GIMP vs Clip Studio Paint

GIMP is completely free and open source, meaning you can use GIMP and all of its features without spending a penny. This makes it an excellent case for artists or designers who may not have the budget to spend over 700 USD on Photoshop. It is also available for free on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. It's licensed under GPL with source code available here.

GIMP is the most feature rich free image editing tool. It has most image manipulation and workflow tools that you would expect from an image editing software and what it lacks it makes up with plugins.

There's a content-aware fill plugin available for GIMP.

By default GIMP splits out each window, but you can check to use the one screen mode in options if you prefer.

Compared to to other photo editing software, GIMP is very light weight. In addition it isn't very resource-intensive, meaning you can put it on a flash drive and have it with you to load up on just about any computer.

Gimp has less features than programs like Photoshop, but for a beginner, or someone not needing complicated options, Gimp is the perfect choice. It allows you to quickly do basic photo manipulation so you can easily get the product you need without having to worry about complicated features getting in the way.

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.

A setting to turn down the bright exterior of the program, this is useful for preventing eye strain after long amounts of usage.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are mobile companion apps available for iPhone, iPad, and Android. Unlimited use of the apps requires a subscription.