Medibang is a free and lightweight drawing software that comes with hundreds of free pre-made tones and backgrounds, lost of brushes, a massive selection of free fonts and more.

It’s strongest points are how lightweight it is, the fact that it’s multiplataform, and it’s free “cloud service.” This means that you could be working on any device and continue your project in any other.

In addition, you can log in to import resources from other users and participate in their artist community ArtSTREET.

You can also create comics and manga art in Medibang as it has features such as comic panel tool, text tool, screentone filters and frame borders, etc.

platform: Windows, MacOS, Android and iPadOS

10. Fireapalca

FireAlpaca is a free, lightweight digital art and painting software that provides most of the features needed for general use.

It has the brush store where you can download any brushes from hundreds of brush types. You can upload and even make custom brushes with it.

The Comic panel tools are really great, and are a time saving option for anyone in creating comic /manga /cartoons.

I’ve tried paid several free programs and FireAlpaca left a deep impression on me.

Firealpaca just feels so speedy and light compared to Krita. Its pens are so smooth and responsive, drawing is a real pleasure.

It doesn’t have layer filters but it does have filters that can be applied to the entire canvas. You don’t have as much control over the tools and shortcuts. Some shortcuts can be edited but not all.

FireAlpaca is better for beginners as it’s a bit simpler. Despite having many of the base features, it misses some extra options.

platform: Windows & MacOS

11. Mypaint

MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for digital painters. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program. You work on your infinite canvas with minimum distractions, bringing up the interface only when you need it.

Other good things it features include brush engine, lots of nice default brushes, storyboarding, etc. It supports graphics tablets made by Wacom, Huion, XPPen and many similar devices.

This program is free and has everything for basic sketching. You’ll find many examples of people starting in this program and afterwards doing post-production in ‘larger’ programs such as Clip Studio Paint, Krita or Adobe Photoshop.

The things i don’t like is that it seems it can’t make selections, and it can’t transform, and i really need that because i’m usually changing the position, size, and shape of things in the canvas so i would need to redraw a lot in this app.

platform: Windows, MacOS and Linux

12. Gimp

Gimp is among the very best free image processing programs one can find. some people use it as their main program for coloring or for editing.

Gimp is primarily for image editing, even if artists tend to use it for painting, it’s great for post-production mostly.

I have been using Gimp for almost a year now and my experience has been that I can make decent art in Gimp but there are some roadblocks with the software – It’s apparently limited in types of brushes.

If you want a free photoshop alternative for Digital painting , consider use the Krita rather than Gimp.

platform: Windows, MacOS and Linux

Any vector graphic program recommendations for Drawing tablets?

You may have heard Adobe Illustrator CC, which is a well-known vector based program, so it’s a very different experience to drawing or painting in raster programs like Photoshop CC.

Vectors are mathematical shapes you draw out, stylise and layer up in order to make a piece, kind of like using shapes in office.

Whereas raster or bitmap programs are ones where you deal with individual pixels, these are the types of software that are more familiar to those drawing and painting.

There are many different vector drawing software that artists can choose from for creating digital art with their drawing tablet. Some popular options include Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Affinity Designer, Sketch, Inkscape (free), etc.

Conclusion

The options for what software you should use for your digital drawing or painting practice are many.

The most famous and popular is Adobe Photoshop, But there are also plenty of other accessible and powerful apps, such Clip Studio Paint, Krita, and more.

These graphics software programs are work best with a drawing tablet with or without display and use of the digital pen, pressure-sensitive, tilt recognition, etc.

Generally, The drawing tablet can handle pretty much any software you throw at it, with only slight variations in capabilities (such as the tilt recognition support).

Which software program is best for you depends on your budget, your computer, what’s best for your creative practice, and personal preference.

Experimenting with different software can help you find what works best for you.

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