It's more popular in Japan than in the west, but there is a small community of artists in the west who love this program too. It doesn't have all the extras some other art software might, because it focuses primarily on the digital painting aspect. Pair it with a decent tablet and you'll be making nice pieces easily.

For what it is, SAI is a digital painting program, but if you want extra features like guides, animation, or even filters, this is not for you.

PaintTool SAI is a good application for a notebook or laptop, where you just want to draw something on the spot, and save it as a PSD file to import to other programs later. But not everyone needs extra design features like that, just to draw what they want. So, you'll find things like line-art layers with simple vector tools, masks, clipping and layer groups, but you won't find guides (except when transforming a selection) or rulers. That's because the program is compact, with just enough features that are easy to learn and use. Overall: It wasn't until I used Paint Tool SAI, that I had fun learning to use my XP-Pen Deco 01 V2 graphic tablet to draw.

It's just not available for Mac which makes it very unfair for those Mac users to pay. The layout makes this software very easy to use.Ĭons: Lack of guides and rulers. Pros: PaintTool SAI is legendary for how fast its brush engine is.

Paint tool sai latest version 2021