Concept Art & Painting
Worldbuilding
with the right tools
Windows / macOS / iPad / iPhone
CLIP STUDIO PAINT PRO
for character art, concept art, illustration
CLIP STUDIO PAINT EX
for manga & comics, animations
Why Clip Studio Paint?
André Pelaes
Nacho Yagüe - Concept Artist
“...the way the brushes blend colors is fantastic”
I really love the brush behaviour. I always like to paint with a "traditional style" and the way the brushes blend colors is fantastic. They are so organic that a lot of times I am getting non planned results that end in the final image.
Custom brushes, unrivaled painting experience
Clip Studio Paint's brush engine was created with artists in mind to provide the best drawing experience available. Choose the best brush from high-quality preset brushes with a natural drawing feel. Each line can be drawn with precision and nuance, even reflecting the 8192 levels of pressure provided by high-end Wacom tablets.
A full-featured cross-platform experience
Create wherever inspiration strikes with Clip Studio Paint for iPad as your digital sketch book or even complete workstation. Use the robust features and cross-platform custom brushes, and enjoy drawing and painting on the go!
Customizable 3D references
Use the pre-installed 3D-figures to quickly create model sheets and turnarounds for characters and costumes, make use of the numerous 3D-objects or import your own OBJ files as reference.
A universe of materials and assets
Clip Studio Assets offers a huge library of free materials. Test concepts and create quick sketches with foliage brushes, tileable patterns, textures and much more. Make use of the constantly expanding universe of Celsys official and user-generated materials at your fingertips.
6 Features for Worldbuilding
Zounose
André Pelaes - Concept Artist
“...Clip Studio allows me to focus on my work”
What I really like about Clip Studio is how it allows me to focus on my work. The tools are there if I need them, but if I just want to jumpstart a drawing or open the software for a quick sketch it is perfect.
1. Easy thumbnailing & layout
Create a thumbnail grid in seconds and get to work, either adding images and reference data to the same layer or to individually masked panels. Organize your game or movie concepts for easy viewing and save time for yourself and the creative team!
2. Color variations with gradient maps
Transform grayscale concepts with gradient maps and explore moods and lighting for projects. Apply color variations to the whole image or individual layers to fine-tune your creations.
3. Brushes for every style and mood
Draw and paint with traditional watercolors, oil paints, pencils and more, or create your own textures.
4. Color palettes for consistent design
Find the best color scheme for your characters, creatures, costumes and more, and stay consistent with custom color palettes for every occasion. No need to clutter your canvas with swatches when color blocking or flatting colors to a design.
5. Flexible designs with vector lines
Draw vector lines with the exact same brushes used in raster painting and adjust them easily, using features such as the vector eraser, line thickness and shape sliders, or switch the brush shape altogether.
6. Non-destructive adjustment layers
Experiment freely by adding finishing touches, fine-tune color balance, hue and saturation while keeping your original layer intact with non-destructive adjustment layers.
Valentina Remenar
CLIP STUDIO PAINT PRO
for character art, concept art, illustration
CLIP STUDIO PAINT EX
for manga & comics, animations
From Concept to Completion
Matt Gaser
Amei Zhao - Concept Artist
“...brushes are highly customizable and easy to use.”
Clip Studio Paint is optimized for drawing and painting, making it ideal for illustrators. The painting brushes are highly customizable and easy to use. There's a thriving community of users who constantly contribute to the online materials library.
Native perspective rulers
With built-in perspective rulers that snap brush strokes and shape tools to vanishing points, refining sketches and drafts feels like drawing free-hand. Add believable depth and perspective without any additional plugins.
Highly customizable
Clip Studio Paint is highly customizable, allowing you to adjust the interface to match your preferred workflow and create your ideal workspace. Additionally, each tool comes with intricate customizing options to match tools you may be used to from other software.
Smooth workflow integration
Easily integrate Clip Studio Paint into your team and clients' workflow with PSD and PSB compatibility. Make the most of Photoshops robust editing features and Clip Studio Paint's natural brush strokes.
Printing made easy
Let your audience experience your work, be it in team meetings, in art books or portfolios, by having your RGB data ready for the screen, or using Clip Studio Paint's CMYK preview to ensure that your prints do your designs justice.
Learn from the Professionals
Jade Mosch
Asim Steckel, Concept Artist
Asim Steckel has worked on projects such as Empire, Shadow Kings and Galaxy for Goodgame Studios and Das Schwarze Auge—Satinavs Ketten and the award-winning interactive children’s book “Living Stories: The Lost Heart” for Daedalic Entertainment.
He shares his concept process using Clip Studio Paint in Artstation Magazine.
Magdalena Proszowska, Concept Artist
Magdalena was born in Poland, and is currently living and working in Germany as a Senior Concept Artist for game developer Ubisoft. Digital painting is her passion, spending any free time working on illustrations and character design.
In this webinar she shares her approach to lighting characters and concepts.
