Digital Art & Painting Software

Digital art & painting software trusted by professional artists

Expand your artistic capabilities using a phenomenal collection of the world’s most realistic digital Natural-Media®. Accomplish natural, professional results with Painter® 2018 that will have people asking – Is it real paint or is it Painter?

Top Reasons To Try Painter

A natural transition

Craft your art with painting software that comfortably blurs the lines between analog and digital.
Exclusive media

Create outstanding art with other-worldly media types that only digital art software can deliver.
Incomparable composition

Paint a masterpiece with perfect symmetry & perspective using built-in composition tools.
Flexible and productive

Custom brushes and palettes, and the ability to import content from others or create your own.
Supports popular hardware and software

Painter plays well with Photoshop and drawing tablets, and runs on Mac and Windows.

What’s new in Painter 2018

Thick Paint Digital Art

Voluminous media you can pile, push, carve, scrape and blend to perfection.

Cloning Photo Art

Easily transform the size and shape of your opaque or transparent clone sources.

2.5D Texture

Paint with stunning 2.5D texture that lifts off of the canvas taking your digital art to the next level.

See all features

So Real. So Painter.
What brush is that?

Category: Cloners
Brush: Camel Impasto Cloner 2
Category: Artists' Favorites
Brush: Sargent Brush
Category: Blenders
Brush: Just Add Water 2
Category: Dynamic Speckle
Brush: Real Bristle Soft Cover
Category: F-X
Brush: Glow
Category: Palette Knives & Sponges
Brush: Loaded Palette Knife 2
Category: Particles
Brush: Flow Sparkler Glow
Category: Real Watercolor
Brush: Fractal Wash Fringe
Category: Sumi-e
Brush: Dry Ink Sumi-e 2
Category: Thick Paint Brush
Brush: Grainy Fine Rake
Category: Texture Source Blending
Brush: Surface Builder

Are you in need of brushes for a specific workflow?

Your Workflow, Your Way

From custom brushes to custom palettes, Painter is the preferred choice in digital art & painting software. Import content from others, create your own, or select from built-in artist layouts to suit your workflow needs.

Concept Art

Take advantage of Painter’s versatility to quickly develop a concept design for a motion picture video game art, and professional character concept art.
Learn more

Illustration

Whether creating a character design, package design or promotional piece, or publishing an fantasy art illustration, Painter is a leader in painting software, providing the tools you need to bring your vision to life.
Learn more

Manga & Comics

Painter’s wide range of sketching, drawing and inking tools and tutorials will allow you to easily draw manga characters or comics in a whimsical world.
Learn more

Photo Art

Use powerful Auto-Painting and Cloning tools to paint photos and produce visually stunning keepsakes and sellable works of photo art.
Learn more

Fine Art

Avoid toxic fumes and costly art supplies while mixing realistic natural media and supernatural media types in a way that only this digital art & painting software can deliver
Learn more

Painter. Keeping it Real. Naturally.

New!

Thick Paint

Plunge into a digital painting experience like no other with voluminous media that lets you pile up, push around, carve into, scrape, and blend your way to realistic painted perfection. Apply pressure, tilt and rotation using Bristle Brushes, and work with Palette Knives to achieve unbelievably real brushstrokes.

New!

Cloning Capabilities

Award-winning photo art tools just got even more powerful, and the ability to collage and edit photo art is now incredibly simple. Create clone sources in Painter® 2018, or import and adjust the size and shape of your clone source on the fly. Experience the new freedom of painting from transparent clone sources that seamlessly blend into your composition. Bonus! Save your favorite clone sources with transparency to your library for use in future masterpieces.

New!

Texture Synthesis

Select an area of your canvas or a favorite texture and allow Painter to use its DNA to automatically generate a larger image for you. Use this unique texture fingerprint to add captivating depth and detail to your final works of art. Best of all, you can save these newly expanded textures for use in your future works of art.

New!

2.5D Texture Brushes

Paint with stunning 2.5D texture brushes that lift paint off the canvas. Import a 2D rendering of a 3D model and use source blending to brush on thick scales, pores or nubby texture. Or, paint direct onto your canvas to add alluring character to your art. Finish things off by skillfully adjusting the ambient surface lighting of the painted result to really make your canvas shine.

Enhanced!

Drip and Liquid Technologies

Artist-favorite brushes that use drip or liquid technologies are now extremely versatile. Paint with the beloved Sargent brush on an empty layer while blending with underlying brushstrokes. Plus, with a wide range of fresh new Natural-Media® brushes, you’ll find endless inspiration for your canvas creations.

New!

Selection Brushes

Use Painter’s new selection brush tool, including the ability to customize unique brush shapes in order to rapidly add or subtract from selections with precision and control. Once you select and customize the perfect brush, you can save it to use repeatedly in forthcoming artwork.

