When comparing Darktable vs Clip Studio Paint, the Slant community recommends Darktable for most people. In the question“What are the best graphic design programs?” Darktable is ranked 6th while Clip Studio Paint is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Darktable is:
There are a lot of different modules.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Feature rich
There are a lot of different modules.
Pro Fast and Flexible
A very well considered UI makes edits fast and fluid. You can redo or undo any step without disturbing any other part of your edit. The UI doesn't get in the way.
Pro Good batch editing capabilities
Darktable allows applying the same set of operations to multiple images and saving your history stack as a style (you can pick exactly which modules).
Pro Edits are saved to a separate file
Original files are untouched by any edits. No worries on what was done before or if an accidental save occurs. All work is separate from the originals.
Pro Customizable
Darktable allows favoriting modules and remapping hotkeys.
Pro Allows for local adjustments
Most modules, by default, affect the whole image, but have the option to only be applied to masked-off areas (be those drawn masks, parametric ones, or a combination of the two).
Pro Supports tethered capture
On the camera set it to use USB Remote. Open Darktable, on the left side under Import, click scan for devices. The camera should appear. Click on tethered shoot. Next on the right side look for the gear icon above the battery n/a and click it. go to the session options tab, and change the base directory to the location you want to save photos. close that settings window and try taking a picture. It should come right up.
Pro Brushes
The brushes on Clip Studio feel natural and smooth. Especially love the Real Pencil and G-Pen. There are also an enormous selection of brushes: you can use those posted daily on the asset store, and you can also use ANY photoshop brush. You can also extensively customize any brush. Clip Studio has a very powerful brush engine.
Pro Dark theme
A setting to turn down the bright exterior of the program, this is useful for preventing eye strain after long amounts of usage.
Pro Familiar and Modular UI
Clip Studio Paint is easy to work with because of its familiar feel and customizable interface. You can also download the most popular interface layouts designed by others in the community and use them yourself with just a few clicks, eliminating the need to customize it yourself from scratch.
Pro Vector drawing
Clip Studio Paint lets you paint like you normally do, even using vectors. Rather than having vector brushes, Clip Studio lets you use ANY available brush on a vector layer. This allows for a normal workflow, while still providing scalable images and complex line-editing after drawing in a way that apps like Adobe Illustrator and the like are unable to match.
Pro AI technology
Clip Studio Paint offers some very cool AI technology that does everything from coloring your paintings, to auto coloring animations, to intuitively closing gaps for you. You can also record your OWN sets of frequently-repeated actions into an auto-action so you can perform sets of actions you have to perform over and over again in seconds at the click of a button.
Pro Tutorials and community support
Since Clip Studio has become very popular, there is a large amount of support available, from community forums to online courses, YouTube videos, and creator-based tutorial and how-to content. It's very easy to learn from the wide variety of content available.
Pro Large selection of community assets
Clip Studio Paint comes with an asset store which contains an enormous collection of both free and paid materials of all kinds (brushes, 3D objects, backgrounds, effects, UI layouts, image material, etc.) that are updated every single day by a huge user base all over the world. It makes it easy to favorite and download material, which you can browse by popularity, newness, or search for and download straight into Clip Studio with very little effort.
Pro Optimized for illustration
Since Clip Studio is optimized for illustration, it provides many tools to make this more efficient. For example, lineart layers (or entire folders) can be set as a reference layer for the bucket tool to reference, allowing you to fill in flat colors in literal seconds, without needing to manually color within the lines OR draw a selection with a selection tool.
Pro Affordable
Clip Studio Paint is a one-time purchase, making it very affordable compared to subscription-based alternatives. The cheaper Pro version does almost everything an illustrator could want. The more expensive Ex version is generally only needed for those interested in page management for publishing books (e.g. comics, manga, artbooks) or animation.
Pro Brush-based erasing
Unlike many other programs, which offer only dedicated eraser tools, Clip Stuio ALSO offers the ability to paint using a transparent color, essentially transforming ANY brush tool into an eraser tool which maintains the texture, edge, weight and pressure sensitivity, and other useful and customized features of your brush when erasing. This is useful both for not needing to switch tools as well as not needing to re-paint erased areas.
Pro Mobile companion apps available
There are mobile companion apps available for iPhone, iPad, and Android. Unlimited use of the apps requires a subscription.
Cons
Con Can be overwhelming
There are a lot of different modules. You're going to need some time watching tutorials to understand how to get the best out of it.
Con For tethered capture on Linux you may need additional software installed that is not a dependency for Darktable
First make sure you have gphoto2 and libgphoto2.
Con No official Windows version
Whilst official builds exist for Linux and OSX, this isn't the case for Windows (though unofficial versions do exist).
Con EX is more expensive than Pro
The EX version is more expensive, for those who want to do a few key features such as multiple page layouts for publishing manga, importing OBJ files, and animation. It's about a $150 difference.
Con Unintuitive keybinding
Though not a big deal, the default keybindings are strange at times. It is recommended to change these, especially if you have used apps like Photoshop.