They are essential for spot-editing, photo retouching, creating textural surfaces, and image compositing.Ī color mode (or color model) is a system of displaying or printing color. The painting tools go far beyond just the ability to apply color in an artistic capacity.

Specifying digital color and applying it with one of the painting tools is fundamental to digital imaging. Painting software uses light instead of physical compounds to render images.

That being said, it’s worth downloading the freeware, (because it’s free after all!) if you’re in the mood to try something new. The advantage of using Photoshop is that if you have a print shop you probably already own it, and it has many other useful image manipulation features that fit neatly into your workflow. Adobe Photoshop too has a virtual paint studio built right into the interface. When it comes to the digital application of color, there are several dedicated painting programs on the market such as Corel’s Painter and a host of art-based pixel editors that you will find online like ArtRage, Rebelle 2, and DogWaffle and Krita freeware that all contain features designed to simulate real paintings (see Figure 1). From the meticulous application of thinned glazes with fine sable brushes to render exacting detail on photo-realistic paintings, to pigment splashed by the gallon on Abstract Expressionist canvases, the application of color is the artist’s way of whispering, speaking or shouting. Applying color to a surface is one of the oldest and most common forms of self-expression.

Artrage painting