New!

NEW Texture Fill

Content

Fill your canvas with dramatic texture. Whether using the Paint Bucket or the new Fill Effect menu, your entire texture library is waiting to be artistically transferred to your canvas.

New!

Random Grain Rotation

Select your favorite grainy brush, enable the random grain rotation, and Painter will slightly rotate the grain in each individual stroke, creating a more natural and organic look to your work.

New!

Included Content

Explore the new Natural-Media brush library for easy access to brushes that mimic traditional media, plus additional textures to add structure to your art. Find just what you need by exploring the new 2018 brushes. Simply enter “2018” into the search window and your list of results will instantly appear.

Blank Canvas

Painter includes all of the wet and dry media types you will ever need to easily transfer the vision in your head onto canvas. Sketch with pencils, pens, pastels and markers. Paint with airbrushes, gouache, oils, sumi-e and watercolors that are so real you will forget you are painting on a computer.

Photo Art

One-of-a-kind cloning and photo-painting tools offer a significant productivity edge. Any brush that can be used on a blank canvas can also be dipped into an image to transform a photo into a treasured work of art.

Amazing Canvas Textures

Papers

Choose from a library of included canvas Paper textures. Adjust, import or create your own and either cover or reveal texture using a variety of media types.

Flow Maps

Flow maps are textures designed to maximize the creative potential of the Real Watercolor and Particle brushes by helping direct the flow of paint.

Textures

Integrate intricate surface texture into your projects by selectively painting portions of the canvas or filling a selection with the texture of your choice.

Artist-Favorite Natural Media Categories

Artists Favorites

Draw using the pressure sensitive Scratchboard Tool that produces controlled thick to thin strokes and use the Sargent brush to produce bold multi-shaded brushstrokes.

Chalk, Pastel & Pencils

Use hard media that reacts to pressure on the drawing tablet to produce highly textured marks that react to paper grain and shaded magic with the tilt of the stylus.

Real Watercolor

Enjoy wet brushes that interact with paper texture and grain – flowing, mixing and absorbing into the paper just like the real thing.

Professional Photo-Painting

Auto-Painting Panels

No experience required! Open a photo, launch the Auto-Painting Panels and prep, auto-paint and restore details with ease.

Clone Source

Use the Clone Source Panel to open the clone sources of your choosing, change size and shape if desired, and paint from the embedded opaque or transparent images.

Clone Brushes

These brushes are built to grab and paint. Choose the Cloners brush category and any brush variant and paint direct from the photo.

Painter Signature Brushes

Image Hose

Artfully spray the objects of your imagination onto the canvas. Paint your own custom hose or choose from the included library to quickly populate your canvas with anything you desire.

Particles

Physics-inspired brushes that spring, flow, glow and gravitate onto the canvas, offering an infinite number of creative possibilities.

Pattern Pens

These unique brushes produce visionary strokes incorporating exciting patterns. Choose from the existing library or create your own unique pattern to paint with.

Texture Source Blending

These brushes seamlessly blend the texture source directly into your rendered 3D output, or let you paint with full control over the texture color, luminance, location and distortion.

Composition Tools

Divine Proportion and Layout Grid

Use guides & grids based on classical composition, creating a sense of proportion that guides the eye of the viewer across a painting.

Mirror Painting & Kaleidoscope

Easily create a symmetrical painting by allowing Painter to create a mirror image by reproducing brushstrokes on the opposite side of the canvas or multiple reflections of mirror planes.

Perspective Guides

Display non-printing Perspective Guides to create objects that give the impression that they are receding, or vanishing, from view.

