I love the blender in MS and PS was making me angry on that note.Ĭomic-wise, the default canvas sizes are all the A4 and common ones. Learned that one when installing new brushes (which is even easier that photoshop as well, and much much better organized)Īnd the blending. You can drag and drop your work-space however you like. The left menu is FULLY customization, and I mean fully. One of the big things for me was the fact that the inking tools work so much smoother and cleaner for me in MS than in PS. It ALSO has a built in poser which lets you make your own 3d reference models for those really tricky shots. So many opportunities.It has many effects and screen tones as well as a really nifty perspective tool. I’ve been considering quite a bit making one featuring characters of mine that star in my next novel, or to plot out a future graphic novel. It gives me all new reasons to draw again. Seeing how clean my art came out of the program, I look forward to starting a web-comic, which I hope to eventually make when my time isn’t as restricted. It should be a lot of fun now that I have a program that can make it a bit easier on me. I haven’t tackled a whole comic page in the program yet, but I hope to do so soon. It’s sole purpose is to make comic drawing easier. The options you have to create panels and lines are much broader than in Photoshop. Overall, Manga Studio wins out for me in terms of comic book art. Everyone’s come up with a million different kinds of sketching brushes for PS that come in handy for me. Second, I find brush sets easier to find for Photoshop than for Manga Studio. I don’t know if you can map the eyedropper to a key in Manga Studio, but if I can, I’m definitely doing it. First, using the Alt key to use the eyedropper. While I was able to give my brush soft edges, there’s definitely an ease-of-use (at least, in my opinion) when coloring in Photoshop. I did try out the coloring for my latest drawing, the one featured here, to give it a shot to see how well colors mixed and faded. I still prefer coloring in Photoshop over coloring in Manga Studio, however. In Manga Studio, it looks fluid, crisp, and really makes the black lines pop out. I eventually chose not to use them in Photoshop when trying to ink my pencil work since it was way more hassle than it was worth, and looked clunky. There is a pen you can choose to use called “For Effect” pen that offers this automatically without having to change a whole bunch of settings like you do in Photoshop. I love my inking lines to have a “tapered edge” look to them. Manga Studio, much to my relief, had various options when it came to pens.
Photoshop is by far better when it comes to it’s functionality with layers and abilities to blend colors, but it’s also more of a hassle to create comic book panels in Photoshop than it is in Manga Studio. The pen in Photoshop is not very user-friendly, in my opinion, and using a brush to ink… well, that’s just time-consuming and frankly, frustrating. My issue with it, however, is it’s lack of versatility when it comes to inking. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Photoshop– in fact, it’s one of the greatest programs for an artist. I didn’t have much high hopes for it at the start, but when using the features for inking artwork, I fell in love right away. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with it.
I’ve recently made a switch to Manga Studio for my comic-style artwork.