Artstation:https://www.artstation.com/magdaproski
Gui Guimaraes, Concept Artist
Gui Guimaraes is a concept artist and has worked on projects such as Just Cause 3, Call of Champions and Saints Row 4. He shares his process to create a character in his Cyber Candy Girls series using Clip Studio Paint in Artstation Magazine.
A Better Drawing Experience
Živko Kondić
Support you can trust
Having technical issues, or just need help with a Clip Studio Paint tool or feature? Our customer support team is happy to help.
Single payment for Windows & macOS
Clip Studio Paint for Windows and Mac is updated every three months with significant upgrades and the addition of creative tools.
International community
Share and access the knowledge of creators all around the world using our tutorial website, "Clip Studio TIPS," and our Q&A forum, "Clip Studio ASK".
Continuously new latest features
Discover new and exciting features in Clip Studio Paint with extensive upgrades and additional functions, giving you the opportunity to seek a new approach to art, like our AI-based pose recognition and automatic coloring options!
Ricardo Bessa
CLIP STUDIO PAINT PRO
for character art, concept art, illustration
CLIP STUDIO PAINT EX
for manga & comics, animations
Get to Know Clip Studio Paint
Kouji Tajima
1. Painting
Bring your concepts to life with Clip Studio Paint’s range of tools and brushes created to help you express your ideas.
Unlimited painting styles
Clip Studio Paint is perfect for a variety of painting styles, such as oil paint, watercolor, or cel-shading. Customize your brushes to paint in your favorite style, or add textures to your brushes for a traditional look.
Packed with presets
Clip Studio Paint comes with a full selection of preset tools, including user-favorite brushes, so you can start painting immediately without the need to customize.
Easy color selection
Select, test, and manage colors with six color palettes, including not only the typical circles and sliders, but also palettes for similar colors, midrange colors, and your color history.
Eyedrop colors from your desktop
It’s simple to eyedrop colors from your desktop or other applications and save them in Clip Studio Paint. You can even eyedrop from semi-transparent colors.
Realistic color blending
Experience realistic blending not often found in digital software, from accurate color mixing to running paint and wet watercolor style brushes.
Smart fill tools
Clip Studio Paint’s fill tools are smart enough to fill spaces without spillover, even if there are gaps in the lines. Drag to fill multiple spaces consecutively or fill missed spots all at once, all with our smart fill tools.
AI colorization
Set color hints and let the AI color your art! Compare color schemes and test out new ideas in a fraction of the time.
2. Details & decorations
Packed with useful tools, Clip Studio Paint helps you save time so you can focus on the fun of creating.
Go wild with patterns! - Hundreds of decoration brushes
Draw repeating textures such as chains, accessories, textile patterns, and flowers with a single stroke. Multiple images can be applied to a single brush and randomized for a natural result.
Thousands of materials at your fingertips
Clip Studio Assets offers tens of thousands of ready-to-use materials such as brushes, patterns, and 3D models. Search from free commercial-license materials and download what you need at any time.
Set your ideal pen pressure
Simply draw a few times to let the software automatically detect the level of pen pressure sensitivity that enables you to draw natural and smooth lines every time.
Drawing the perfect line
Use the inbuilt stabilization functions to draw clean, accurate lines without shakiness or wavering, exactly how you’re picturing your creation.
Fix vectors when and how you want
Experience new freedom with vector layers; layers that allow you to move, thicken, thin, and selectively erase individual brushstrokes up to an intersection.
Perspective rulers to help draft backgrounds
Set up ruler guides to draw buildings and interiors with perfect perspective using your favorite pen and brush tools. What’s more, access inbuilt and customizable symmetry rulers, ellipse rulers, and more to help you create geometric shapes with ease.
Simple and flexible masking
Create masks from selections to keep your painting layers organized. It’s easy to shrink or add to a mask with drawing tools for precise masking or to create interesting layered effects.
Test compositions with 3D models
Import your own files or download pre-made buildings, furniture, crowds, vehicles, and many other materials that are ideal for trying out compositions before you start drawing.
Sketch human figures with ease
Clip Studio Paint comes with adjustable 3D models to help you sketch out human figures. Freely change the pose, proportions, and body type as needed for any kind of character.
AI posing from photographs
With AI features enabled by deep learning algorithms, you can simply scan a photograph and let Clip Studio Paint automatically pose your 3D drawing figure to match.
Extract line art from photos and 3D objects
Extract lines from photos and 3D models to create frameworks for your artwork that you can build from, boosting your efficiency.
Simple layer effects
Apply effects to entire layers with a single click, whether adding outlines to text or images, adding a watercolor edge, changing the line color, or creating a screentone effect.
Gradients how you want them
As well as basic two-color gradients, you can add and edit interval colors or create gradients into transparency. You can also apply gradient maps to instantly apply colors based on an image’s values, or use the Contour Line Fill tool to create gradients following a shape.
