12-24-2025, 11:16 AM
I'm an illustrator looking to transition from traditional mediums to digital, and I'm completely overwhelmed by the choice of digital painting software; I've tried free trials of Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, and Procreate on my iPad, but each has a steep learning curve and I don't want to invest significant time and money into mastering a tool that might not be the best long-term fit for my style, which involves detailed character art and comic panels. For professional illustrators, what factors ultimately helped you choose your primary digital painting software? How important is brush engine quality versus workflow efficiency for comic creation, and did you find that skills were largely transferable between programs once you learned the core concepts, or did you feel locked in after building a large asset library in one ecosystem?