Version Comparison

PDF Download PDF

Feature	Painter 2018	Painter 2017	Painter 2016	Painter 2015	Painter X3
Drawing & painting tools
NEW Thick Paint brushes
NEW Thick Paint Palette knives
NEW Thick Paint Color Mixing
NEW Thick Paint lighting control
NEW 2.5D Texture brushes
NEW Imbedded Impasto Support
ENHANCED Document lighting control
NEW Interactive brush loading
ENHANCED Natural Media brushes (96 New brushes)
NEW Texture Synthesis
ENHANCED Drip
ENHANCED Sargent
NEW Selection brushes
Dynamic Speckles
Audio Expression
Particles + Natural-Media
ENHANCED Layer Blending
Particle Gravity brushes
Particle Spring brushes
Particle Flow brushes
Artist Inspired Color Mixers
Reference Image Panel
Real Watercolor
Markers
Airbrushes
RealBristle™
Acrylics
Blenders
Cloners
Digital Watercolor
Erasers
Impasto
Oils
Sumi-e
Watercolor
Content
ENHANCED Welcomebook Learning Content
ENHANCED Unique Textures
Gradients
Patterns
Paper Textures
User interface
ENHANCED Layouts
NEW Interactive Brush Loading
NEW Brush Presets
Palette Drawers
Customized Artist Layouts
Portable Brush Selector
Quick Access Property bars
Paper Rotation
Flow Map Rotation
Simplified Toolbox
Command Bar
Brush Search Engine
Smart Brush Controls
Real-Time Brush Preview
High-Quality Display Rendering
Clone Source Palette
Image Navigator
Enhanced Library Management
Recent Brush List
Enhanced Customizable User Interface
UI color options
Cloning
ENHANCED Tracing Papers
NEW Quick Switch Clone Source
NEW Transparency cloning support
NEW Cloning With Textures
NEW Selection Brushes
ENHANCED Cloning Workflow
Toolbox
NEW Selection Brush Tool
ENHANCED Fill Effect Tool
ENHANCED Fill Dialogue
ENHANCED Selections
Interactive Gradient tool
Gradient Express Painting
Dropper tool
NEW Brush Hints
ENHANCED Visual Tooltips
Content Sharing
Transformation tool
Rotate Canvas
Performance/support
ENHANCED Brush Speed
ENHANCED Crash Reduction
Pixologic Zbrush - ZAppLink Support
RTS Support
2-in-1 or Dual Personality
64-Bit for Mac
64-Bit for Windows
CPU Enhancements
Windows Touch Support
Photoshop Brush Import
Adobe® Photoshop® Support (PSD)
Wacom® Tablet Support
Wacom® Multi-touch Support
Multi-core Support
PNG Support
Color Management Support

System Requirements

Windows

Windows 10 (64-Bit), Windows 8.1 (64-Bit), or Windows 7 (64-Bit) (with the latest updates)
Intel Core 2 or AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2 GHz or faster
4 logical cores or higher (recommended)
2 GB RAM (8 GB RAM or higher recommended)
1 GB hard disk space for application files*
Solid-state drive (recommended)
1280 x 800 screen resolution (1920 x 1080 recommended)
Mouse or tablet
DVD drive (required for box installation)
Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or higher, with the latest updates
To activate your product, you must connect to the Internet and register it first

*Additional space may be required for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6

Mac

macOS 10.13, macOS 10.12, OS X 10.11 and OS X 10.10, with the latest revision
Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
4 logical cores or higher (recommended)
2 GB RAM (8 GB RAM or higher recommended)
750 MB hard disk space for application files
Solid-state drive (recommended)
1280 x 800 screen resolution (1920 x 1080 recommended)
Mouse or tablet
DVD drive (required for box installation)
To activate your product, you must connect to the Internet and register it first

The Joy of Painting^®

You've seen him before. He's the soft-spoken guy painting happy clouds, mountains and trees in about twenty-six television minutes, using big house painting-type brushes and cooing smoothly "you can do it" to the audience. His Joy of Painting program is the most recognized, most watched TV art show in history.

If Bob was painting on a computer today he would really love these mystic mountain brushes in Painter®, which were built to mimic his approachable painting style in a digital medium. Best of all, these brushes are extra special because they are endorsed and approved by Bob Ross Inc.©.

You can move mountains, rivers, trees, you can determine what your world is like... Just let your imagination go. You can create all kinds of beautiful effects, just that easy... Anything we don't like, we'll turn it into a happy little tree or something, because as you know, we don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents. You have unlimited power here, you can do that. You can do anything on this canvas, anything.

— Bob Ross

Videos: Paint Like Bob Ross Tutorials

Recreating Bob's Wet-on-Wet Technique is now even easier when you paint on a digital canvas using Bob Ross approved digital brushes.

Webinars: Mystic Mountain in 30 minutes!

Now, you can watch Painter Master Elite Karen Bonaker emulate Bob's painting technique. Grab your brushes and paint along with this live, "easy-does-it" painting approach to see and feel the magic happen on canvas.

Download Mixer Pad images

Brush Packs: Mystic Mountain Brush Pack

Paint just like Bob Ross using this custom pack of 16 brushes that includes everything you need to paint the happy little clouds, trees, river and mountains that make up a Mystic Mountain.

Painting Graceful Waterfall

Paint along with Karen as she starts from a blank canvas. Fill the canvas with color, lay down ethereal light, craft frosted foliage, create rock formations and plunging, misty water to complete your masterpiece.

Download Mixer Pad images

Paint like Bob Ross art gallery

A collection of artwork created with the Mystic Mountain brush pack
Share your paintings in social media and tag #BobRoss

Deborah Kolesar
Edie Hicks
Georg Ireland
Janice P. Van Dijk
Kathleen Casey
Lynne Alexander
Marie Otero
Per Ole Johansen
Raquel Bigby
Susan Goldberg
Terry Sayers
Walter Van de Voorde