Clean up scanned artwork
Use dedicated features for removing scanner dust or extracting drawn art from a white paper background, helping you to smoothly convert your traditional art for digital editing.
3. Final touches
Handy features for effects, adjustments, and finishing touches to bring out the best in your art.
Transformation tools for quick adjustments
As well as rotating and flipping images, you can adjust the shape of selections with free transform or the mesh transform feature for more detailed adjustments.
Experiment endlessly with tonal correction layers
Use Tonal Correction Layers to add finishing touches while leaving the original layer as it is. Adjust image brightness, contrast, tone, and more until you’re satisfied.
Boost quality with filters
Apply effects to images such as blur, sharpening, noise, and mosaic with filters.
Convert photos to illustrations
Photos can also be converted into painterly styles with the Artistic filter. Here, you can also fine-tune line thickness and the strength of the effect.
Smart Smoothing to improve image resolution
Resample images and erase jpeg noise to reuse your past work as a larger image.
Get expressive with blending modes
Use blending modes on your layers to add a variety of interesting effects to your image. Select from 29 blending modes to create specific effects or compositions.
Text
Add text, edit line, and word spacing, or rotate, tilt, and flip text, all without switching your software.
4. Managing files
Manage your storyboards, multi-page projects, and animations all in one software!
Keep sketches and storyboards together
Create separate panels for thumbnails or storyboarding simply by dragging the frame tool. Save your canvas layouts as templates to recall them later on your next project.
Manage multi-page works
Keep multiple project pages together in a single file, add or reorder pages, and export as print-ready data.
See your work before you print with 3D preview
Before printing multi-page projects, check the final product's binding and finish with the 3D preview feature.
Supports CMYK color for printing
Clip Studio Paint supports the import/export of both RGB and CMYK data used for printing. With the CMYK preview, colors displayed in your workspace are even closer to their real printed hues!
Export anywhere
Supports Kindle and EPUB e-book formats, including commercial e-books and self-publishing.
Inbuilt animation features
With Clip Studio Paint’s 2D animation tools, arrange your storyboard scenes with audio, or even work on full-length animations.
5. Efficiency & support
Clip Studio Paint supports the needs of professional artists with efficient tools and a reliable support system.
Fully customizable workspace
Save and share your customized palette layout, shortcuts, command bar, and colors whenever you need them!
Reference images at a glance
With the secondary window, you can view your canvas at full-screen and zoomed in at the same time! Meanwhile, view and eyedrop your reference images with the Sub View palette. The Navigator palette lets you flip, scale, and rotate your canvas intuitively.
Streamline repetitive operations
Perform frequent or repeated operations with one click using Auto Actions. Customize shortcuts and recreate your favorite shortcuts from other programs.
Easy access to your most frequently used functions
The Quick Access Palette gives you access to menus, Auto Actions, tools, and colors from a single palette to customize your ideal virtual workspace.
Input and output in Photoshop formats
Clip Studio Paint supports input and output in Photoshop file formats, so you can deliver files to clients and printing companies without changing your existing workflows. Load, edit, and save PSD and PSB data while maintaining layers to seamlessly switch between programs.
Peace of mind with automatic backups
Unexpected crashes are every digital artist’s nightmare, so Clip Studio Paint offers an optional autosave feature. You can also change the autosave interval to your preference.
Back up your workspace to the cloud
Check and manage your saved works, and sync to the cloud. You can restore the software settings manually if needed, and synchronize your PC and iPad data to take your virtual workspace wherever you go.
Drawing freedom with the iPad
Create on the go or at your favorite cafe with Clip Studio Paint for iPad. With the same functionality as the desktop version, enjoy smooth drawing thanks to complete compatibility with the Apple Pencil.
Optimized for touchscreens
Touchscreen mode allows you to use and customize touch gestures to speed up your workflow or reorganize your workspace.
Supports HD resolution displays
The interface and canvas displays clearly at the native resolution of Mac devices with a Retina display.
Compatible with macOS Sidecar
Clip Studio Paint is compatible with the macOS Sidecar feature for screen mirroring or extended screens. You can even use the Clip Studio Tabmate shortcut device while using Sidecar.
Free user support
Our support desk is open year-round, offering technical help and advice free of charge.
CLIP STUDIO PAINT PRO
for character art, concept art, illustration
CLIP STUDIO PAINT EX
for manga & comics, animations
PRO
EX
Single-page illustrations & comics
Multi-page comics/manga & illustrations
Up to 24 frames for gifs or short animations
Unlimited frames for professional animation
Natural, customizable pen and brush tools
Vector layers
More than 10,000 free downloadable brushes and materials
3D models and drawing figures
PSD compatibility
RGB and CMYK compatible
For macOS and Windows
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Export and print multi-page files
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Convert images and 3D models into lines and dot shading
Free technical support
Free web services & community
Clip Studio Ask / Assets / Tips / Share
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