ArtRage 2.5 is a digital painting application similar in many ways to Corel Painter, and comes in two flavors: free and nearly so ($25USD). As a long-time Painter user, I finally decided to give ArtRage a trial run, and see how it measures up to Painter. After all, the founders of Ambient Design (makers of ArtRage) originally worked for Metacreations, which once upon a time was the maker of Painter (called Fractal Design Painter back then), so I was curious to see just how similar the two programs are. I’d love to report that ArtRage is an inexpensive alternative to Painter, but it’s not really powerful enough to be used as a professional tool. It is, however, a lot of fun to play with. And it’s a great way to get your first taste of digital painting without a big investment.

While Painter is known for being complex and hard to learn, ArtRage stands at the other end of the spectrum. It’s simple. It’s intuitive. But the ease of use comes at a price: there are only a handful of brush types available, and your options for controlling how they behave are very limited. Using ArtRage is nearly as intuitive as picking up a brush and dipping in a paint well. The interface is modern and fun to work with. It reminds me a lot of the old Metacreations front ends for Bryce and Kai Power Tools, though it’s not as quirky.

ArtRage allows you to dive right in and begin exploring digital painting. If you’re looking to give digital painting a try, this is a great place to start.

There are enough brush types here (Oil, Chalk, Crayon, Pencil, Airbrush, and Markers) to give you a taste for how digital painting programs can mimic their traditional counterparts. You’ll be able to vary the “paper” surface from smooth to rough, in a very convincing way. You can load in an image to trace, or load an image as a starting point, and begin painting right on top of it. ArtRage even includes layers, and will retain layers (and their blending modes) from imported Photoshop files.

The downside is that brush behaviors are limited, and there are very few to pick from. While Painter has dozens of variations of a single brush type, such as Oils, ArtRage has a single Oil brush. The options for controlling an Oil brush in Painter are practically overwhelming, though beginners can just pick one of the hundreds of presets and get to work. ArtRage’s single Oil brush has just three variable settings: pressure, thinners, and loading.

My recommendation is to give ArtRage a try. The free version has many options and brushes turned off, but it will let you take it out for a spin, so there’s nothing to lose. You may just find yourself a new way to express yourself, and have a ball doing it.

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